No blue skies here today, for we are on our second day of rain.
It is a gift of indescribable proportions, albeit an unusual one: summer’s early arrival paired with a mercury that feels positively wintry now. Our rainy season here, in ordinary times, was confined almost exclusively to the weeks between early to mid-June and the first half of September. Even then, the patterns of the storm were entirely predictable, hot mornings with a steady buildup of clouds that by early afternoon would become thunderheads, then wave after wave of short sharp cloudbursts, chilling air and land alike and delivering an abundance of rain over a very short period of time.
This rain is different.
This is the kind of rain we get in my own homelands, hard and steady, lasting hours at a stretch. There, of course, it can last for days, but here, even one day of solid rain is virtually unheard-of. This storm began early yesterday afternoon and has continued intermittently through the night and into today — with breaks, yes, with periods of hail and torrential downpours, with soft showers and even a complete cessation periodically. But the system itself has not budged, and now there is snow on the invisibles slopes, entirely hidden by low-hanging clouds, and still the rain falls outside the window.
Today’s quartet of featured images are photos from a rainy season some ten years or more ago, all shot on the same early summer’s day from nearly the same spot, only moments apart and each facing a slightly different direction. They represent the imagery of summer near midday here, sky still the darkest cornflower blue in the west, puffy white clouds only just beginning to coalesce into something more, sunlight still casting shadows on the earthen walls and turning the weathered wooden poles to silver even as the day itself whispers promises of rain.
The one above was the first, a shot of wall near our old gallery space: a thousand years old, the chipped paint edging the window the same shade as the sky. It’s always been one of my favorite photos, both for the combination of contrasting colors and for the ancient beauty and power that it represents, one of longevity and steadiness too, a sign that old ways can withstand the weathering of the natural elements and of the forces of colonial “progress” alike.
And I know what lies within the clouds just rising above its roofline, still low enough for the old pine ladder to touch.
That part of the old village consists of low, one-story buildings, most but not all interconnected on the sides. They lead inward toward the towering geometry of North House, and South House across the river, and while they are flat-roofed, their share more in common with their layered and crenellated multi-level counterparts than with any structure outside the village walls. It is one of the gifts of this place, of the structures and spirits that the architecture of Red Willow comprises: aesthetic and ancestral, all the corners and angles of earth and sky brought together as shelter and safety, as home.
Speaking of what we count as home, I had to be outside a few minutes ago — just at the moment, naturally, when the heavens decided to open and birth a cloudburst, driving hard and heavy. At the same time, what had been lines and layers of dark gray clouds stair-stepping up the side of the sky suddenly melded together in one opaque gray veil, the kind that hides everything above the earth before one’s feet. No contrasting blue and white, no rocky peaks or purple slopes, just a solid expanse of gray-white, like the coldest smoke.
But there is real smoke, too, rising from the roof as I write; outside, the mercury has plunged to barely over forty, and there is a fire in each woodstove now. Within are flames of warmth and light, not, perhaps, what the outside world associates with summer but a necessity here all the same. It’s an image that calls to mind the first of today’s three featured works of wearable art, all from the same category and all with more than a passing resemblance to each other despite their equally distinctive styles. Each work is a pair of earrings, all three pairs found in the Earrings Gallery here on the site. We begin with the newest, a pair that embodies the same architectural spirit as Red Willow’s crenellated rooflines and kiva steps. From their description:
A Sacred Fire Earrings
At the center of ceremony sits a sacred fire, flames burning clean and bright, smoke the medicine of prayers and healing. Wings ignites two new flames in the pit with these earrings, masterpieces of ajouré cutwork excised with the signifiers of ingress and egress to sacred space. Each drop is cut freehand in the flowing arc of individual flames flickering up from the fire, each filed smooth and polished to a glowing Florentine finish. at the center of each, the saw-work, wrought in opposing twinned shapes instantly recognizeable from ancient traditional motifs long found in Pueblo pottery, a “kiva steps” pattern that shows the way to the ceremonial chamber. Each earring is suspended from sterling silver earring wires by way of organic ring tabs extending from the top of each fiery drop. Earrings hang 2-1/4″ long (excluding wires) by 3/4″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Fire here assumes many forms, from traditional fireplaces and woodstoves inside homes to the bonfires and torches of the holiday processional, from the small flames of smudging for prayer and cleansing and ceremony to the distant flames of Father Sun that warm the earth and the adobe bricks that form the local homes, walls, and ovens, too.
Adobe is a genius material if ever there were one. So simple, known to Indigenous cultures the world over, and yet so difficult to create; adobe masonry is a highly specialized skill, and it takes training and practice to learn to do it right. In this place, it is one of the oldest traditional skills, and in the village, the people still do their own repair work. Besides being the monsoon season, summer is also mudding season, when people take advantage of the warmth and the longer light to to repair and resurface homes, walls, the church and courtyard, all in preparation for the elemental stresses of the long hard winter to come.
In the meantime, the earthen walls weather and crack . . . and still they hold.
Even the single-story buildings are built in layers, with stair-stepped rooflines of their own. It’s due in part to their original design, which featured roof entry, and it’s why you still see the old ladders propped against the walls. In the winter, they are used to scale the roofs to sweep the snow off and protect the structure from its weight and from potential leaks.
And it gives people a chance for a small quotidian emergence, a very ordinary chance to touch the sky: in the rainy season, a silver sky, earth sheltered by the glowing gray bases of tallest of towering clouds.
And that evokes the image, and the spirit, that infuses the second of today’s featured works of wearable art. This second pair of earrings combines the geometry of both spirit and place with the elemental expanse of that same sky. From their description:
Silver Sky Earrings
Between sun and clouds, above a world in flower, is the glowing expanse of a silver sky. Wings brings together storm and light and lines of growing medicine with these classic earrings that meld traditional slab and concha styles in a work of motion and depth. These dancing drops begins as perfectly saw-cut rectangles of solid eighteen-gauge sterling silver, filed smooth on all sides and with a single organic ring tab at the top center of each. Thunderhead symbols, stamped freehand, chase and conjoin down the center, creating compound motifs associated with rain and the winds and the sacred directions, their open bases at either end abutting gentler clouds beneath a radiant sun. Each set of rays is flanked by a triptych of stalks the evoke the image of plant spirits in flower. This same pattern is chased down either edge of each earring, forming a border of medicine beneath a vaulted silver sky, the curvature created through gentle shaping, repoussé-fashion, from the reverse. Each dangles from sterling silver earring wires strung through the upper tab rings. Earrings hang 1.5″ long (excluding wires) by .75″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver
$425 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Of course, in summer not only the sky turns silver. The light not only pulls the mica’s shimmer from the clay but seems to transfer its glittery shade to the weathered poles that both form and bound the arbors and other structures here.
Collectively, the ancient pine poles and latillas lashed together in the old way engage clouds and sky in an annual dance greater, and more beautiful, than the sum of its parts. In the middle of the monsoon season, those same poles seem almost to serve as as magnets for the season’s medicine, summoning the rain the way their modern metal counterparts call the lightning.
As usual, the old ways are less destructive than modern colonial methods.
The third and final of today’s featured works of wearable art embody poles of a related yet distinctly different sort: as sharply-edged and -cornered as any latilla or any roof made therefrom, yet as ethereal as the giant vertical tower of stormclouds they represent. This third pair are the thunderheads made tangible, the spirit and medicine of the rain given concrete form and shape. From their description:
A Space For Medicine Earrings
A world in harmony is one that holds a space for medicine. With these earrings, Wings summons the First Medicine, water, and the sacred spaces that hold it into bold cascades of sterling silver. Each dangling drop consists of four pairs of thunderhead symbols, eight in total per earring, each pair conjoined at their open bases, then linked to the next at their narrow ends. The stampwork is heavy, deep, and even, and transfigures an ancient symbol for rain into one that represents the sheltering nature of sacred space — together, abundance, protection, medicine itself. Each earring is cut freehand of silver of a substantial gauge, enough for solidity but not for weight, following the lines of the stampwork. Sterling silver wires are threaded through organic tab-style loops. Earrings hang 2-1/4″ long, excluding wires, by 3/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver
$425 + shipping, handling, and insurance
And they, too, remind us of the magic and the purpose of earth and sky. What this ancient place knows is that the world around us naturally a space for medicine, a truth we are far too prone to forget.
But the fourth of today’s images brings clarity to this lesson: earthen adobe walls, wooden posts and arbor roof, the sheltering sky and the rainclouds already forming . . . again the backdrop of the sacred peaks, themselves a form of medicine, too.
The mountains here are sacred space, albeit too often violated now by colonialism and its ravages and ravagers alike. Invisible though they are at this moment, hidden well behind the veil of clouds and rain, we know their every outline, their essential form and shape. They are spirits of corners and angles, too, ones that mediate the space between earth and sky. In their way, they form a ladder for us, too, a means of scaling the walls of the sky, stairs to climb to a new place of emergence.
That, too, is a gift of the summer season.
~ 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.
