This day’s weather is determined to reach new heights of absurdity. Ninety degrees yesterday, and the only light in the nighttime sky the descent of sun dressed in blood and flame, girded for war against the toxic pall of smoke that still enfolds the land in its harsh embrace. This night, we are supposed to get snow, perhaps three days’ worth.
Red Willow has always been a land of extremes, a world where summer and winter are one, and it seems set on demonstrating its capacity to hold such opposites at once now.
At this moment, the skies are gray less from clouds than from that same smoke that has held us in its grip again for two days now. Some of it comes from a newly-expanding Medio Fire at Nambé, just north of Santa Fe; some of it doubtless comes from the blazes in Colorado; much of it is the product of the wildfires racing across California, the choking miasma of particulate matter having drifted far inland by now. But the wind is fierce and rising, and by early afternoon, the mercury will begin to fall. And while the trees are not currently quite so gold as in today’s featured images, if the forecast is accurate, they will be within a day or two . . . and with far fewer leaves on them than now.
Today’s images are a pair, the same place and subject shot from the same spot, the first in close-up, the second from panoramic distances, with a single work of sterling silver and stone to connect them. Wings captured the photos on an unusually stormy day several years ago, somewhere between 2011 and 2015; back then, our foliage still followed more usual schedules and patterns of change, with aspens and cottonwoods alike only really going gold from late October into the early days of November. Now, the change begins with the dawn of summer, or perhaps more accurately, summer leaves are never fully born now; this year, several of our trees never greened completely, retaining some of the golds and reds and browns of the dormant seasons.
The silverwork piece, on the other hand, bears “summer” in its name — and yet, that name and its identity show clearly how summer and winter hold space together in this place. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Hail In Summer Cuff Bracelet
One of the gifts of the rainy season is hail in summer, a bit of snowy white to grace the green of a heated earth. Wings brings together the green and the white and heat, too, with this slender cuff bracelet studded with gems of summer and winter. The slender band is stamped free-hand in a repeating pattern of directional symbols down the very center, spokes pointing to all of the Sacred Directions like a radiant star, or the crystalline structure of a snowflake. Each side of the band is edged in a separate repeating pattern of triangular motifs, a symbol used at once to represent the mountains and the shelter of the traditional lodge, radiant with light at the base. The ends of the band are rounded by hand and filed smooth, each stamped in a single radiant sunrise image. Along the center, five gems are set into scalloped bezels and backed with sterling silver, the layer then overlaid across the band itself — a cascade of three round cabochons of grass-green jade alternating with a pair of domed oval cabochons of snowflake obsidian, icy white patches adorning the glassy black molten material. The band measures 6″ in length by 1/4″ across; jade cabochons are 3/8″ across; snowflake obsidian cabochons are 1/2″ long by 3/16″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver; jade; snowflake obsidian
$1,150 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Hail in summer is an utterly ordinary thing here, or at least it used to be. We even had a couple of short-lived episodes of it even this year, although nowhere near the sort of storm we’ve seen in summers past. It is, after all, the time of the monsoons, this land’s rainy season, and the storms here are far more fierce than such descriptors tend to imply. Hailstorms here sometimes produce tennis-ball sized orbs of ice, felling trees and power lines, shattering windows and denting vehicles with abandon . . . but more often, it falls as a mass of tiny pellets, so hard and heavy and fast that it collects along the surface of the rivers and rivulets of rain, a rime of ice pebbles that look, from a distance, just like a dusting of snow.
A place where summer and winter are one, indeed.
The vantage point of these two photos, is, in fact a prosaic one: the highway in front of our post office, on the main road toward town. It’s about four miles south of our house, at least by road, but it’s a curving, winding road, and from the point where Wings captured these images, our home can be plotted on a leftward diagonal more or less directly from the stand of cottonwood back toward the mountain.
Today, this same site looks a little more green, albeit not as much as one would normally expect; drought has already accomplished much of what seasonal foliages changes have not. Some of the old sentinels are gone now, including, as of a few weeks ago, the last of the ancient warriors just out of view to the left. The land seems empty without their old bones still standing watch between meadow and mountain.
But otherwise, both images could have been taken this day: gray and story skies lowering threateningly, albeit their color as much a product of the smoke as of the storm to come. The land is dry now, yellowed in the light, thirsty for whatever form the weather chooses to take — rain, hail, snow, it will welcome it all.
As I type, what was a rising wind is now blowing at gale force, skies heavy and warning of what’s to come. The mercury has fallen some ten degrees in a matter of moments, and I felt the first scattered drops of rain a few minutes ago, when I went outside to call the dogs indoors. And still the calendar reads summer, but by night, the snow will fall. I need to go harvest what remains of the squash and the peas and the tomatoes now, bring in wood for a fire tonight.
This is, after all, a place of opposites and a space of extremes, a world where summer and winter are one.
~ 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.
