The title sounds counterintuitive: a fire born of storm. How, exactly, does the rain create flames?
In our world, there are many ways.
The most literal one, of course, is the one we find ourselves at risk of this time every year, albeit much more so now that thirty years of five-hundred-year drought have deepened into half a decade of the record twelve-hundred-year version. That’s the source of much of the wildfire that has always been a seasonal element here: ignited by lightning, and thus birthed by the very storm that, in a good year, keeps it in check and eventually extinguishes it.
We have not had a good year for some time now.
Today was supposed to be a day of rain; then, yesterday, the forecast shifted to snow for tonight. I suspect that we shall see neither, or at least not enough to measure; after all, yesterday’s forecast rain never materialized in any real way, either (and that also came as no surprise to us) — five minutes’ worth of drops early in the evening, followed later by tornadic winds that produced half a rainbow in front of Spoon Mountain and nothing more. At least, nothing more until the predawn hours, just before the light, when an actual rain mixed with a dusting of snow washed over the land. We are grateful for it, but with the dawn have come skies already almost entirely clear, and I suspect that these spirits of drought will regard it as enough.
What is a surprise, these recent weeks, is the fact that rain is regarded as a possibility at all; in this place, spring (like fall) is the dry season, its aridity amplified by the gale-force trickster winds, interrupted only by winter’s occasional and short-lived return. We have, in fact, had snow fall from the sky here as late as June tenth, although without accumulation; April here is quite often marked with a sudden heavy snowfall, as much as a foot, that’s melted entirely by noon. We have no snow, save the faint and already-melting scattering on the peaks from this morning, but at our elevation, we also have no rain, only clouds.
But even absent any precipitation, we somehow still have the fiery skies of summer, those that appear at each day’s dusk in the wake of the last monsoonal storm, skies once formerly confined only to the rainy season here.
The three featured images in this edition of Red Willow Spirit all embody the beauty, power, and absolute fire of that season. Wings shot all three in digital format on the same day at the heart of the monsoon season nine years ago: mid-August, 2014. Yes, that’s a whole season away from where we are now, in this year — but it’s also representative of our twilight skies of recent days and weeks.
The one above is one of my personal favorites: It captures all the shades of the post-storm sunset fire that, here at Red Willow, turns our western sky into its own sort of rainbow. But it’s not just the sky, nor even the shades of it; it’s also what shows in silhouette: the traditional latilla fenceposts standing sentry, the old traditional pine ladder rising against the flames, as though capable of elevating us to cooler, calmer spaces. As photos go, it’s compositionally nearly perfect, angle and perspective clearly in tune with the great wide expanse of sky above that shows us all the shades of the storm . . . and the fire in its wake.
A metaphorical fire, to be true, at least at tis distance, and a good things, too. And since we have been getting that atmospheric light show, it seems fitting that these images should be linked bythe single work of wearable art, shown here from two vantage points, that is named for it: a storm-tossed wildfire sky that, fortunately for us, is now mostly if not entirely lacking in wildfire smoke to buttress its blazing colors. From its description in The Coiled Power Collections in the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
A Storm-Tossed Wildfire Sky Coil Bracelet
Summer here is the season of water and flame, of the light manifest in the magic of a storm-tossed wildfire sky. With this coil bracelet in Wings’s newest collection, he summons dawn’s smoky sun to the circle to dance with the pink berry moon of the post-monsoonal night, and all the stages of the light in between. Hand-made barrel beads of Ethiopian silver anchor both ends, flowing inward to alternate with, at top, the smoky golden glow of a Pietersite sun, and, at the opposite end, a shimmering pink sphere of icy red tourmaline. In between are all the shades of storm and sky, from iridescent clouds of Labradorite to the pale morning blues of cloud-webbed impression jasper; from the bronze glow of smoky quartz, like a hazy veiled sun, to the flames of old amber and fire agate and peach moonstone fading into the grays of night; from the warm pale evening hues of lepidolite to the new night’s deep violet by way of ultra-high-grade red and black tourmaline. Bracelet consists of four full coils of beads strung on memory wire, which expands and contracts to fit nearly any wrist. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Another view shown below. Coil bracelet coordinates with The Mystical Flames of Falling Stars necklace and Where the Lightning Strikes earrings. From the Fire series in Wings’s new collection, The Summer Elementals (all pieces shown at the link).
Memory wire; Ethiopian silver; golden Pietersite; smoky quartz; Labradorite; impression jasper;
amber; fire agate; peach moonstone; lepidolite; red and black tourmaline
$350 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love this one, and I’ve been surprised that it has not already sold independently of the two works created to complement it. Ironically, we have already had a few of the falling stars for which the coordinating necklace is named, courtesy of the Lyrid meteor shower As far as either of us knows, though, there has been no early lightning . . . yet. That will come, and if we are lucky, it will not be the dry lightning so famous for igniting conflagration here, but the simple bolts of the rain-heavy thunderstorm.
A storm like that which left behind the skies in today’s images. I’m showing them here out of order, because he shot the close-ups before capturing the one at top, but they’re all of the same sky.
This one, as it turns out, has a companion shot: nearly identical in every way, save that the color is much lighter, peach and gold rather than copper and amber. No, that one wasn’t an example of overexposure; it was simply captured a few moments before this one, and in those intervening seconds, the sky had darkened to this level.
It doesn’t take long here. You learn early on that if you wish to capture the light, you have to move fast, and it means that you also must be constantly aware for that subtle shift that means you get the shot . . . or not.
Regardless, you can clearly see the cloud patterns on the left-hand side of the distance shot at top, what looks like a sky in flames, and in fact, one could be forgiven for thinking that the colors had deepened so dramatically due to an infusion of smoke.
But there was no smoke, only water and light, which brings me to the second view of today’s featured work, seemingly with smoke at the top, fire in second wrap, and stormclouds and rain visible from this angle in much of the lower two layers.
One of the things I love about this coil is its diversity of colors and textures: shimmery golden Pietersite above giant nuggets of old, old natural amber; glossy, puffy, plump barrels of rich smoky quartz paired with icy lepidolite, rounds of red tourmaline, and rough barrels of Indonesian silver. It’s impossible to miss the connection, the symbiosis, between water and fire.
And the amber in this piece. is so perfect in color and resiny texture that it looks as though bits of the sky in the image below have hardened, broken off and fallen to earth in the manner of turquoise — but here, instead of drops of rain, falling as tiny jewels of flame.
And this is a shot that I love, albeit perhaps not for reasons anyone else would know.
First, a little orientation: It’s a zoom close-up of one small section of latilla fencing in front of the sunset. Scroll back up to the top photos, and look at the section of fencing on the left side — specifically, the five posts on the right end of that section that stand before that golden swatch of sun. Now imagine that you are standing before those five posts, but instead of facing that golden brushstroke to the west, you’ve turned slightly northwest: in effect, looking through those same latillas to the darker clouds in the area behind the ladder.
That’s what you see here.
But what I have always seen, in addition to that? In addition to the the clear, if diffuse, fire in the sky behind their silhouettes? A single photo that seems to have come from what is perhaps my favorite mainstream art period, the Art Deco era. They remind me of the smokestacks in the brilliant geometric cityscapes that characterized paintings of that period . . . and also the flames of the smelters in the background of Diego Rivera’s famed Detroit Industry Murals that adorn the actual walls of a hall in the Detroit Institute of Arts now known as Rivera Court. I saw those in person, up very close and very personal, when I was young, and the experience is inscribed on my spirit in more ways than I can count. No online photos will ever do those murals justice, and at this remove, it’s impossible for me to evoke the sheer power in the panels.
Of course, Diego Rivera was also partly of Indigenous descent, and that identity, that spirit comes through in his work, especially in these works. And for the daughter of a Native mechanic who grew up working on the earliest of motor vehicles, and in the earliest of industry settings, too? It was a moving experience in many ways.
Of course, that industry in the form in which my father knew is long gone. So, too, are the techniques memorialized in the panels. But the hardships remain, the oppressions, the heat and the sweat and the pain that accompanies the process of trying to live well in a colonial world that wants the exact opposite for you and yours.
And it reminds us that whatever the fires of industry, of the smelters and furnaces? Whatever the fires now of a climate they daily speed on to collapse, via drought and overheating and sea level rise and wildfire?
There is a fire in our spirits, in our hearts, too — one that demands of us survival for future generations. And it, too, is a fire born of storm.
I would not want to be one standing in its way when the conflagration takes hold.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
