We have a few clouds drifting around the horizon today — coral cotton at dawn, now stretched into bands and turned the color of new snow. The forecast predicts actual snow for tomorrow, if only a late dusting, but the change in weather and sky is already afoot.
It would be hard for anyone to believe, given how warm and bright the day is, but such has always been the nature of our climate, one of polar swings and extreme conditions. Now, of course, the extremes are greater, and not in a good way.
Still, the altered climate here occasionally produces its own unique beauty, unique even to this place of such singular, distinctive, highly localized phenomena in ordinary times. And here at Red Willow, these are not ordinary times.
Even so, there is mostly an order to atmospheric events. Certain types of weather occur at certain seasons; certain wind directions and effects of the light, too. Rainbows have always been almost exclusively the province of the summer monsoon season, and then mostly in the expanse of sky that stretches from northeast to southwest. In winter, we occasionally get the rainbow-like effects known as sun dogs, almost always only on those coldest days of the year when the ice beads the breath upon one’s face, and then only in the southeast to western skies.
Not anymore.
Now, the ravages of climate change seem to have had the effect of setting the light free, a spirit now unshackled from its seasonal tethers. It’s also intensified the colors of cloud and sky, rendering the blues less turquoise and more cobalt, the shades of dawn and dusk altered, too. We have witnessed, in recent years here, the rise of a flowering winter light, from lilac twilight to the moonstone petals of morning, and rainbows reaching across skies previously unknown to their kind.
Today’s two featured images represent moments in time from two of the three winters just past: one reflective of the gilded cobalt of clear cold days, the other of a full spectrum of color and light blossoming out of season and place. The latter is pictured above, one Wings captured in February of 2019. It was something we had not seen before — a winter rainbow, one born wholly of the northern skies, its arc never making it fully eastward. Oddly enough, it was not a post-storm phenomenon, either. There had been a few morning clouds, by then clearing as the photo shows, but the snowfall was long gone and no rain had replaced it. It was an effect of the light we hadn’t thought possible, this dance of remnant clouds and cold air and a wintry sun against the spreading blue, all combining to distill the light in its most varied, most intensely hued spectrum, as though flowering from the snow-covered earth instead of falling from the sky.
It’s a phenomenon manifest in today’s featured work of wearable art, as well. It’s a simple piece, an old-style link bracelet, each of the rectangular links hand-milled in a raised flowering motif and set with a different stone, six shades in all. Wings never intended it to track the shades of the rainbow in their usual order, simply to evoke the its radiant petals of jewel-toned light. In that, it has succeeded beautifully, a hinged and mobile arc of silver and stone. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Rainbow Medicine Link Bracelet
The storm delivers rainbow medicine, beauty and color flowering when the water meets the light. Wings summons each shade into a shimmering strand of silver with this stylized link bracelet. Each gently shaped rectangular link is milled by hand in a floral pattern, its Art Nouveau-ish loops and whorls standing out in sharply textured relief above the velvety Florentine finish. A tiny round cabochon sits at the center of each link, each a different jewel in its own unique shade: peach moonstone, carnelian, lapis lazuli, amethyst, amber, and jade. No, the links are not arranged in the usual “rainbow”order, but in Wings’s own inimitable style that refuses to be bound by convention; here, they are joined in an inversion and reversion of the color array, as when two rainbows meet and meld while facing in opposite directions. Each link is connected via a hand-wrought hinge strung with sterling silver wire; closure is via a loop saw-cut, freehand, into one end and an organically extending tab at the other; tiny hand-stamped rainclouds dance along the tab’s inner surface. Note: This link bracelet, when closed, functions much like a bangle, and is designed for a smaller wrist. Bracelet is 7″ long, excluding tab (functionally slightly under 7″ when closed); each link is 1-1/8 long by 1″ high; cabochons are 3/16” across (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; peach moonstone; carnelian; lapis lazuli; amethyst; amber; jade
$750 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Oddly, at least to those unfamiliar with this place, the six separate jewels set into the links all embody shades of the winter sky now. I don’t mean simply the once-in-a-lifetime winter rainbow above, but the peach moonstone and amber of dawn, the carnelian and amethyst of dusk, the lapis of midday and the jade band that marks the middle gradient of the clearest sunset sky. And in fact, even the rainbow may no longer be a once-only occurrence after all, given that on October 9th of last year, we awakened to an early morning rainbow in the west, no rain anywhere in sight. It was not a sun dog nor any kind of sunbow, but an actual rainbow, and it was wholly out of place in the western sky, never mind time of day or season.
But it was there all the same.
Still, in winter, our western skies tend more toward the deepening turquoise and lapis blues of today’s second image, one from January of 2020.
That was an image of the winter days to which we have now become accustomed in recent years: clear and cloudless skies above an earth with too little snow cover, the weeping willow branches golden filaments against the cobalt blue overhead. This is the southern sky at mid-afternoon, when the sun shifts to the west and it is the east that deepens with indigo. On the ground, there are in fact flowers, despite the season: the dried heads of wild sunflowers and chamisa, and the fluttering stalks of the reeds and marsh grasses, dry and dormant but still gilded in the low sunlight.
On this day, there are no other flowers; it’s still too early in the season. It is possible, though, that we shall soon see a renegade alpine dandelion or two — hardy indigenous spirit of these high-altitude lands, one that used to appear regularly in May and June only but now is sometimes seen as early as late February and, last year, as late as the middle of the December snows.
For this moment, the skies have faded to cornflower beneath the glare of the midday sun; the clouds, still feathery, are awakening, beginning to stretch, contemplating the work of coalescence. The air is clear and far too warm, and the world is bright.
We may indeed have snow tomorrow, but for now, it’s all a flowering winter light.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
