In this week’s Wednesday/Weekend series featuring Wings’s own work, we’ve been highlighting pieces that are extremely small and yet wholly elemental: earth, air, fire, . . . and now, water.
Today’s featured work is another ring — small, spare, simple in the extreme. It’s one plain band of sterling silver, scored on either side . . . and named for the local waters that sustain life in this high desert land, the rivers, large and small.
From its description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
The Rivers Ring
Water is life in this desert place, and it is the rivers and streams that daily feed this land, and therefore us. This simple silver band embodies the three rivers that are the lifeblood of the Pueblo lands: the Rio Pueblo and the Rio Lucero, both feeding ultimately into the gleaming silver waters of the great Rio Grande. The band, unadorned by anything but the shimmery surface, is scored by hand on either side, making visible the smaller tributaries that merge with the great flow of the main waters. Sizeable. Another view shown at top.
Sterling silver
$275 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Of course, the body of water that is most sacred here in this place is not a river at all, but a lake. But these rivers are inextricably a part of this place, too, a fundamental element of its identity. As I wrote when we introduced this piece, new, a few months ago:
There are multiple rivers in this area, a cardiovascular system of this land composed of arteries and veins and capillaries in the form of rivers and tributaries and streams that range from creeks and brooks to the local acequias to simple hand-dug ditches a few inches deep, sometimes called canales here but more properly conceived as shallow, narrow depressions in the soil than as anything approaching an actual canal. In one way or another, everything feeds, and is fed by, the Rio Grande, the greatest river (by name as well as by fact) of them all in this place. But it is one of three that play a major role in Pueblo life, with two smaller rios occupying positions of greater immediacy and impact: the Rio Pueblo de Taos, the river that bisects the old village and serves as its primary water source; and the Rio Lucero above us, that feeds the irrigation ditches, and thus the lands of the outlying areas.
All three rivers play much greater, more complex roles that described here, of course. They are essential elements of life here, not merely on a practical level but in cultural and spiritual terms, as well. If water is life, then these three watersheds are the life of this specific place and its inhabitants, people, animals, plants alike. It should come as no surprise that the waters find themselves reflected in Wings’s work; they’ve been a part of his very identity since time immemorial.
There are, of course, other rivers here, too: some tributaries that feed larger flows; some their own wholly independent currents; some that become rivers only during this monsoonal season, when the rain descends so rapidly that the streams and ditches and acequias overflow their banks, flooding lowlands in their downstream-rushing haste. Among them are the great rivers above us, only a short distance away:
To the north, the Wild Rivers descend, spilling into the Gorge to the west of us, thence feeding into the Quartzite winding through the canyon south of the town. The waters run high and hard and fast, dark green rapids tipped with flashing white diamonds that boil and pour over and around the rocks that have fallen into their path. If you’re lucky, you may catch sight of a bald eagle, or perhaps a pair, calm but alert in the upper branches of a gnarled old cottonwood. Below, mallards and drakes and the occasional goldeneye skim along the water’s green surface, landing like miniature jets, diving forward to grab an unwary snack, pointed tailfeathers reaching for the sky.
Up at the Wild Rivers, it can feel like a world of its own no matter the time of year. It’s a protected area, federally administered now: Part of the Río Grande del Norte National Monument, it’s run by the Bureau of Land Management as a federal recreation area.
To the locals, the real locals, it’s something much greater, older, deeper.
It’s the place where the Red River and the Río Grande, iconic stretches of water both, come together to create something much greater than the sum of their parts.
. . .
[T]he water itself: thick and yet translucent, clear as blue-green glass and still cloudy white, a substance that looks for all the world like thick unmelted slush but for the speed with which it roars downstream, its all-consuming wetness turning the jet-colored slate to a glossy obsidian as it passes.
Like all else about this land, it is fierce and fiery, an elemental power so intense that it assumes the characteristics of its opposite. Gift and curse; blessing and danger; a reminder that even that which is most crucial to life can sweep you off your feet and carry you away against your will if you are not mindful of its force and strength. There’s always the risk of being dashed on the rocks along the way.
The photos by Wings that accompany that post illustrate what I mean about elemental powers that assume the characteristics of their opposites. It’s impossible to look at the them without feeling the great sense of motion, of fierce speed and velocity, of water’s raw power to alter and shape the world.
In a land where water is life, the currents that carry it to us are something to be honored, to be celebrated, to be always remembered with gratitude and respect.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
