June’s end, and a day that began shrouded in a blanket of smoke is slowly clearing, courtesy of a chill wind that whispers more of October than July. Meanwhile, the clouds will rise in the afternoon, and a new trickster wind with them, and still the rain will decline to fall.
This is life at Red Willow in time of drought — and not just an ordinary drought, but a deepening of one now decades-long, driven inexorably by anthropogenic climate change.
It would be all too easy now to focus on what we do not have: rain, greenery, freedom from the dangers of pandemic. But eve in the deepest drought, there is healing to be had, a way to live in harmony with a changed and changing world. The colonized reaches of this place are no help, of course; they are overdeveloped, overpopulated, adorned with too many technological toys and underwritten by those with more money than sense.
We look inward, both to the land and within our spirits, for answers now. And we find them, weathered, pollinated, flowered, dried and gone to seed the soil again — our dreams and our ways, kept alive and still flourishing with backcountry medicine.
As I use the phrase here, I refer not to our traditional ways of practicing medicine in the sense of physical healing, nor even particularly to the growth of medicinal plants, although there are plenty of both, always. Today, I mean something simultaneously shallower and far more deep, a medicine for the spirit that we find in the world around us, natural, ordinary, beautiful, and wholly Indigenous.
And at the end of an especially brutal month, an equally brutal first half of this calendar year, such healing of hearts and spirits is needed now.
Today’s imagery goes back to the beginning of this month — its third day, in fact — when our dogs had been stolen from us and we were searching daily for any sign or trace. Wings took the ATV into the backcountry, crossing fields already drying in the heat, into the stands of piñon and beyond, back toward the foot of the mountain. In most such places, a cell signal is less than a mirage, but there are occasional small spots where it’s possible to reach the outside world, and so he took his phone in the hopes of maintaining contact with me as I searched closer to the house.
And while he was at work, searching for our dogs as yet unfound, the world presented him with moments of stark summer beauty — sufficiently arresting that he had to capture them with the only camera to hand.
The images were a mix of classic high-desert motifs, each its own particular form of medicine. The first was the weathered skull shown above, remarkably well preserved — a cow skull, yes, not the buffalo that has been our brother and our medicine since the dawn of time, but still a not-uncommon sight on this land over the last century and more. It seemed almost as though some spirit had placed it there in the shadow of the sage, the better to display its sun-bleached shades against an earth grown arid and ashen.
It seemed, in fact, like a magnet for light medicine.
And that is the name of the first of today’s three featured works, all holding in common the shapes and symbolism of summer. We begin with the bracelet, a cuff of desert petals and colors. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Light Medicine Cuff Bracelet
Summer is the season of light medicine, the mysteries of the storm and the gifts of the sun and the new life breathed in and out by the leaves of tree and wildflower. Wings calls the light, the breath, and the blossoms to dance together across the surface of this cuff bracelet. The band is hand-milled in a random floral pattern, petals spiraling in great looping whorls around the pistils, edges rising in sharp relief. At the center sits a single bold round cabochon of green-gold Labradorite, fantastically iridescent with the internal glow of sun and storm. The focal cab is flanked on either side by smaller orbs, a pair of luminous round citrine cabochons like tiny suns; at either end sits a round jade cabochon, glowing green with the very breath of summer. Each cab is bezel-set in sterling silver; dual scalloped patterns formed of chained crescent moons linked by tiny hoops trace either edge of the inner band. The band itself is 6″ long by 11/16″ across; Labradorite focal cabochon is 7/16″ across; citrine and jade cabs are 5/16″ across (dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver; green-gold Labradorite; citrine; jade
$1,050 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This has been one of my favorite works from the moment of its completion: silver light hand-milled into the looping, flowing lines of summer petals, stones in the gold of sun and cactus blossom, in the jade of chamisa in full leaf, in the gray-green shimmer of desert sage. It captures all the shades and shapes of the second of today’s images, one adorned by a pollinator’s presence:
In this place, we are granted the great gift of an extraordinary range of cactus species and subspecies, to say nothing of other varieties of dessert shrubs and plants. Prickly pear here flowers in shades of gold and white, of delicate pink and rich magenta, of mulberry and scarlet and lilac, too. Others manifest in all the golden hues of the sun itself, or in whites as pure as winter snow, with pale green pads or stalks and leaves like emerald.
And June is the month when they are all in full wild flower.
Which brings us to the second of today’s featured works, also hand-milled in the same floral pattern, also set with luminous gold and green — in this instance, citrine and peridot. From its description in the Accessories Gallery:
Summer Wildflowers Barrette
Summer wildflowers rise from green-tipped stalks to blossom and dance in the light. Wings summons these spirits of warmer winds in this barrette, hand-milled in a random profusion of silvery petals across a gently arcing rectangle of medium-gauge sterling silver. In the center of the barrette, a single round citrine rests in a saw-toothed bezel, a small wild sunflower amid the larger blossoms. The “stalk” is formed of an elegant silver pick made of sterling silver half-round wire, hand-stamped in a repeating pattern of directional arrows alternating with tiny sacred hoops down its length. At one end, the pick is anchored by an elegant oval peridot cabochon, beautifully translucent in the color of summer greenery, set securely into a saw-toothed bezel. The barrette is 3-5/16″ long by 1-3/4″ high; the citrine cabochon is 1/4″ across; the pick is 3-7/8″ long by 3/16″ across (save at the bezel); the peridot cabochon is 3/8″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Another view shown at the link.
Sterling silver; citrine; peridot
$775 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This piece is all summer, from the softly rounded petals standing out in sharp relief on the surface of its gentle arc to the gold of sunlit blossom and the green of leaf in light. It’s perfect for attracting pollinators, less of the physical form than those of the spirit, of all the joy and healing of the warm season.
And speaking of pollinators, we have been fortunate, drought notwithstanding, to have a decent number of bees in residence so far this summer, honeybees and bumblebees both. The bright desert blossoms attract such small spirits, but they also add a bit of fire to the earthy landscape:
These small blossoms, flowering beneath a small stand of sage, are the best of winter and summer medicine combined: a golden sun-like orb dotted with crimson fire at the center, orbited by the soft snowy spread of white petals, a cooling sight in the desert heat.
The last of today’s three featured works seem to me to embody that heat — flowers of molten fire, cooled by night, small high-desert worlds all their own. From their description in the Earrings Gallery:
Flowering Worlds Earrings
Summer brings us the gift of flowering worlds, alive and fertile and awash in petaled light. Wings evokes orbs and blossoms both with these dynamic earrings, near-perfect spheres hand-milled in a profusion of wild blooms. Each dangling drop is formed from a bold sterling silver concha, ever so slightly oval in shape and fully three-dimensional half-spheres. Each concha is milled in a vibrant wildflower pattern reminiscent of ’60s “flower power” motifs, each flowing petal rising in sharp relief. The earrings are domed, repoussé-fashion, to provide extraordinary depth; delicate holes hand-drilled at the top hold sterling silver wires. Earrings hang 1-15/16″ long by 1-7/8″ across, excluding wires (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver
$475 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The photo doesn’t begin to do justice to these earrings. They are big, bold, so rounded as to resemble half-worlds each, the surfaces marbled with petals, the texture firm and strong and silken too.
The remind me of petals in their prime, in full abundant flower . . . and of those already dried and gone to seed, new medicine for the land and new spirits to be born:
These are not dandelions, but larger wild dessert blooms. Their dried orbs sometimes reach four inches across in size, their centers a geometry of earth-born stars ready to set out upon the wind. And while the colonial world regards them, like their smaller dandelion counterparts, as invasive weeds, we know better: They are indigenous plants with healing properties, medicine for the earth, and for our own bodies and spirits.
This region now is rife with invasive species, including the Russian olive trees that steal and hoard the water, but there are smaller such spirits taking up space here, too, in the town and along the roadsides and even overtaking open spaces. But the backcountry is different.
In the land the leads to the mountains, uneven of surface now and decimated by drought, there is still an indigenous harmony to the rhythms of each day, still healing to be had for a broken world. And in the face of a world now filled with colonial dangers old and new, it’s good to find a little unoccupied space, to acknowledge its gifts, to avail ourselves of the backcountry medicine here to heal our spirits.
~ 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.
