It is much, much colder today. Spring is finally here.
No, I didn’t misspeak. Spring arrives each year on the howling winds, and they showed up today in blustery and blustering force. Of course, what that also means is that, despite being mostly clear today for the first time in two weeks, the temperatures have dropped drastically, and will fall yet farther tonight.
But in defiance of calendar and convention, time and temperature alike, this is our official notice of the season’s arrival here in northern New Mexico.
On day like this, so bitterly cold, it’s hard to remember that it’s a harbinger of warmer, greener days, but it is. The more than two feet of snow that fell and melted, fell and melted over the last two weeks is down to a matter of inches, but what has disappeared has all gone straight into the ground. The cold has hardened what remains into a solid crust, crunching underfoot. It’s the time when we walk on the surface of the snow, when our boots hover rather than sink. There’s a reason my people call this time the Snowcrust Moon.
It seems an essentially feminine seasons, Spring, with its analogues of fertility and conception, pregnancy and growth. And so it is perhaps appropriate, on a day like this, to highlight an essentially feminine piece.
Long-time clients and friends will already recognize the Warrior Woman, that most closely held of Wings’s several signature series. She is also, perhaps, especially well-suited to this particular temporal threshold, this transitional time when the waxing moon lights the way from a season of harsh elemental cold into one that is supposed to be gentler, more nurturing. It’s not, at the moment, at least, but stereotypes die hard, whether for women ourselves or for spaces of time.
Still, the symbolism is obvious: Woman, unafraid of undeterred by the elements, indeed, of the elements herself, strength and support for her family and community through the hard cold months, planning and planting and nurturing through warmer times.
The one shown above is one of Wings’s latest, completed only days ago. From its description in the Pins Gallery here on the site:
In memory of Wings’s mother; created to honor women. The Warrior Woman is as elemental as the seasons, the sacred directions, the very winds themselves. Here her great heart rests atop traditional dress marked by symbols of those very directions, Eyes of Spirit at the center of each, while patterns emblematic of the spring winds whirl and dance, sending new blossoms eddying inward. She holds the crescent moon, itself marked by four flowering plants, in her left hand; a tiny lapis cabochon, of stone of strength of leadership, rests solidly in her right.
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli
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It’s a beautifully appropriate marker for a transitional time, a soothing gift of and for the spirit in an unsettled and unsettling season.
And it’s a reminder that the cold winds that are Spring’s herald will also usher in bright and healing flowers.
~ 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.
