The passing storms have left a chill in their wake, temperatures more appropriate to December, if still a bit on the high side. The sky is an impossible shade of blue, icy but not ice blue, its color leached a little by the chill yet still dazzlingly bright.
Here at Red Willow, winter is a cold gold indigo, a inverted cabochon of purest turquoise set into the golden filigree of a dormant desert land.
It’s one of the peculiarities of this place, this blue and gold of winter. In so many other places, whether white is present or not, brown and gray reign supreme, as though the earth itself dons a camouflaging plumage, the better to hide itself from . . . itself, as though any show of color would be perceived as a challenge by the elements.
Even here, even now, the snow obliges.
And that is not a bad thing. The earth needs to rest, too, and winter is the season it chooses for its own long, regenerative sleep. Our old ways recognize this truth;; it’s why so many of our peoples’ ways incorporate specific rites or practices that recognize a need for calm and quiet, for stillness and silence at this season. It is time of turning inward, for warmth and safety, yes, but also for reflection: to recognize where we stand in the sacred hoop that forms our days, to look back upon where we have been and to look forward, as far as possible before the curve obstructs our vision, to where we are going. A lack of colorful distractions aids in the contemplative process as surely as the cold focuses the mind upon finding the peace of shelter and a fire.
The first of today’s two featured works embody the hoop itself, in name as well as in its spiraling shape. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
The Sacred Hoop Coil Bracelet
Truth may be found in the sacred hoop, infinite and eternal, journey and existence alike. Wings calls the wisdom of its experience into being with this coil, a winding hoop of symbolic color and traditional beauty. It begins with the darker shades at either end, represented in some traditions as black and in others as blue, here manifest in both colors by way of lengths of jet flowing into cobalt orbs of lapis lazuli. Each is followed by slightly larger beads of chatoyant red tiger’s eye, shimmering in shades of luminescent red, extending inward to brightly translucent freeform nuggets of glowing yellow citrine. At the center sits an expanse of the first shade of the hoop, snowy spheres of white-lip mother-of-pearl shell as luminescent as the North Star itself. Memory wire expands and contracts to fit nearly any wrist. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji.
Memory wire; jet; lapis lazuli; red tiger’s eye; garnet; tiger’s eye; citrine; white-lip mother-of-pearl shell
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This one is wrought in the shades of the seasons, but it fits winter here very nearly as well: black earth, white snow, red willow; a lapis sky and the golden filigree of dormant aspen and chamisa. Indeed, it is the chamisa which, to my mind, the glowing citrine nuggets at the center of this col have always most resembled, and they always evoke for me the image above: the scalloped edges of that plant’s gold winter filigree, capped with pure white and arrayed against a shaded indigo sky.
Step back a bit from that image’s vantage point, of course, and you see the broader expanse: more white beneath and against the blue, the only gold that of the sun-kissed latillas, old gray wood given a new and subtle shine, and the gold infused into the red of the willows that have lent this place its name.
These are not new images; it is vanishingly rare that we get this much snow at one time anymore. Wings captured these in the first days of 2013, what would turn out to be perhaps the last of our truly great snows, although we had no real inkling of it then. Certainly, we were well aware off the effects climate change was wreaking in real time upon the land here; we observed them daily as we went about our work. But on the heels of a storm that dropped feet of snow, and then dropped temperatures so far below zero that our daily highs still registered in the negatives, it was impossible to foretell that only a few short years later, such extreme events would have almost wholly vanished.
Yes, the snow is still here . . . at time. For the moment, all that remains to us are small patches mostly out of direct sunlight; even on the peaks and slopes, the sun has already begun to do its work of turning the white into water and the earth beneath it arid once more.
But the mountains remain, and the blue skies, too; the red willows survive and thrive seemingly in the face of all comers. Even the latillas are mostly the same, save for one noticeable gap where one disintegrating pole brought an entire segment down. That last feels like its own message, one we here are forced to live as the changes accrue despite being culpable for none of it.
It’s a message we have long since heeded, even as its volume and urgency increase here daily. We do what we can, but up against the ravages of a colonial world, we can produce only so much medicine on our own. For the rest, we turn to those old ways that also figure prominently in the cold season: prayer and ceremony.
The second of today’s featured works is likewise a bracelet, one also studded with jewels, but instead of a spiral of gemstone beads, this one finds form in feathers of sterling silver. From its description in its own section of the Bracelets Gallery:
A Medicine Prayer Cuff Bracelet
The medicine wheel summons the powers of the four directions to our healing, while the eagle’s feather sends our prayers to Spirit. Wings brings their collective forces together in this breathtaking cuff bracelet, connecting the four winds to earth and sky, linking the place of our emergence with the place in the heavens where the spirits dwell. The cuff’s band is wrought in in the shape of twinned eagle feathers, all hand-cut of a single piece. Each barb of the feathers is created by way of hundreds of tiny individually hand-scored lines angles downward on either side of the quill, while delicate freehand ajouré cutwork forms the natural separations in the barbs. The dots that naturally adorn eagle feathers are formed via small stamped sacred hoops, and the ends of the cuff have been lightly oxidized to bring the patterns out into beautiful relief. A delicate strand of sterling silver half-round wire, hand-stamped with dozens of chased cloud patterns symbolizing imminent abundance, form the quill shaft. At the center of the band sits a hand-wrought medicine wheel in an elevated setting, with small round cabochons placed at each of the cardinal points in the traditional colors: a white rainbow moonstone to the North; yellow amber to the East; red coral to the South; and blue lapis to the West. At the center lies a larger cabochon of rutilated clear quartz, an elemental stone that carries within it an earthy, fiery collection of shiny black schorl and gold- and silver-hued rutile. Hand-stamped directional arrows point inward from each cardinal point to the center’s vortex of power, while broken arrows between the points represent the irregularity of the path. The band measures 5/8″ of an inch across at its widest point; the wheel setting is 1.25″ across; the center cabochon is 9/16″ across (dimensions approximate). Side view shown at the link.
Sterling silver; rutilated quartz; rainbow moonstone; amber; coral; lapis lazuli
$1,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This one embodies prayer: the twinned eagle feathers to fan the smoke and send our words to Spirit; the colors of the hoop and the sun and the sacred directions. The blue in this one is also lapis, less cobalt than pure indigo, bright and light in the glow of an illuminating sun. It holds the white of northern snows opposite the reds of the southern willows, and two golds, too — the fiery amber of the dawn, and the rutilated sherds and shafts of a lighter, brighter overhead sun, rent here and there with tiny slivers of black shadows, the harbingers of night.
It’s a piece that incorporates all the shades, and not a few of the shapes, too, of the third image in this series, an image that effectively brings the first two together in one.
There is the blue of sky and white of snow; blackened posts limned with silver light. In the background, the red willows are just visible; in the middle distance, the chamisa’s golden filigree. And in the foreground, there is more glowing gold, that of tradition, of the oldest of ways and the spirits that travel with them: an old hide, drying atop a low point in the latilla fence . . . a symbol of warmth and shelter in its own right.
These images were only three of an extended series that Wings captured in the opening days of 2013’s calendar year. I remember it well, days when the highs reached only ten degrees below zero, when undrifted snow had accumulated to knee height and beyond. It was a bitter time; there was an extraordinary beauty to its brutality. And it was a clear lesson to us, two-fold: that Mother Earth delivers no gift without sacrifice on some front; and that she imposes no hardship that is not also touched by a singular beauty.
At this season, it is easy to count the hardships — deep cold, long dark, low light. It is harder to remember to see the beauty. Here, though, even on this day when the storm has long since passed out through the mountains to the east, some gifts remain behind: a cold gold indigo of earth and sky, jewels of the season, shimmering in the light.
~ 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.
