This morning’s sunrise was beautiful, wides expanses of shimmering cirrus vertebratus clouds stretching outward from the hidden point behind Pueblo Peak where Father Sun was already at work on his ascent. Now, the skies are bright blue with heavier masses of gray-white puffs here and there, all driven rapidly southward on a brisk north wind.
Despite the wind, it feels like spring today, as though air and earth alike are already warming.
This is not a good thing.
Oh, the day began chilly enough, with the customary rime of frost spangling every outdoor surface. Not, of course, at the level of the diamond-encrusted willow above, a shot captured on an early January morning two years ago, but enough to make our small world here shine all the same. Now, at midday, the mercury has passed yesterday’s mid-afternoon high of 41 or so, having hit 45 already and still climbing. Here at Red Willow, the first week of January is supposed to be touched by the spirit of deepest winter, with highs barely exceeding zero, never mind the 40-degree mark.
If weather and temperature do not revert soon, we shall have a very early spring, one encrusted not by icy jewels, but by the ravages of drought.
Of course, a few minutes pass and winter’s icy blast returns, but it’s a matter of wind chill, not actual temperature. And this, too, is not really the weather of winter: Spring here is an icy affair, its chief feature gale-force winds for months on end that make even a mercury at fifty-five degrees unbearably cold. One spring arrives to stay, our chance of snow is mostly gone, save for a late heavy storm or two whose foot of accumulation is entirely gone by noon.
And so we hope, and we pray; we ask the spirits to grant us the precipitation the land so desperately needs even as we plan for the worst once again. And we recommit ourselves to honoring our relationship with the spirits of birth and growth and life: with the waters that flow across the earth and those that fall from above in a weaving of lazuli skies and light.
The first of today’s two featured works embody this weaving of the water, an ancient traditional practice, with the gold and silver of willow branch and rime of frost and the azure of waters and winter sky. From its description in the Cuffs and Links and Bangles section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Weaving Water Cuff Bracelet
Here at Red Willow, working with the First Medicine is a process of weaving water, drawing down rain and river alike to flow across the land in silvery threads, taken up by the earth on its way to pool in the pond at the end of the ditch. Wings brings together pool and process alike in this cuff, a silky, silvery band of woven strands meeting in the middle at a lake of pure cobalt. The band is formed of two substantial strands of sterling silver pattern wire, possessed of an elegant Art Deco sensibility and molded into a scored lines with braided overlays at intervals, the strands spaced gently apart at the center and narrowing to meet at either end. At the top of the band’s surface, an extraordinary oval cabochon of electric blue lapis lazuli, adrift with wisps of white and whorls of shimmering gold and silver pyrite, set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed with its own delicate braid of twisted silver. Band is 6″ long; each strand is 1/4″ across; cabochon is 1-1/2″ long by 1-1/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Side views shown at the link.
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli
$1,100 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Of course, even in the heaviest snows these days, it’s mostly off the branches by noon. Somehow, the bare branches always seem colder to me, as though a deeper chill is immanent in that very lack of frost. It does, however, make for a spectacular image, one of weaving gold and blue:
This photo, if memory serves, dates back to this time last year, at the outset of a long and deadly year of drought, its effects magnified by the unchecked spread of a global viral pandemic.
At the moment Wings captured that image, we still had hope: hope for a year that, if not filled with rain, would at least deliver enough precipitation between winter snows and summer monsoons to allow for a decent planting season, good growth and at least a modest harvest. Two months later, when the reality of the pandemic began to sink in, the hope for water became more urgent; we had planned to expand our gardens and plant far more extensively, so that we would have food to share with others during what we expected to be extended periods of lockdown.
But the lockdowns never materialized, and so the virus rages still; neither did the rains, nor any real amount of snow, and there was no water to be had for any amount of work. Our garden, instead of expanding, was reduced sharply in size, and despite our best efforts to sustain it, much of what we planted, corn included, failed to reach fruition.
It was, sadly (and infuriatingly) a perfect metaphor for a needlessly terrible year.
And yet, history teaches us hope in spite of everything.
the weaving of the water that the description above discusses refers to the ancient Indigenous irrigation practices here. Here at Red Willow, the people have always been dedicated to agriculture, having early on developed sophisticated techniques of farming that were woven inextricably with the obligations of stewardship of the land itself. It has made for resilience in the face of threats of all sorts, grounding the people, both literally and figuratively, in the land and giving them a base for survival in the face of all comers.
Even that is threatened now by a drought driven on the winds of colonial anthropogenic climate change.
But in a land as harsh and extreme as this, resilience is a way of life; so, too, is adaptability.
And so is hope.
In those processes of irrigation, there is a certain recognition that forces far beyond human control remain at work. It’s why, despite having turned the weirs the proper directions and set the dams to control the flow, Wings always notes the first of the flow as “the water came.”
You see the difference: Not “I brought the water down,” or “I routed the water,” but “The water came,” as though of its own accord — a recognition of the power and agency of this elemental spirit that, to a great extent, comes and goes at will, irrespective of human needs and wants. It’s a locution that reflects ways of thinking, of being, in our Indigenous world and ways, one that decenters the human self and places it in a context with the world around us that is far more accurate and realistic.
And so it is that the name of the second of today’s two featured works came to be. From its description in the same section of the same gallery:
When the Water Comes Cuff Bracelet
Pond or lake, rain or river, the ebb and flow of the tides: When the water comes, it comes as the First Medicine. Wings honors the medicine as he summons the rains and the pooled waters of the bluest of lakes with this cuff, hand-wrought in eighteen-gauge sterling silver. The band is hand-scored on either side and hand-stamped in a repeating pattern of radiant crescents connected by tiny sacred hoops; between the scored borders is a flowing water motif, connected at the ends by tiny petals in flower. The space between stampwork and edge is hand-texturized on either side, via hundreds of tiny dots struck individually by hand. At the center, elevated slightly from the bands surface, sits a breathtaking cabochon of lapis lazuli, set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed in twisted silver to offset its extraordinary cobalt blue infused with shimmering pyrite. The focal stone is flanked on either side by a pair of Skystones, each a small square of Sleeping Beauty turquoise, surface freeform in texture, color the blue of the desert sky adrift with more bits of pyrite amid an inky black matrix. The band is 6″ long by 1-3/16″ across; the bezel for the focal cabochon is 1-1/2″ long by 1-1/4″ across at the widest point; the focal lapis cabochon is 1-1/4″ long by 1″ across at the widest point; Square Sleeping Beauty cabochons are each 7/16″ across (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli; Sleeping Beauty turquoise
$1,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This cuff is a personal favorite, and despite the stones being my preferred colors, that’s not why. It’s the imagery, made real in the freehand scorework and stampwork, so delicate and detailed and meticulously deep. The band is a phenomenon in and of itself . . . much like the water that it represents.
The last image, though, shows the weaving whole:
Three beautiful golden willows rising from a landscape of silvered snow, the sky a perfect gradient from cobalt to aquamarine, and all the blues between: To me, this last photo ties together all three images perfectly, a sum both of the parts and greater than them, too.
This is why we do it: the hope, the prayer, the endless work. Because we have been granted this greatest of gifts, a beautiful, sustaining world that in turns keep us alive and well and mostly safe. Through no fault of her own, but entirely of the collective cannibalistic tendencies of colonial humanity, she is at risk now . . . which means that we are, too.
And so no matter the cold or the too-early thaw, the melt and the mud and the trickster winds, we recommit ourselves now to the work: of honoring these spirits of birth and growth and life, of honoring the medicine that flows across the earth and falls upon it in a weaving of lazuli skies and light.
~ 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.
