The last two days, Wings’s photo gallery reminder on his phone has sent him images that he shot exactly a year ago.
In them, there is snow on the ground everywhere. It’s not especially deep — only a few inches. But it’s snow, and it’s accumulated, and it’s clearly cold enough to keep it on the ground.
Unlike now.
Look outside, and the earth of our entire small world here is a wan yellow-gray color, a bit like the sky preceding a tornado or other dangerous storm. It’s apt, I suppose: We do have a dangerous storm gathering now, unlike anything humankind has ever seen, one in which the planet’s climate collapses all around us.
And we are all, every last person, woefully unprepared for what is to come.
It’s easy to become diverted now, with the winter holidays looming close; easy, too, to be distracted by the harsh realities of daily life, of what it takes simply to get through each turning of the earth in this society. But we cannot afford such diversions now, nor can the planet itself.
There’s precious little that we can do in the short term to return the climate to its proper balance, at least in terms of the sort of actions whose consequences are immediate and perceptible. We cannot wave a magic wand and lower the temperature of air and waters, cannot conjure snow out of a clear blue sky. All of the actions available to us are of the much more attenuated variety, and much longer-term in their ability to effect change, and it’s easy to become discouraged in a world whose corporate and political masters offer instant gratification in exchange for the sale of our collective soul.
It’s why memory matters: Only by understanding what was can we shape what lies ahead.
I’m not talking about wallowing in memory to the exclusion of dealing with reality, of course. Pining for the “good old days” is an endeavor that is not useless, but actively toxic, designed to keep us from the work required now . . . and, of course, on so very many fronts, those old days were very far from “good.”
No, I’m talking about something else entirely, something that is integral, essential, elemental to our traditional worldviews and ways of being: a practice and praxis of daily life that remembers the past, respects it, honors it, seeks to understand it in a way that permits us to restore its greatest gifts to the world of future generations, while recognizing and refusing the damaging behaviors that left us needing to recreate and reclaim those gifts in the first place. It’s a process that applies as much politically as it does environmentally, and it’s one of the reasons that our cultures’ traditions of honoring elders and ancestors is so important to our survival.
And sometimes, that history shows itself to us in the most unlikely of places and contexts. It’s like hearing a fragment of a song from one’s youth, or catching a scent upon the air that is familiar from childhood holidays: One can be swept by a tidal wave of memory and experience, or perhaps just find one’s mind suddenly transported to a calmer, happier state. And it’s true that the experience may not always be a good one; trauma is real, and it’s good to be cautious about such incidents where possible. But sometimes, it’s merely a reminder of a time and place, perhaps an event or person, not neutral but not tied particularly to emotional experience, either.
And sometimes, such reminders now, years later, are all it takes in dark days to reignite hope — a hope that carries us forward, even in the dark [yet insufficiently cold] days of winter.
The image above that is the subject of this week’s Monday Photo Meditation serves this latter purpose for me, for us. It’s one a series of three film photos that Wings shot on a winter’s day somewhere between late 2005 and early 2007, if memory serves. If I had to guess, it was probably January of 2006, a little later in the season than now, but it could have been either side of that year, and in truth, back then? Anywhere from October’s end to late April.
Wings shot this one in black and white; the other two in the series, shot in color, will appear in tomorrow’s post. One of them as taken from the same vantage point as this, very nearly identical; the other is of the horse in close-up, facing it obliquely, not quite head-on, its steel hooves raised in the foreground. The sculpture is [or was; it’s been nearly twenty years since we were there] on land south of here, near Picuris Pueblo and the village of Peñasco, and I was not along when he discovered it and shot these photos, although he took me to see it on a subsequent trip.
The horse is, of course, a metal sculpture made of steel, heavy oxidized by long exposure to the elements. But the words that appeared instantly and unbidden in my mind when I first saw it myself were “Iron Horse,” followed immediately by “No Iron Horse,” the latter of which became the title of a post here a little over six years ago, part of tomorrow’s series. If you choose to read it, you’ll understand a bit of the ways in which the U.S. government’s railroad aspirations were directly contributory to the genocides of our peoples, and why it is impossible for us to regard it as the unqualified good that the country’s official history teaches it to be.
You’ll also understand why, iron or steel or no, the horse spoke to us [and understand a bit of the role that horses fill in our worldviews and ways].
On this day, though? It speaks to me of other things: of the snow deep on the ground, of the gray clouds across a sky as white as the earth, of the rich lush stands of evergreen that ring the shot — of a world seemingly in good health and harmony. Of all three photos, this is actually my favorite, the black and white film lending it a moody, haunting air, one that reminds me of all the possibility, all the beauty, all the hope and power that winter holds.
It’s a lot for a giant steel horse to carry. Then again, its real-life counterparts are accustomed to carrying us in much more literal terms. Perhaps it’s why, whether ancient Indigenous horses or those acquired from. colonial invaders, horses are to us an embodiment of hope: hope that carries us forward, even in the face of the worst that humanity can dream up or enact.
Although millions too many did not, our own ancestors have seen that worst, and survived. We are beginning to see a return of that worst on every front now, deliberate evils compounded by the ravages of a planet mortally wounded by human acts. The horse, and the snow, both remind me that hope remains.
We are approaching the Solstice, end of the Earth’s own year; approaching, too, the end of the calendar year as the colonial world defines it. It’s a time, we are told, for making resolutions, for turning over new leaves, for recommitting ourselves to what is good and right.
So let us commit ourselves to hope, revolutionary and resilient: Let us make it a hope that carries us forward, into a future world of health and harmony.
~ 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.
