Our highs are once again approaching fifty — ten degrees warmer than forecast for this week, and at least thirty degrees warmer than normal. It’s spring here, irrespective of what the calendar declares.
This is a place where Mardi Gras, Valentine’s Day, and the beginning of Lent are all traditionally marked [by those who observe them] in the bundling embrace of heavy winter coats and snow boots, celebrated while there is snow on the ground, and often more of it falling outside.
Instead, we are looking forward to beginning of spring from deep within the climate and conditions of spring itself, and the dissonance it creates is profound.
Of those markers, the first is today, the other two tomorrow, and it makes for an emotionally heavy week for a lot of folks. We were just talking this morning about our own tendency to shy away from colonialist [and capitalist] “holidays” — in part because we simply don’t have time to devote to the patterns and whims of the colonial culture beyond that which is mostly forced upon us, and partly because there is no need. Our conversation was centered around the notion of Valentine’s Day, and how love is so much greater, so much more vast and profound, than the trinkets of a single day’s shopping in February. In our way, love encompasses all: romantic love, yes, but also of family and community and culture, of nonhuman relatives, animal and plant alike, of earth and sky and cosmic spirits . . . and our obligations to tend, to steward, to protect and defend them all.
In my people’s way, love is one of the original teachings, one of the foundations from which all else flows. And all of these teachings, their subjects and objects, are inextricably intertwined, so that love becomes also a matter of bravery and humility and generosity, of respect and wisdom, of truth. And while Wings’s teachings assume a different form and shape, the spirit that animates them is similar in their essential nature. We believe in a love that is brave, one that is humble, one that is generous and respectful and wise and true.
And we find it here, in our small corner of the earth, in the earth itself and the sky and the seasons, a love that lives in snow and sun and shadow.
Here at Red Willow, we have historically been granted abundant levels of all three — until the last six years or so. Now, snow is increasingly scarce, and thus more valuable than ever, but sun and shadow will never leave this place . . . nor will the love that animates it, and us.
This edition of Red Willow Spirit is devoted to expressions of love in all three contexts, and to the earth that makes it possible. It’s perhaps apt that that last should be manifest, in part, in the green of the spring that is already here, albeit absent its customary color; the former find expression in the photographic images that bookend the single work of wearable art.
As it happens, neither photo is from Valentine’s Day, nor even from the month in which that day appears. Wings captured the one above some half a decade ago, in March of 2019 — our second year into this deadly deepening of the long-term drought that has plagued this place, a hardening of the conditions that have led us to this point of climate collapse. The snow that day was a gift, one we had already learned neither to expect nor to take for granted should it appear, and it’s perhaps no surprise that Wings should have been paying particularly close attention to how our small world looked robed in it then.
Both photos were shot at the entrance of our drive, where the wrought-iron gate shuts out the colonial world. We had, as I recall, just come home from running errands; it was late in the day, and Wings had opened the gate to drive in. The sun, already on its descent for the day, had caught the face of the heart [Wings’s registered brand, as it happens] that adorns the top of the gate, highlighting both the green oxidation and the rust showing through. The heart is made from old horseshoes, formed into a rounded W of sorts, then inverted so that the rounded arcs of the letter form the upper arcs of the heart, descending to a flattened point in the form of the gate’s top bar. An arrow, created separately, is welded to and seemingly through it — less Cupid’s arrow than traditional heartline, signifying breath. It made for a striking subject against the snowy ground beneath a bright blue late-afternoon sky . . . and if you look closely at the left, you’ll see that the same sun casts it in shadow upon the snow, as well.
It’s a reminder that that breath of life that sustains us comes from the heart of the Earth, that our world, in every sense of the word, is kept alive by virtue of its gifts. And so we find a perfect expression of those gifts, of that love the Earth holds for all of her children, in today’s featured work. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
From the Heart of the Earth Necklace
From the heart of the earth our whole world grows. Wings pays tribute to this evolutionary process with this necklace, a cross that is not a cross, but the embodiment of elemental forces and nurturing spirits. The pendant’s form is a very old design, one that circumvented colonial insistence on Christianity by appearing to adopt its four-spoked shape — and then adding an extra bar and a curving end to produce the form of a much older spirit: that of Dragonfly, a pollinator, a messenger, a symbol of romantic love and life’s abundance. Here, Wings has honored another old adaptation of the style, turning the curved tail at the base of the lowest spoke into a stylized heart. Above the heart, the pendant extends upward and outward to the Four Sacred Directions, each of the remaining five spokes stamped with a single thunderhead symbol pointing inward toward the center, a sign of the rain that keeps our Earth herself alive. Above the top spoke, the hand-made bail flowers into a lush green peridot; at the base in the center of the heart, the place of emergence, two tiny hand-stamped flowers are wedded into the form of a butterfly, a small spirit rising from its own place of emergence to continue the processes of pollination and prosperity. The cross is made of solid fourteen-gauge silver, and hangs 2-5/8″, the bail 3/4″ (the pendant is 3-3/8″ in total length; 1-1/8″ across at the widest point); the stone is 3/8″ long; the pendant hangs from an 18″ sterling silver snake chain (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; peridot
$1,150 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I noted above that this work is set with a stone whose color is a bit unseasonal now: peridot’s spring green, the color of new aspen leaves and the first fresh blades of grass. It evokes spring, too, in the shapes and spirits that animate it: dragonfly, butterfly, flowering medicine. But in a world where seasonal boundaries so clearly no longer apply, it’s fitting now: We are, after all, in the period when it’s time to start thinking about planting, about preparing the land and bringing down the water and generally beginning the year’s process of direct stewardship. This work embodies all of it: earth, air, water, even the fire of the light.
And if you want to know more about this shape that Wings calls the dragonfly cross, or about the traditional symbolic link between dragonflies and romantic love, you can read about both here.
Speaking of earth and light [and dragonflies are spirits of both, as well as of the water], our second photo today is a synthesis of both:
Wings shot this one at roughly the same spot as today’s first image, also in digital format, but almost a whole year prior: in May of 2018. He also shot it facing the opposite direction, toward the drive itself, which means that this one would have been taken in the morning, with the sun behind him to the southeast, in order to cast a shadow on gravel to the northwest. It also shows the arrow-pierced heart atop the gate from the opposite side, arrow point facing to the viewer’s right and fletching on the shaft to the left.
And for a shadow cast upon the blurred and bumpy surface of gravel, it forms a remarkably clear heart.
It’s a good reminder to us that love, genuine love, is stronger than the obstacles we find in our path, able to survive the hardness of an unforgiving ground, eternal even when swamped by the force of brighter lights. But that kind of love requires commitment, dedication — more than just simple fidelity or loyalty, it requires a willingness love through the worst the world can throw at us and come out the other side still just as committed as [or more so than] before. And again, I’m not talking about only romantic love, though it applies there, too.
I’m talking about the kind of love that is an elemental, essential part of being, the kind of love that saves the planet, and us with it.
There’s too little of that in the world now.
What we need is a radical love, a love that is truly transcendent, a love that lives in snow and sun and shadow, and find expression in, and through, them all.
It is, after all, what Mother Earth gives to us, and what we are taught to return to her. We can reverse the planet’s course, heal her wounds and those of her children, too. But we have to commit to it.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
