We finally have a real “first snow.”
It’s only a month or so late, of course, but then, our first hard freeze this year was twice as late, so this is a bit of an improvement.
For now, we’re just grateful to see it coming down in real volume, to know that it’s cold enough for it collect on the ground. Just barely cold enough, as it happens, but we’re grateful for what we can get.
Despite the fact that the wintry weather is long overdue, it has seemed for so long so much like early fall. We’ve had mostly temperatures worthy of Indian summer and then some, just enough nighttime cold to produce some clouds and fog, with nothing tangible to show for either; even the foliage, half turned early and half late this year, has lasted longer than normal, courtesy of the unseasonal warmth.
Our historically customary seasonal patterns here dictate certain cycles for fall: early frost and sunset fire, a first snow in October with peak foliage colors at that month’s middle, and most of the green entirely gone by now. What we got were a couple of very late hard freezes that did not even display that early frost, no grass rimed in silver and crunching underfoot, no shimmer of grass blades and spiderwebs frozen into translucent, light-catching filaments just above the earth. These were traditionally two aspects of fall that I have always awaited, making sure to look out for them expressly.
This year, to no avail.
So much has changed, and not for the better; such upendings and inversions of this land’s usual cycles is dangerous for it, and for us all. We have to find ways to ameliorate it, to mend it, to rehabilitate and reclaim it, but as tools are taken away and options increasingly erased, the first and hardest battle still awaits us: the one that sees us internalize this new reality and reaffirm our commitment to the fight.
What I see today all around us offers little hope.
But our job now is igniting fall’s fire before the winter comes, both literally and metaphorically. There are many weeks of official autumn left, and in this place, certainly, fall and winter will do their annual dance for primacy during most of them. People are in jeopardy now, need help now, need means to survive now, to say nothing of what the true cold season will bring.
As we say, it’s time to warrior up: to check your bows; make sure our arrows will fly true, armor up with our medicine shields and the protective power of prayer and what the spirits provide. Sometimes, we need a reminder, in terms as much literal as metaphorical, as tangible as they are symbolic. It’s why Wings’s approach to his work is so deeply infused with symbolism, animated by spirit . . . and by Spirit, who he has always credited wtih guiding his hands through every work created.
And it’s a dynamic that infuses today’s featured work, a masterwork by any measure, and the final remaining work in a signature series of four, a collection in miniature created, by its very name, to honor the power and medicine of The Four Seasons. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Fall: Early Frost and Sunset Fire Necklace
The light of a high-desert autumn sets the land aflame amid the chill dance of Fall: early frost and sunset fire. Wings calls to the circle leaf and flame, frost and light, with this extraordinary necklace, a medicine shield manifest in the shades of season and time, wrought as a tribute to the winds and the Sacred Directions. The pendant, large and protective as any true warrior’s shield, is hand-wrought of heavy eighteen-gauge sterling silver, all solidity and substance, yet scalloped freehand with an edge of fantastic delicacy. It’s set with nine spectacular stones: At the cardinal directions sit four large teardrops of stunningly webbed Red Creek jasper in all the shades of autumn leaves, crimson and gold, bronze and hints of remnant green; at the ordinal points, four smaller Red Creek jasper teardrops in beautifully marbled hues; at the center, a single incredible square of agatized ocean jasper, lacy bands of frost tracing a path across the last of the earth’s green. Between the cabochons, solitary fall wildflowers bloom, traces of frost falling around them. The pendant hangs from a simple flared bail stamped freehand in an Eye of Spirit motif formed of single stamps, conjoined, in a radiant design of sunrise over clouds. Strung through the bail is dazzling strand of beads in natural materials, each one selected and matched for color: large rounds of ocean jasper in greens and rusts and pearly whites extending into similarly-sized Red Creek jasper spheres, each segment separated by single beads of faceted high-grade gray moonstone; lengths of medium-sized golden fossilized coral, Red Creek jasper, ocean jasper, and scarlet red-willow wood spheres, with more icy gray moonstone rondels as separators; then segments of frosty matte sardonyx and tiny round ocean jasper anchors, separated by sterling silver doughnut rondels. Beads are strung over extra-sturdy tri-ply foxtail made of heavy nylon, specially treated and encased in metal, then silver-plated for color matching; findings are sturdy sterling silver assemblies. Pendant including bail hangs 6.75″, 6.25″ excluding bail, and is 6.5″ across at the widest point; the bail is .5″ long by 9/16″ across at the widest point; center cabochon is 7/8″ square; cardinal cabochons are 2″ long by 3/4″ across at the widest point; ordinal cabochons are 1.5″ long by 5/8″ across; bead strand is 22″ long, excluding findings. [All dimensions approximate.] Designed jointly by Wings and Aji; fourth in The Four Seasons Series. Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Sterling silver (setting and findings);
Red Creek jasper; agatized ocean jasper (pendant cabochons); tri-ply silver-plated foxtail (to hold beads);
Red Creek jasper; ocean jasper; red willow wood; gray moonstone; fossilized coral; sardonyx; sterling silver (beads)
$2,000 plus shipping, handling, and insurance
All four of the works in this series evoked the shape and spirit of a shield — something talismanic, imbued with its own power but wrought in a form that reminds the wearer every moment of that essential truth.
But of the four, this is the one most manifest in that form and shape. It’s big, bold, heavy, full of substance in physical terms, and in spiritual and symbolic ones, as well. The pendant’s compound setting is saw-cut freehand in a distinctly shield-like pattern, and Wings kept the stampwork spare enough to allow the silverwork to speak. The cabochons are themselves tributes to the elemental identities and spirits that animate autumn as a season.
And the beads . . . the beads are all of that more, a cascading, kaleidoscopic whirl of shades and shimmer that braid those of the other three seasons into this one: spring’s silvery light, the earthy golden clay and sun of summer, the rich evergreen and icy rime of winter, all inextricably intertwined with the pure flames of fall.
It is, in its way, a reminder that the work remains year-round. But it also urges us to focus more sharply now: now, in these last weeks before winter, when the cold, dark days are near but not yet fully here, when the most vulnerable most need our help to make it through to the warmer winds beyond.
Today, of all days, reminds us that we have work to do. It begins with igniting fall’s fire — in our hearts, in our spirits, in the work of our hands and bodies, in the love that must animate it all — before the winter comes.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
