We are one day into this new season the calendar calls “Spring” — and two weeks into the traditional season when this place is closed to the outside world. It is a time of culture and ceremony, of teaching and tradition, a time to tend the fires of both practical and spiritual existence.
Both forms of existence require sustenance — fuel against the cold spring winds and late snows yet to come, against the privations of hunger in a season that requires great expenditure labor with harvest but a distant hope.
It is also a when those not directly involved in traditional obligations nonetheless have their own tasks and supporting roles to play. Some are connected expressly to cultural duties; others are more general, linked to the land and to cycles of the nature and time.
All might be said to require feeding fires in the service of feeding the people.
In the village, the hornos, the traditional ovens, will be pressed into service again. Bread will be required, and in quantity, in the days and weeks to come, as will traditional foods of other sorts, and thus, so will cooking fires of every sort. Here on our own land, we have already begun the controlled burns preparatory to the irrigation and planting to come. The heat has arrived so early this year that, despite winter snows measured in many, many feet, the land is already dry as dust. The burns clear the way not only for the ditchwork that will send the waters flowing to our crops, but have already loosened the chokehold of vegetation that passed from dormancy to death: For two weeks now, bright green shoots have emerged from the soot-blackened soil, and grass and hay alike are already growing steadily in the fields.
Our peoples have always known the value of fire, of course — and have always known its power, as well. It cleanses and cauterizes, sanitizing the body and purifying the spirit. It’s why fire is often the center of ceremony, why we use it, by way of its smoke, for Medicine and for sending our prayers to Spirit. It stimulates growth, and transforms the raw materials of sustenance into art for the palate. And it appears in our art, as well: in very practical terms, used as part of the process for clay artisans and some carvers; an in deeply symbolic ways for artists like Wings, who evoke its spirit and power, and the need to respect both, in works as diverse as jewelry and photography and graphic arts.
We have spent this month exploring elemental themes: water; light (air); earth; and now fire. Only yesterday, one of the spirits of fire, Father Sun himself, crossed a threshold that appears only twice in the course of a year: that magical, mysterious midpoint moment we call the equinox, when the day is divided evenly between light and dark. Here in this place, as the light approached that midpoint, we were visited by one of the spirits of spring.
And so today, as I plan this day and what will be an extraordinarily busy week, I am mindful of the need for the purifying, sustaining power of fire, the need to respect and honor it. Because in this place, when we feed the fire, we feed body and spirit.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
