We awakened this morning to beautifully clear blue skies, warm air on a gentle breeze, and the absolute absence of anything looking remotely like weather, never mind winter.
Now, evening is here, and it’s been snowing lightly but steadily for three or four hours already.
Some prayers do get answered.
Of course, in a land of such extremes as this, seeking answers to prayer often carries more than a little of the old warning about being careful what you wish for. In this instance, though, it’s all good: The snow is light and gentle, collecting steadily, and our temperatures will be at once cold enough and mild enough to let it all soak thoroughly into the ground, no worries about flooding runoff and certainly no chance of evaporation.
It is very much a gift and a blessing, and a reminder to make a space for the sacred now. Here at Red Willow, spring is the hardest of spirits, but it is also a season for prayer.
The spirits know, though, that our prayers sometimes need a little help, and so they have lent us the aid of none other than Eagle himself. He is not alone in this task, by the way; he is aided by the properties and powers of cedar, too; of fire and of smoke. Between the cedar and the smoke and Eagle’s feather, our prayers have a far better chance of reaching their destination, that they may be heard.
Of course, it helps that, for the moment, this is still Eagle’s season, too. He is a spirit of the cold months here, wintering along the great river a few minutes to the southwest of this place. Oh, his kind find sanctuary among the peaks, too, but we are only likely to see them perched along the river’s banks, or on the hunt skimming low above the waters.
Until now. As winter cedes space to official spring, and the song of migration beckons them onward, we are occasionally privileged to see them flying overhead. Today required multiple errands of us, and as we headed home, we caught brief glimpses of raptors soaring and circling overhead, racing off in all directions, diving toward a distant earth. We could not be sure, in any instance, precisely what we were seeing; the soar too high and move too fast for the eye to focus from a moving vehicle.
Perhaps we will make it down to the Gorge yet before many more days are out. If so, we may be privileged to see one or more of these spiritual guides before they depart for the better part of the calendar year.
Wings captured all of today’s images in that very place, at at about this very time of year, some fifteen or sixteen years ago. These three were part of a larger series, all shot on film, all taken from roughly the same vantage point along the highway overlooking the river and the bank opposite. The first, shown above, was of a solitary raptor, seated calmly and confidently atop a slender branch on the remnants of an old dead tree rising from new earth still dotted with patchy snow. It would not have been unaware of Wings’s presence in the slightest, but it was secure enough not to need to notice . . . or to fear.
It was also not alone, at least not for more than minutes at a time. But it sat there contentedly in the pale, half-cloudy light, its white hood and deep brown cloak not so much shining in the sun as glowing from within.
It is, perhaps, an indicator of the power its feathers hold.
It’s a power Wings channeled into the feathery spiral of today’s featured work of wearable art: one item today, shown from two different vantage points, the better to demonstrate its own power and beauty. It’s a coil bracelet named for the gift Eagle grants us for prayer, but the description here sits beneath the second image of it, below.
The image shown immediately above, of the bracelet coiled gently around the prongs of an old deer antler, evokes the shapes and shades and spirit that infuses the photo above, and the one below (and the third, near the end, as well): the flaring white tips of the feather’s barbs; the smoky faceted lenses of Eagle’s eye and the Eye of Spirit, illuminating, wise, able to see for miles in all directions; the mottled brown and white patterns along its middle, snowflakes melting on obsidian’s hot glass surface and the matte onyx hues at its base; the textured surfaces of the basaltic lava rock that surrounds them and the fossilized banding of the earth and its spirits, older than time.
All find expression in the image above, the pair at home in the weak spring sun, camouflaged by the rocky landscape and yet wholly, openly visible to the world around them.
It’s a function of their status in this place above the river that they need have so little fear, a function of their power, too. And the gift they share with us to use in our most sacred traditions lends us a bit of that power, as well.
It’s a power that infuses the spiraling shape of today’s featured work. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Eagle Feather Coil Bracelet
The eagle feather carries our prayers to spirit; as a gift, it is an honor conferred, a sign of respect for the person who has earned it. Wings calls its power into the spiraling hoop of this coil bracelet, one strung with gifts of the earth in the mottled earthy tones of Eagle’s own robes. At either end are the feather’s downy fringe, made of Hawai’ian puka shell in hue a shade off snow-white. Just above, the raptor’s characteristic mottling begins, expressed in the form of a length of doughnut-shaped rondels of variegated fossilized dinosaur bone. The bone flows into shades of black with round matte onyx, thence to more round beads of mottled black and white snowflake obsidian, fire and ice that flows into lengths of ovaled barrel beads of basaltic lava rock. At the center rest seven large faceted diamond-shaped barrel beads in smoky quartz, the color of a young eagle’s feathers and the shape of the Eye of Spirit itself. Note: Puka shell fringe beads are fragile; best worn for special occasions, not everyday wear. Another view shown at top. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji.
Memory wire; Hawai’ian puka shell; fossilized dinosaur bone; onyx; snowflake obsidian; basaltic lava rock; smoky quartz
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It is a piece formed of rare and ancient materials, of substances and spirits as timeless as the land itself, and as Eagle’s presence on it.
Or above it, as the case may be.
Before that day so many years ago was out, Wings was granted that rarest of opportunities here: to capture this powerful spirit in full flight.
On those rare occasions that the smaller raptors perch on a post or in a tree directly on our land, we have the chance to search for feathers dropped when they depart.
It’s mostly a fruitless endeavor, though.
But where Wings took this shot, there was no chance whatsoever of any such activity. This was an event to experience, to appreciate and acknowledge, to capture on film, yes, but to memorialize mostly through memory.
And, of course, to honor it with future prayers.
We asked for the snow; that request has been granted. Tomorrow, it will be time to give thanks for that gift.
And for the remainder of these most difficult of months here, we will need to remember that this? Is manifestly a season for prayer.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
