For the first time in days, the dawn was all about the sun.
It came and went throughout the day, snowclouds moving in and enfolding the peaks in their embrace once more throughout the middle of the day. But dawn and dusk were all about the light.
It’s deceptive, this abundant sun here at this time of year. One would expect it to be warm, and this morning, it was — but as the day ticked onward, the wind ticked upward until it sharpened itself into an icy scalpel’s blade. Now, with fall of dark, the mercury will plunge, reaching single digits overnight . . . or colder still.
It’s hard to believe that in winter, a new world’s first flower has already opened.
It’s flower as verb, not noun, although both apply in their own ways. Apply, that is, with an expansive understanding of what constitutes the noun form of the word: flower perceived at least slightly metaphorically.
One might think I’m referring to the snowflakes — after all, their mandala-like prisms look a bit like the petals and stamens of our floral relatives — but I’m not. I’m actually referring to two separate interpretations of the word, one entirely symbolic and one all too literal. The symbolic one is simple: With the winter solstice came our new year, our new world, reborn, and while it may be only seeds at the moment, we know that this world will flower in its own good time.
The literal meaning is more problematic.
A few days before Christmas, as I walked in the narrow space between the house and the stand of young aspens, I noticed that the buds had already opened — flowered, in other words, into the fuzzy catkins that more rightly belong to the weeks that straddle what the world calls March and April.
But they are born, fully, in the deepest cold of winter now, a first flower of a very different sort, and the question becomes how we keep them alive.
Aspens are hardy spirits; it’s why they thrive at these steep elevations, through all extremes of temperature and weather. But there are some conditions that even the toughest new buds cannot survive, and that is cause for concern now. There is nothing to be done; as with any birth, it’s impossible to return it to its womb. It’s impractical, to say the least, to think about wrapping, especially in temperatures that will simply freeze any cover first wet and then solid. But there have been occasions, in recent years, when early budding and late sub-zero freezes have combined, and the trees have made it to full leaf and flower anyway.
And so we can hope. We can pray. We can speak to the branches and sing to the buds, as our ancestors taught us to do. And we can have some faith in Mother Earth’s own resilience, for she has survived much more than this to flower anew every year on her own.
Today’s featured work, one that perhaps would seem an odd choice for winter were it not for the context above, is manifest as this moment: that of first flower, the earliest evidence that the world’s annual rebirth has been truly successful, that it will grow and mature and bring its hopes to fruition. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
First Flower Necklace
A single sunlit dewdrop summons the new buds to open in first flower. In this wildflower season, Wings brings sun and dew to the newest petals in this necklace wrought in shades of rose and gold and sterling silver. It begins with the pendant, a stunning giant teardrop of mookaite, a perfect bud of dusty roses petals edged in sunny gold, just ready to open for the first time. This extraordinary cabochon is set into a scalloped bezel trimmed with twisted silver, and topped by a tiny round bezel-set citrine cabochon, sun filtered through the dew at dawn. It all hangs from a hand-wrought bail of flared sterling silver, stamped front and back with a single hand-stamped flowering sunburst. The bail hangs over a pair of tiny round ocean jasper beads flanked by small faceted mookaite alternating with ridged barrel beads of bright golden citrine, interspersed throughout the length of the strand with large, silky doughnut rondel and barrel beads of mookaite in mulberry and rose and gold. Each end of the strand is anchored with four round ocean jasper beads flowing into sterling silver findings. Bead strand is 20″ long, excluding findings; pendant, including bail, is another 2.5″ long by 1-3/16″ across at the widest point; visible portion of mookaite cabochon is 3/4″ long; citrine cabochon is 3/16″ across; bail hangs 1/4″ long by 3/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Close-up view of pendant shown below.
Sterling silver; mookaite; citrine; ocean jasper
$1,750 + shipping, handling, and insurance
As I said above, it might seem an odd choice for the depths of midwinter: no real petals in evidence, no actual dew. Except that that’s not quite true. There are petals still in existence here — dried, yes, waiting for the winds to strip them from their stalks or new growth to push them off their stems, but they are here, and they remind us, in the hardest, coldest days, that they will be reborn in all their glorious colorful finery.
And while it’s not really accurate to regard the drops that the dawn delivers as dew, our small world here is, even in these dangerously cold days, still dusted with droplets of moisture: a product of fog, of mist, of freezing rain and snow already melting in the early-morning light. Such winter beadwork catches the golden glow of the sun as surely as any summery dewdrop will ever do.
In the light of the rising and setting sun, one could even be forgiven for thinking that the hard glossy shells of the aspen buds, just cracking open to release the early catkins, do, in fact, look much like the mookaite cabochon of the pendant. What is rich brown in natural light takes on a reddish hue limned in gold when the low-angled radiance of the sun catches them just right. And the chunky beads, faceted and polished, that its strand comprises? Most of the trees are still ornamented, not for the holidays but by the last stubborn leaves, turned gold and brown and gray with dormancy, curled and ruffled and textured and absolutely capable of turning to fire in the winter light.
It’s a reminder that words are rarely as limited as we like to pretend, because the world they describe refuses to be bound by narrow definitions. Drought, cold, and climate collapse notwithstanding, we have been given a gift once more: in winter, a new world’s first flower.
And we have been tasked with raising it to full fruition.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
