This week, we’ve been focused on the blessings of winter: the shades and symbols, the gifts of the skies.
Most obvious (and perhaps most valued and valuable) is the snow. However much we emphasize the importance of the rains in summer, it is the snowpack that provides the base for our watersheds, and for the land itself, long before the planting season is anything more than a plan.
In the years when there is little snow (years now increasing in frequency and number), the warmer months bear witness to an unusually delicate dance. Irrigation is always a necessity here, and it is the snowpack in the mountains that provides the water used. In years that have seen little winter precipitation, the flow must be managed carefully, and competition for access to it increases accordingly.
It’s also why even the mud that accompanies a thaw is a welcome occurrence, if an irritating one. Our big snow came right after Christmas, dropping as much as two feet in some places here on the land, and, as is the usual pattern here, the post-storm temperatures plunged to well below zero every night. The snow hardened into an icy pack atop the earth, where it simply sat.
Since then, we’ve had a few smaller snows, mostly flurries, but over the last week, we’ve also undergone an exceptionally early thaw. Yesterday’s high was not far short of fifty, and the projected high for today is forty-six. Wings has spent much of the month on snow removal, and while there are still acres where the depth remains a good foot, most of the areas for driving and walking have long since been plowed — and they now sit in two inches of mud.
That will change, and soon — if the forecast holds, a major storm will arrive this weekend, and stay for a few days. But in the meantime, what it means is that we have had the great good fortune of allowing a great deal of precipitation to soak slowly into the ground, thawing and freezing and thawing again, a long slow cyclical process that will ready the land for planting in the latter half of spring, rendering it rich and fallow.
And so, for our last Friday Feature of January, we turn to a spirit more often associated with summer growth and autumn harvest: the Corn Katsina. It is an exceptionally beautiful rendering of this spirit, one with, in a sense, a dual identity: In this iteration, the being embodies the spirits of yellow corn and blue corn, both essential forms of sustenance for the people, in body and in spirit. From its description in the Other Artists: Katsinam gallery here on the site:
The Corn Katsina emerges here from an ear of yellow corn on the front, from blue corn on the reverse. Hand-carved by master carver Josh Aragon (Hopi/Laguna) in the traditional Hopi style from a single piece of cottonwood root, and hand-painted in traditional patterns, the katsina stands just over 16.5″ from feather tip to base.
Hand-painted cottonwood root
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Fragile; extra handling charges apply
We learned, this winter, that the blue and yellow corn spirits do not confine themselves to the warmer months. Perhaps it is yet one more manifestation of climate change, but we prefer to think that this was simply a special occurrence, a gift of the spirits at a time when we needed such a sign: Just before year’s end, after the snows had covered the land and the temperatures had descended to bitter depths, giving air and light alike a razor-sharp edge, we were given something extraordinary, a small sign of new life in the short dark depths of winter.
Back in October, and again in November, Wings and I walked the garden in tandem, following behind each other to ensure that we had harvested every useable ear of Indian corn. Those unsuitable for our use were given to the horses and the chickens. After several passes, we had picked every single ear; repeated checks behind each other ensured that none was left behind.
But less than two months later, as I walked past the garden where the dried stalks still stood shivering in the wind, something had changed: there was a protrusion low on one of the stalks where there had been none before. There was nothing fresh or green of the husk surrounding it; it was just as dry and desiccated as all the others. But nestled inside was this:
A small ear of Indian corn, neither blue nor yellow, but a combination of both. Its rows were slightly misshapen, flowing in curves; many of the kernels were a bit oddly shaped, like large round pearls. But it was a full ear of corn, pearlescent violet blues and chatoyant golds, and it had appeared, as if fully formed, where there had been nothing but a dried husk. It now hangs indoors as a reminder of Spirit’s abundance.
There is much of winter left, weeks and months yet to go before spring arrives to stay for a while. But every day, we see in our kitchen this reminder of the spirits of the corn and all that they represent for our peoples. We are taking its mysterious appearance as a good omen for the planting and growing seasons to come, a reminder that even the coldest days of winter will soon bear fruit.
~ Aji
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