The only storms now are metaphorical.
And they are more catastrophic than any natural weather system will ever be. But this day could not look less like the featured photos if it had set out deliberately to contradict them. There remains a weeks left to August, and yet today looks and feels of September’s end: hot sun but a breeze with a sharp bite; perfect clarity, not a single particle of ash or smoke anywhere in the air; and a blue sky impossibly pure in color, the only clouds the wispy white banding of mare’s tails stretching from east to west above the southern horizon.
Here at Red Willow, the only rainbow to be found today is the one that the mind creates by piecing together blue sky and green leaves and golden wildflowers swaying in a the chattering wind.
Wings shot yesterday’s and today’s featured photos eleven years ago to the very day: at day’s end on August 23rd or 24th of 2010, a year when we were beset on all sides by other metaphorical storms even as earth and sky still produced and delivered the weather patterns this land so desperately needs. The one featured in yesterday’s post was part of the series, a wide-angle shot that captured almost the whole of fence, arbor, tree, and field. Today’s three photos show only the southwesternmost end of that view, with glimpses of fence and bush and background, but the focus of the photos given over almost entirely to the double rainbow that arced in full high overhead. The key feature of today’s images is their similarity, and the stark contrast effected by the rapid-fire change in departing storm and arriving sunlight: above, the back of the weather as golden-green as the fields and the leaves of the globe willow in the low angle of the light; at center, the same imagery as the sun’s glow was dimmed once more by the force of the wall of thunderheads, transforming te gold into amber and the green into a darkening slate gray; and at the end, that momentary magical shift that occurs when the sun sets just low enough to turn the grays into flawless violet, a purple as perfect as the petals of any aster.
And the three of them collectively provide an apt embrace for today’s two featured works of wearable art: a pair of cuffs wrought solely in the silver of the light, but scored with all the marks of wind and weather and the shapes of rainbows, too, a way forward following the lines of the storm. Both are found in the Cuffs and Links and Bangles section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site. We begin with the older cuff (albeit only by a day or two, both of them having been completed within the last four weeks); it’s a work that moves from the eye of the storm to the lines of the light, guidance given tangible form like an arrow aimed to fly true, wrought here in solid heavy-gauge sterling silver. From its description:
Fly True Cuff Bracelet
Guided by the wisdom and illuminating power of Spirit, our aim will always fly true. With this cuff, Wings calls the arrows into the circle beneath Spirit’s eye, ready to find their mark. Wrought of heavy nine-gauge sterling silver half-round wire, the cuff is cut freehand at the very center to limn the edges of the three Eyes of Spirit at its center. The interconnected central motif is flanked on either side by four boldly incised stamps, half claw mark and half crescent moon, as befits the light whose illumination is so bright that mere mortals find it sometimes painful. At the end of each quartet of thin crescents is a single hoop, with traditional arrow motifs facing inward, one at one side, two on the other, as though focused on and following the guidance of the three “eyes” at the center. The band terminates at either end beneath solitary celestial stamps in the form of classic five-pointed stars. The cuff is 6″ long by 5/16″ across (dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver
$975 + shipping, handling, and insurance
If the skies above are that rarest of greens, it only takes a moment for them to shift and darken once more. This, too, is a common phenomenon here in the summer season, the first of the sun’s bold and brilliant rays shining gold lighting up the departing stormy blues, the mix creating a jade glow as ethereal as it is ephemeral.
But it takes only a split second for a drifting wisp of cloud to turn the gold to silver, and transform what remains of the weather into a wall of dark but glowing gray.
In point of fact, it is the gray that creates the best backdrop of all for the light: The rainbow arc is more brilliant, the colors more intense, the lines of their gradient more clearly delineated against a blue-black sky.
And sometimes we need that clarity. It’s easy to shout at the storm; harder to find the gifts and the guidance it has to show us. But that is one of the perhaps counterintuitive gifts of heavy weather: The darker the sky, the brighter the light that shines against it . . . and the clearer the path that is open to us.
We could do with a little of that contrast now, and the wisdom that it imparts, showing us the ways of wind and light.
It’s a wisdom imbuing the second of today’s featured works of wearable art, a heavy-gauge cuff wrought in a classically understated style yet infused with a powerful symbolism. From its description:
The Ways of Wind and Light Cuff Bracelet
We are bound to the ways of wind and light, like braids woven with silvered ribbons, never to unravel. With this cuff, Wings calls both element forces to the circle to show their strength and beauty. The band is formed of heavy nine-gauge sterling silver half-round wire, solid, substantial, with a graceful arc to the surface and a softly rounded edge. Across the center, evenly spaced, are three sets each of four parallel core marks, bold and deep, representing the winds and the sacred directions. Each set is joined the next via a single long scoremark incised on the diagonal, like the ribbons we use to bind and braid our hair in the old way, but here made of shimmering silver light. The freehand scoremarks are repeated on the sides and inside of the band, but joined instead with repeating motifs of tiny round sacred hoops; more sacred hoops, evenly spaced, adorn each rounded edge along the sides of the cuff. At either end, inside and out, are matched directional arrows formed freehand of bold, deep freehand scoring terminating in a single arrowhead point. Cuff is 6″ long by3/8″ across (dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver
$1,100 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This one is a personal favorite, with its bold, spare lines and simplicity of message and spirit. It’s a spirit that infuses the storm itself here, and these unseasonal days of sharp clarity, too — one that beckons us to focus on the path laid out for us instead of the distractions along the way.
Because distractions, as the colonial world makes clear to our detriment, can be deadly. When the storm encroaches, when the night gathers and darkness prepares to fall, the way becomes much more perilous. It’s a truth as real for metaphorical dark days as it is for the rainiest of literal nights.
But still, the darkness has its own gifts . . . .
On that day eleven years ago when Wings captured these images, he shot them in rapid-fire succession, no more than moments apart. That’s how fast the post-storm light shifts here, how fast the landscape changes as it is laid out before us. And if it took only seconds for the green to become gray-black, it took only seconds more for the slate skies to turn violet, a gradient from lilac to amethyst to the most royal of purples.
That’s a true shot, by the way, and true color; no Photoshopping or filters here. At Red Willow, the spirit of the storm is one that luxuriates in all the shades of the rainbow, even apart from its well-defined portal.
The other gift here, and it’s one that is not granted to the more populated areas of town and lower county but is common on the pristine expanse of tribal lands, is the ability to see that spectrum in its fullest arc. It’s routine here, or at least it was, back when we had an actual rainy season, to see the full arc meet overhead, and simultaneously to be able to see both ends touch the earth with their glow. At the time Wings shot these photos, double rainbows were a common summer occurrence; that’s a phenomenon that has grown rarer than the rains themselves now, but a few weeks ago, we had that rarest of gifts: a clear double rainbow with a third arc forming on each side.
It reminded me of the sun dogs of winter.
And winter is not far off now. That, perhaps, is the most important factor now: No matter the upheaval in summer and fall weather and climate, winter’s arrival is always a sure thing. The only question is how hard it will be, and for us, the hardest winter of all is the one that is too warm and too dry. As our small world here enters one if its sacred seasons, it’s time to pray for the snow.
It’s time, too, to keep perspective. It’s very easy for the colonial world to extol the virtues of endless sun and warmth; that world is, after all, busy invading still, overdeveloping, draining the groundwater dry in a place that soon will have trouble supporting the Indigenous population with first rights. We know better; we know that Mother Earth’s survival depends upon balance, and that in turn depends upon the participation of the weather, of the powers of the rain and the snow.
We have more reason than ever for following the lines of the storm now . . . and for protecting them, as well.
~ 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.
