After a thoroughly unseasonal high of fifty yesterday, the weather is changing again. The sky is our barometer: shelf clouds hovering above he peaks to the east; iridescent bands shimmering across the southwest expanse. Before the day is out, those bands will have turned, at least temporarily, into forbidding gray banks that hold snow in their depths, but if the forecast is to be believed, no precipitation will be delivered before tomorrow.
For now, there is still snow on the ground, a gift of the most recent storm, although the warmth of the sun has reduced it to an inch or two in most places. Already bare patches of earth strain toward the light, and the every available path has turned to mud.
It’s a reminder of just how fast circumstances can change here. Red willow sits at an elevation of some 7,500 feet, high desert by any measure but also a place, historically, of unusually lush environmental gifts, an ecosystem of four discrete seasons and a decent amount of semi-regular precipitation, a place as known for the green medicine of its natural world as for the red-gold earth of its walls. The first colonizing invaders thought to arrogate to themselves “naming rights,” and they called this vast range of peaks and ridges Sangre de Cristo, or Blood of Christ. but these impossibly high points at the end of what the colonial government calls the Rocky Mountains bear much older names, and nicknames, too, and these are known to some, colloquially, as The Dragon’s Tail.
It’s easy to see where the name originates, given the an aerial view of the entire expanse of the Rockies does look rather like the ridged back of some giant sleeping dragon. Down here at their southern extreme, the peaks remain high and full of switchbacks, like a long, pronged tail curling around on itself. The colonial world forgets that such creatures as dragons are not solely the province of either medieval Europe or ancient East Asia; humanity’s symbologies are more connected than we know, and so, too, are the ancient creatures that inhabited all the indigenous corners of a world we no longer remember, but was no less real for that. And at this season, they may mostly slumber, but the weather is a gift to them, as well: ice for the Water Serpent, snow on the Dragon’s tail.
This is a land of smaller dragons, too: of great water serpents and their smaller cousins who carry the rattle and a sing whispering song, of salamanders in the mud along the Great River and of small flying dragons (bats) who make their homes in the caves that dot the mountains’ craggy faces and slopes. Much has changed in the time that these mountains have stood, emergent from deeper seas, and the changes we are witnessing now, though greatly accelerated, are still no more than the blink of an eye or the beat of a bird’s wing to spirits so ancient.
Humanity, though, has difficulty grasping such scale. To us the changes of a single day seem drastic and remarkable — and so they are, for we are seeing a level of alteration and adaptation of scope, scale, and speed that even ancestors only one generation removed could never have conceived. It is our task to make sure that future generations need not recognize them, either, to halt this headlong flight in the here and now. And perhaps nowhere is the evidence of this change more readily visible than along the banks of the Great River.
The images featured here today were all shot in a single day almost exactly two years ago: in February of 2019. We were on our way either to Santa Fe or to Albuquerque, where I was undergoing medical testing (in different facilities in both places), and this particular day a day or so after a small storm had dawned near-perfectly clear and bitterly cold. All were shot from the same place, a visitor’s center not far south of town in the opening stretches of the highway through the Gorge. And they showed clearly, in the dead of winter, how much can change in the space of those few hours of light on a single winter’s day.
Wings captured the one above early in the morning, perhaps seven or eight o’clock. It’s a view looking west and north, a cobalt river running hard and fast beneath indigo skies, and a cold so deep that the lacy rime of snow along its earthy brown banks and evergreen slopes had not lost so much as a single flake.
That would change. But for the moment, we simply took the time, in a time of significant worry and stress, to listen to the river’s song, to feel the cold and calming quiet that surrounded it.
And in a day whose primary emotion was fear, it reminded me of the abundance that filled our lives, of the beauty and the prosperity, still, of this world the spirits have given us.
I come from a land of Big Water, and the sight of it is always medicine for my spirit. Whether it’s the Great Lakes, calm and blue or wild with the storm, or the bubbling flow of the Great River snaking through the Gorge like the ancient Water Serpent itself, the sight and sound of it is immediately calming, instantly healing, ad we resumed our journey in a better frame of mind for having stopped to view its beauty and power.
There are in fact many reasons why we call the water The First Medicine.
There are many reasons, too, why it, and the ancient Indigenous serpent that lives here in its depths, are linked with notions of abundance and prosperity. It could hardly be otherwise in a high-desert land where drought is always a lurking danger, but it’s a truth even more in evidence now, when both drought and pandemic are proving particularly deadly.
This is a region where Serpent assumes many forms and identities and speaks to different peoples in different ways. West and south of here, they are taboo entirely; in one culture, snakeskin clothing, footwear, and accessories are entirely forbidden on tribal lands. In others, they are objects of avoidance, not precisely taboo, but also not engaged in any real way.
Here, likely because of their association with their powerful elder and ancestor, the Water Serpent, they are regarded as signs of prosperity. It would be incorrect to imply that they are welcomed, precisely; there is always a healthy respect for their fierce and fearsome power. But just as their identities and gifts play a role in medicine in my own people’s way, here, their identities are also bound and braided with notions of a healthy environment, one with the gift of abundant water and with that, prosperity.
So it should come as no surprise that Wings has long chosen to feature this spirit in his work. Snake appears in every single iteration of the signature series perhaps closest to his heart, the Warrior Woman series, included explicitly as a symbol of prosperity. An entry in another of his much smaller series is featured here today, a cuff bracelet in his own signature style that embodies the best of what our small world here in general, and this spirit in particular, offer us.
Both silverwork photos today are of the same piece, and normally, I would place the description beneath this first image. Today, though, I want to lead into the description further below by way of the photo between, and the links between the work and the land itself.
Because the links are both express and very clear, provided that you know how to see them.
This second image of the riverscape, like the third one, below, were captured several hours after the one below. It’s taken from the same vantage point, only turned to look slightly downstream along the western slope and bank of the same stretch of river shown above. wings wanted to capture the snow that remained on the low, plateau-like flat above the banks, to contrast it with the more panoramic shots above and below.
This shot was taken perhaps six to eight hours after the one at the top of this post, no more; well within the same daylight hours. This was on our return trip home, and you can see the wholly different angle of the sun.
You can see, too, how that change in angle changes the subject matter, both in fact and as a matter of perception. As to the former, the steady application of the sun’s warmth and light, despite the deep cold of the day, had melted most of the snow from slopes and riverbank. The one visible, notably-untouched stretch of land was the flat area in this shot, too long out of reach of the sun’s rays.
At first glance, it looks as though the white expanse is the river, but in fact, the river is visible only as that narrow jade-green edge along the bottom. And that, too, is one of the changes of the day: The water is no longer blue, but green; the green of piñon and sage have likewise shed their dusting of snow. Even the sky is no longer entirely blue, its paler turquoise shade underlit with a green glow bestowed by a golden sun. The earth, no longer frozen, shows its skin as a golden brown warm enough to match the still-bare stalks of the red willow stands; the waves of the river are tipped with silver, and so is the crystalline pack above its banks.
In other words, the same place that was indigo just after dawn turns amber and jade by mid-afternoon, all in the space of a single icy day . . . and through it all, the Great River snakes and turns, its flow moving as sinuously as the uncoiling body of the serpent thought to inhabit it, as steadily as the slow flick of the dragon’s tail.
So, too, does today’s featured work turn and move, a half-coiled cuff of extraordinary elegance and pure power. From its description in the Cuffs and Links and Bangles section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
A Prospering World Serpent Cuff Bracelet
The spirits honor hard work and a life well lived in the old way by answering prayers for a prospering world. Wings evokes one of these spirits of prosperity in silver and stone by way of his own signature style: a hand-split cuff in the coiled shape of Serpent, he who bears good fortune. This version of the snake is the same one who lends his talents to Medicine, a rattler bearing jewels of the earth in rich fertile colors. The band is formed of a single piece of sterling silver, hand-split so that head and tail extend in opposite directions to coil around the wrist. Small hand-stamped points form his eyes; tiny hoops, his snout and heavily layered rattle; lodge symbols adorn the two intermediate ends of the uniquely-styled band. He is that fierce member of his clan, the diamondback, with tiny hand-stamped versions of the pattern alternating between the gemstones he bears along his back, ten small round bezel-set cabochons of jade and tiger’s eye. Band is 6″ long by 7/16″ across; cabochons are 5/16″ across (dimensions approximate); the band has significant flexibility, but is designed for a smaller wrist (6.5″ or less). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; jade; tiger’s eye
$1,025 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s a gift of the land here, and of its spirits, too. Even in the hard cold days of midwinter — or, as is the case yesterday and today, the hard and dangerously warm days of midwinter — it’s the promise of earth and sky, of storm and light, of the Great River and the Water Serpent, of the sheltering mountains that are The Dragon’s Tail. And it is evident, even now, in the rich golden brown earth, in the evergreens, in the silvered waters and the remnant snow.
On that same afternoon, Wings repeated his shot of the morning, from the exact same spot and vantage point. Indeed, if you look closely at the image just below, just above center of the land and water, you’ll see a flat white spot stretching just to the left of a pair of bare cottonwoods. That small flat is the area shown in the middle photo here today: there, up close, looking big and bright; here, rom a fuller perspective and in a more accurate context, seen for the patchy remnant that it is against the bare brown and green.
And it’s possible to see the blues again.
Yes, the sky is light near the horizon, pale in such afternoon heat as may be had on a day when the mercury rose not far out of single digits. Ye, there is that faint hint of green to its clear expanse, bestowed by a sun already dropping in a southwest sky. And yes, save for that one tiny patch, the snow is gone, leaving behind the jade of piñon and sage, the earthy golden brown of the red willows, the silvered branches of still-dormant deciduous trees. But the water has turned cobalt again in this light, save for the lack of snow, it could be a near-perfect copy of the first image, taken only hours prior.
And seeing it from the overlook, testing behind us for the day and most of the trip, too, reminded us both how truly blessed we are, even in an era of catastrophic, colonial-drive climate change, to live in this ancient place. It’s is a place that delivers on its promise in any season, but its medicine in especially strong in winter.
This is Water, The First Medicine: ice for the Water Serpent, snow on The Dragon’s Tail, and a prospering world beneath it all.
~ 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.
