The last day of November, and our weather is strange and terrible.
This is one of those years when winter comes early and hard, rapid-fire temperature inversions driving the mercury to lows as bitter as the winds driven on or by the next storm.
Today, we shall have both.
It snowed again late last night, a dusting, but snow all the same. For the early hours, the forecast originally predicted a dangerous clearing, the sort produced by gale-force winds, accompanied by temperatures near zero and wind chills well below. That has proven to be inaccurate, at least for the moment.
But as I write, dawn yet remains some way off. The world outside the window is fully dark, no hint of light anywhere; the wind is rising suddenly, and the snow has returned, driving in hard from the west. The flakes are unlikely to last too long or amount to very much — just enough, once the temperature plunges, to add another layer of ice to our world.
For the winds will come today, off that there’s little doubt. They will bring with them a dangerous cold, the kind that makes it unsafe to outside for long. This will not be the harshest of Novembers we have endured (that honor goes to 2010, when the mercury plunged to 40 below, actual temperature, for a night of two), but it is certainly nowhere in the neighborhood of what we would ordinarily regard as normal.
Normal no longer exists.
Perhaps that sounds like an exaggeration, but it’s a fundamental truth, once we have been forced to dace and engage for some time now. The sudden howl of the wind through the doorjamb, rising and falling in rolling waves of sound, seems like agreement, perhaps even testimony. For several years, it was only a matter of intensifying extremes, but for the last few years, we have been presented with a chaotic and capricious climate, one in which the only predictable thing is its inherent unpredictability. After two or three years of deepening and sustained drought, fierce storms out of season suddenly present what feels like an abundance of riches.
And make no mistake: This new wintry precipitation is as far off its usual schedule as it is proof of a looming prosperity.
In this part of the land mass we sometimes call Turtle Island, abundance is delivered, and measured, by the First Medicine: water. We tend to think of it in terms of rain, and of creating a lush and fertile world in spring and summer, but the truth of the matter is that winter plays a far greater role.
In an ordinary year.
But there is no ordinary now.
And so colonialism, the chief driver of climate change in conjunction with its handmaiden, capitalism, gives the lip service of grief to a world dying of thirst even as it extracts every ounce of water for profit it can get. It is precisely the dynamics of colonial society, birthed in genocide and chattel slavery and regarding of the land not as a relative to be loved and nurtured but as a commodifiable, saleable good to be owned and traded and exploited and eventually destroyed when it is no longer of use, that have brought us to this pass.
It will take courage to face it. It will take strength to fight it.
And so it’s perhaps fitting that this week, and this month, should end in defiance off all “normal” patterns, and yet in the absolute abundance of a prospering world that perhaps only we can perceive.
For the snow is welcome, however it comes. Rain and sleet and even ice, too, although snow is both safer and more useful in the long run: It melts relatively slowly, permitting the ground beneath time to absorb its riches; up on and among the peaks, it packs together in volume and depth, the alpine temperatures preserving its crystalline state until the spring thaw, when it surges down through the rivers and streams and ditches to renew our world visibly. In the meantime, our watchwords are strength and courage: strength of body and of spirit, and courage in our hearts, to keep us thriving through the lean harsh extremes to come.
And yet, the renewal is already occurring. Our lives, braided inextricably with the land itself, follow an older clock and calendar than any the dominant culture prescribes. Our year ends, and a new one begins, at the winter solstice; our world now is neither dead nor dying, but simply preparing itself for its cold and snowy rebirth. Even now, there is new green upon the rich brown earth, both uncovered in the process of plowing away the inches that fell only days ago.
And so perhaps it’s fitting that today’s featured work should manifest in a form and shape the dominant culture would regard as prosperity’s most unlikely emissary. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
A Prospering World Serpent Cuff Bracelet
The spirits honor hard work and a life well lived in the old way by answering prayers for a prospering world. Wings evokes one of these spirits of prosperity in silver and stone by way of his own signature style: a hand-split cuff in the cold shape of Serpent, he who bears good fortune. This version of the snake is the same one who lends his talents to Medicine, a rattler bearing jewels of the earth in rich fertile colors. The band is formed of a single piece of sterling silver, hand-split so that head and tail extend in opposite directions to coil around the wrist. Small hand-stamped points form his eyes; tiny hoops, his snout and heavily layered rattle; lodge symbols adorn the two intermediate ends of the uniquely-styled band. He is that fierce member of his clan, the diamondback, with tiny hand-stamped versions of the pattern alternating between the gemstones he bears along his back, ten small round bezel-set cabochons of jade and tiger’s eye. Band is 6″ long by 7/16″ across; cabochons are 5/16″ across (dimensions approximate); the band has significant flexibility, but is designed for a smaller wrist (6.5″ or less). Other views shown above and at the link.
Sterling silver; jade; tiger’s eye
$1,025 + shipping, handling, and insurance
In Wings’s tradition, Serpent is a symbol of abundance. The great horned serpent, after all, is the Water Serpent, and his domain is that of the First Medicine, of that element without which nothing lives, much less thrives. And what is snow but frozen water — for the long-term health of the land here, the most useful sort? Here, he embraces the wrist with the whole of his being, much in the way that it is up to us to embrace our world, even in the difficult times, to enjoy its abundance.
I have been up long enough now for the snow to cease, and for the dark to recede from the day’s skies. To the west, the winds have driven out the storm entirely, and the air is clear as glass and twice as sharp. To the east, the storm still clings to the peaks, as though unwilling to undertake the next stage of its journey across this land.
But the storm will, eventually, be forced to face whatever hears it harbors and continue on its appointed journey; the winds today will see to that. So, too, will we. It helps to know that the very conditions that complicate our lives now are actually sowing the seeds of abundance for the year to come.
Regardless of wind or weather or storm, we already have prosperity, with the courage to embrace it.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
