Today is projected to be the last day of a winter storm, one that has arrived amid a swirl of sun and snow, of temperatures rising and falling at the speed of light, creating an endless cycle of freeze and thaw.
On Friday, we awakened to four inches of snow, which had appeared on the ground overnight as if by magic; much of it had melted by noon under a sun that required only a light fleece jacket. Within the hour, flurries had begun again, sun and clouds playing a game for which the French have the perfect expression: cache-cache, which translates loosely to “hide and seek,” but somehow manages to be both more evocative and more accurate. Dawn yesterday brought six new inches, much of which also melted, and this morning has seen another three or so fall during the night.
Dawn is a witness to the workings of this world. So are the stones and the light, even as they are actors who set such works into motion.
Recent events have put me in mind of how much of lives is spent in the task, the simple duty, of bearing witness, even — perhaps especially — when it is to events that remain steadfastly beyond our influence and control. Living as we do in this place, Nature reminds us of this obligation on a daily basis, a reminder whose force and frequency have accelerated in recent years apace with climate change. And such thoughts have led me, naturally, to today’s image, one Wings captured some ten or eleven years ago . . . one called, simply, The Witness.
I’ve written here before about the role rock and stone play in our peoples’ ways. In my own, we have the Rock People, sometimes called the Little People, small strong spirits of great power. Here in this land, hoodoos abound, both those built by Mother Earth herself, with some help from her elemental children, Wind and Water, and the stone cairns created by mere mortals like ourselves. Wings has place numerous ones around the land here, including one that, on the Vernal Equinox last month, at about the midpoint moment itself, served as a door through which an ancient female spirit walked, crossing the threshold between the worlds to walk in this one once again, if only for the briefest of moments.
The small solid stone kachina above has long since abandoned that form, forming and reforming in different permutations in the years since. The stones that are its constituent parts still exist, still manifest the same spirit in other bodies, still locked in their daily dance with the spirit of the light.
Together, these spirits of stone and light have watched this world turn and grow, watched other spirits come and go. Whatever form they assume, they remind us of our own duty: to see, to think, to feel, to understand; to learn, to adapt, to encourage, to prevent; to bear witness . . . and then to act upon it.
~ Aji
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