Snow into last night, a cold clear sun today, and more snow forecast for tomorrow: Such is winter at Red Willow. Storms come and go with astonishing rapidity now; where once we could be assured of a few multi-day snowstorms per year, now a snow that lasts even one day is considered great good fortune. What we now consider “cold” bears no resemblances to the temperatures of even a few years past, and we now have days in the dead of winter that feel more of summer’s bookends — the highs of middle spring and fall, not warm enough to abandon sleeves entirely, but sufficient to leave the coats inside the closet.
It’s not a good thing by any measure, this warming trend. It might perhaps frighten us more — and perhaps we need that, too — were it accompanied wholly by the markers of the drought that plagues this land. Instead, we are granted just enough seasonal accoutrements to lull us into a false sense of security, this notion that things aren’t really that bad, that it’s only temporary, that things will be back to normal soon.
They won’t, of course. “Normal” is a thing of the past, a state of being that lives only in memory now. There will be no return, only saving what we can, reclaiming and rehabilitating on the much smaller scale now possible, our future circumscribed by a process of relinquishing much of what we thought we knew, what we thought was ours.
It sounds bleak, and in a way it is, this loss of the richness of a healthy earth. Humanity has not even begun to engage with what that means yet, not here any more than anywhere else. This, too, is a forcibly colonized land, and that colonialism proceeds apace, new waves of invading arrivistes always stepping over, in front of, and on those who actually belong to this land in their haste to undo decades’ worth of Indigenous work for public acclaim and personal gain.
It’s what happens when people value the earth not for its own intrinsic worth, but only for what it can do for them personally.
It likewise fails to understand that, the damage now having been done, the change that perforce occurs is on us, and not on the earth that colonial humanity has exploited so unrepentantly. That change, Mother Earth’s is already long since under way; it is humanity that now must adapt or die.
And that will be no easy road, but the spirits offer consolations for the struggle. One is the unusual and ethereal beauty that, here, at least, accompanies such drastic existential changes. We may not have sufficient cold or snow in season, and look forward to a dearth of water in the spring, but such grim circumstances still offer us reason to protect what we still can: an extreme and elemental beauty, embodied here and now in a dance of storm and light.
The image above captures this gift, and the dynamic that underlies it, too — a day that should by all rights have been early winter, illuminated instead by the violet and gold of a monsoonal light. It’s caught, too, in the first of today’s featured works, a pair of gemstone bead earrings in the shades of those elements at their most powerful. From their description in the relevant section of the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Earth, Fire, Water, Sky Earrings
The high mountain desert in summer is a land of earth, fire, water, sky, a place of starkly beautiful extremes and fertile abundance. Wings gives form and shape to all four elemental powers with these old-style earrings formed of faceted fire and vintage Skystone. Each cascade gemstone beads is strung on sterling silver wires, anchored at the base with tiny faceted mookaite in dusty, earthy rose tones. Immediately above sits a medium-sized free-form orb of sky blue turquoise, each bead little more than polished rough. A golden mookaite bead like a tiny faceted sun leads to the large vintage free-form rough bead at the center, each a soft robin’s-egg blue with glowing golden matrix. Above the center bead, a fiery red mookaite leads to the last rough piece of Skystone, thence to a final mookaite in rich earthy brown. Earrings hang 2″ long, excluding wires (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Part of The Standing Stones Collection.
Sterling silver; mookaite; free-form robin’s-egg turquoise
$155 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The description was written for summer, but it works as well for winter, too: the cloud-marbled blue of the skies, the red willows’ crimson fire and the bare branches of the taller trees, radiant gold in the waning storm light.
Then, too, sometimes winter looks more like winter — ten years ago, above, and this season, below. And it’s true even this day that no one would mistake the weather outside for anything other than winter; there are still several inches of snow on the ground, after all, and that doesn’t even begin to address the wind chill that cuts to the bone. But that’s another oddity of our changed and changing climate here: wind chills far more extreme than what ambient temperatures would suggest possible; days that look deceptively warm and welcoming, harboring a trickster wind lying in wait, seeking to steal breath and life itself.
Here, the deepest, truest cold is just at dawn, but it feels strangely warm then, less bitter for its lack of wind. Even on days like yesterday, when the snow is only hours off at sunrise, a winter’s dawn remains, most often, a moment of shimmering clarity, of a perfect purity of air and an illuminating radiance that begins with rose and coral and arcs into a near-rainbow of colored light.
It is, in other words, the embodiment of today’s second featured work, a pair of earrings named for its moment of pure magic. From their description in the same section of the same gallery:
High Desert Dawn Earrings
A high desert dawn lights the world with a gentle glow. Wings evokes turquoise skies and soft golden sun with these earrings, a cascade of spheres in the shades of the sunrise. Each drop is strung on sturdy sterling silver wire and is anchored by sterling silver earrings wires. The focal point is formed of large old freeform turquoise beads in pale robin’s-egg blue, nuggety in texture and only lightly polished. Each is flanked at top and bottom by a delicately luminescent orb of shimmering sunstone, each of which in turn flows into a pair of tiny round impressions jasper beads that combines the colors of the others, a fragile turquoise sky marbled with radiant peach glow of the morning sun. Earrings hang 2″ long, excluding wires (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Part of The Standing Stones Collection.
Sterling silver; old freeform robin’s-egg turquoise; sunstone; impression jasper
$155 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Compared to last winter, we are blessed: a small yet still decent amount of snow thus far, the possibility of water for spring and summer planting, a fantastic array of color in our ever-changing skies, the magic of a dance of storm and light.
We rely on no regionally-famous groundhog to tell us when winter ends and spring begins; here, we don’t even rely on the calendar. The Earth herself tells us, as do her other children.
Our seasons live not by a piece of paper, nor by colonial myths; they live by the water of the storm and the fire of the light; by earth and sky and elemental powers; by no less than the gift of the spirits. That, too, is a dance of magic.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
