With the advent, these last days, of real spring temperatures, summer finally feels possible.
That’s no mean feat these days; the pandemic has upended all notions not only of normality, but of possibility. The outside world, the colonial one, has been knocked off its axis and out of orbit, and it staggers, befuddled and lost, around this new path that requires a wholly different pace.
In our world, not so much has changed — indeed, very little at all, save that it has become quieter, more tranquil, less bothered and bedeviled by invading forces and agendas. And since a year that has brought so much illness and death, so much grief and loss to the world, has also (in this place at least) brought a seeming return to more usual levels of precipitation, we have found ourselves returned to our own patterns of normality . . . and of possibility.
There has been no water in the months, indeed, nigh on close to a year now. Before that, we went well over a year without, as Red Willow, and indeed this whole region, descended into the deepest drought in living memory. Water here is always a gift, never to be scorned, wasted, turned away or taken for granted, but it is a sign of healing, too. In this place, water is very much the First Medicine: life, from the sacred lake to the great river, and all points in between.
And those points are many. This land has been in Wings’s family forever, and they have always made good use of the water, whether from the earth or from the sky. The summer rainy season helps, of course, but it is the snowpack in the mountains that provides most of our water, its runoff filling the lake whence the tributaries flow, routing the flow downward through the people’s complex ditching system to the lands below. One of the first things done here when a person newly inhabits their land is the building of a pond, a catchment for the flow that can then be routed out to that land, to the trees and the ground cover, the crops in the gardens and in the fields too. Ours is appropriately small, just long enough, just wide enough, just deep enough for the land’s needs. And while it is, when full, a place of magic the year round, in the warmer months it becomes its own tiny oasis of near-indescribable beauty, aglow with blues and the green overhang of the willows’ tears, abuzz with the music of the Dragonfly Clan and the night rhythms of the frogs. Occasionally, it has provided a respite from the summer heat for a small spirit with four legs and floppy ears and a wolf’s tail, too (and today’s leading image, above, was taken within moments of yesterday’s, a few steps out from roughly the same vantage point).
And while there have been years when the pond is full in winter, too, the ice cracking and reforming and bursting its banks, it is mostly a phenomenon of the seasons of the warming winds, full of the deep blues of the sky, the greens of grass and willow, the reds of the skimmers that dance across its surface, and the shimmering golds of the longer light.
In that respect, it embodies all the shapes and shades of the first of today’s featured works, one in the warm shades of spring and summer accented by the lapis blues of water and sky, and captures its identity, too. From this work’s description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Warming Winds Coil Bracelet
Within the currents of warming winds, the world is reborn. With this coil bracelet, Wings calls the gale into a spiraling cascade of renewed and renewing color and light. The focal beads consist of five chunky nuggets of glowing gold-lip mother-of-pearl shell scattered at intervals around its vortex. At the center, two are linked by large red tiger’s eye rounds, chatoyant and blood-red, alternating with equally large doughnut rondels of shimmering Labradorite. The coil extends outward on either side into a gradient of amethyst and lapis lazuli rounds punctuated by icy Labradorite chips as spacers; thence to jade rounds separated by tiny blue goldstone chips in the shade of a midnight storm. At either end, bright segments of spring green peridot chips alternate with sunny yellow quartz faceted barrel beads, each chip and barrel delineated by contrasting bits of blue goldstone. Beads are strung on silver-plated memory wire that expands and contracts to fit virtually any wrist. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji; coil coordinates with Shades of an Early Storm necklace and From a Nearer Sun earrings.
Memory wire; gold-lip mother-of-pearl shell; red tiger’s eye; Labradorite;
amethyst; lapis lazuli; jade; blue goldstone; peridot; yellow quartz
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
And this is the season of the winds; they bedevil the earth here from March through May and even into June. In most years, though, they bring little in the way of precipitation, although their dry and dusty twisters deliver plenty in the way of destruction: felled limbs, uprooted trees, downed fences, and, as here two years ago, half the roof torn off our horses’ barn.
But this is also the season when the water begins to flow, as people begin the laborious process of irrigation, which here is done the old way, with earthen dams turned by hand. “The water came” is a colloquial refrain here in the warmer months, part a prayer of thanks for its arrival, part an acknowledgment of its immanent power and capacity for going only where and as it chooses.
All the plots of land here are webbed with ditching systems that are at once both elaborate and very, very simple. It’s an old way that makes use of the powers of gravity and flow, human labor added to send it out to the patches of earth that need it most. It’s rationed carefully, every drop put to use to nurture ground cover and crops alike, and to provide a habitat for those small spirits of the season that, like the sun itself, help our world breathe, to live and thrive.
These fast-flowing streams the branch off from the upper tributaries, sometimes wending between the trees and under the wire, catch all the colors of the world that holds them fast in its embrace. They flow in the shadow and light from a nearer sun now, exposed veins and arteries shimmering with the promise of life. In that, they are much like the second of today’s featured works, part of the more or less formal collection that comprises three of today’s four works. This work is actually two pieces, a pair of earrings whose light and color and flow are hung on the vertical, much like the flow of the streams pulled downward by earth’s gravity to thirstier lands. These embody the lengthening of the light, too, and the closer bend of its arc now. From their description in the relevant section of the Earrings Gallery:
From a Nearer Sun Earrings
A warming world is renewed in the light from a nearer sun. With these gemstone bead earrings, Wings gathers a lengthening golden light amid the greens and grays and blues of earth and storm and sky. Each drop is centered around a bold and chunky focal bead of luminous gold-lip mother-of-pearl shell, long bright bricks of pure sunlight. Flanking these golden centers are small jade rounds in the color of new grass; shimmering green-gray Labradorite barrels in the shades of the spring storm; and richly marbled lapis lazuli rounds like cloud-swept skies. Earrings are strung on sterling silver wire and hang from sterling silver earring wires; each hangs 2.25″ long, excluding wires (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji; earrings coordinate with Shades of an Early Storm necklace and Warming Winds coil bracelet.
Sterling silver wire; gold-lip mother-of-pearl shell; jade; green Labradorite; lapis lazuli
$155 + shipping, handling, and insurance
These earrings remind me, very literally, of a very particular river in that nearer sunlight: the Rio Pueblo de Taos, the tributary that descends from the mountains, an artery of life that transects the Pueblo at its very heart — in spring and the early days of summer, running high and hard and fast in its race downstream to join up with the Great River’s flow.
All the shades of the season are present here in this image from the early hours of the day, from the gray-green of the roiling waters to the jade leaves that overhang them, gold light on the earthy and the glint of silver on the waves, and above it all, the vault of a lapis sky.
It’s a sky that takes on the other color, too, as the day progresses, the gray clouds of the monsoon reflecting that of the waters, the violet blues of their bases lowering until they break apart — the shades of an early storm, delivering its gifts with ecstatic fury, then departing to make way for the reddened glow of sunset. It’s a spectrum manifest in the third of today’s featured works, a name and identity, too . . . but the work itself is described further below, for it suits our world here in two ways now.
Yes, this piece matches the spirit of the early storms of summer, some of which have already passed through here in recent weeks, well out of season. But those early storms manifest in other ways now, too: the spring snows unwilling to depart entirely, the storms that are early by the hands of the clock, giving way to a full melt in a matter of hours.
It’s not just a phenomenon of late spring, either, as the following paired photographs of the Great River herself make clear.
This image and its counterpart, both bookending the next image of our third featured work, were taken on the same day, from roughly the same vantage point, mere hours apart. It’s true that these were images of late winter into early spring, but in recent years here, the calendar has meant little; in a land of drought, the seasons warm long before any rains arrive.
But this is land of nothing if not harsh extremes, snow in June and seventy degrees in December (the former in a good year; the latter, in a bad one). And while this stretch of her flow runs south of us by a significant degree, the Rio Grande at this area tends more toward our own colder temperatures and harsher winters than some lands between this point and our own heightened elevation. It’s a rugged stretch of land, the river winding along beneath a twisting two-lane highway, and on some of these early days it’s possible to see her robed in the shades of an early storm at one hour, red-gold and green between the cornflower of the sky and the lapis of her shining self, edges ermine-trimmed with snow . . . then divested entirely of white a mere three or four hours later, her sole shimmer coming from the silvered light upon her blue traditional dress.
And this is where the shapes and shades of this third feature work figure best: between the markers of weather, season, and time, an elemental blend of earthy powers and cosmic forces. From its description in the relevant section of the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Shades of an Early Storm Necklace
On the threshold between winter and spring, iridescent clouds coalesce in the shades of an early storm. With this luminous gemstone bead necklace, Wings summons the colors of the light into a flowing graduated arc, as bright and colorful as any rainbow. At the center, three chunky nuggets of glowing gold-lip mother-of-pearl shell flank a pair of outsized round sardonyx beads banded with pure flame. Each side of the strand flows upward in a graduated pattern of size and color reminiscent of the gradient patterns of traditional Indigenous seed beadwork: segments of large round lepidolite alternating with single shimmering Labradorite if similar size; medium rounds of amethyst, lapis lazuli, and jade interspersed with Labradorite and green garnet; all strung on heavy-grade tri-ply silver-plated foxtail and secured with oversized sterling silver hook-and-eye findings for ease of fastening. Necklace hangs 17″ long, excluding findings (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji; necklace coordinates with From A Nearer Sun earrings and Warming Winds coil bracelet. Full view shown below.
Beads: Gold-lip mother-of-pearl shell; sardonyx; lepidolite; Labradorite;
amethyst; lapis lazuli; green garnet; jade
Findings and strand: sterling silver findings; tri-ply silver-plated foxtail
$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Above, only hours after dawn; below; hours yet before the dusk. Same land, same ridge, same river — and yet, within a span of four hours, all trace of the storm is gone. The red willows are more red, the earth more warmly gold, the slopes a deepened evergreen . . . and the waters still a deeper shade of sky, the blue of finest lapis lazuli.
It’s a reminder of the ways in which the waters, in this high desert land, remain constant. Higher or lower, running fast or pooled and still, they are the medicine that keeps our small world alive, the medicine that heals the hoop.
And that in turn is a reminder of the work we have to do to keep them healthy, too.
The fourth and final of today’s featured works is not one that is a part of the collection that comprises the three above. It is, however, in its way the sum of their parts, an end point, a logical conclusion and result to a world in harmony, one that has learned the lessons of the waters and works to keep them safe. It is a representation of life, in our way of conceiving it — the sacred hoop with no beginning and no end, only the links of a life lived well that connects us to the ancestors and our children yet unborn, to Mother Earth herself and her other children, and to the spirits that give life to us all. From its description, also found among The Coiled Power Collections in the Bracelets Gallery:
The Sacred Hoop Coil Bracelet
Truth may be found in the sacred hoop, infinite and eternal, journey and existence alike. Wings calls the wisdom of its experience into being with this coil, a winding hoop of symbolic color and traditional beauty. It begins with the darker shades at either end, represented in some traditions as black and in others as blue, here manifest in both colors by way of lengths of jet flowing into cobalt orbs of lapis lazuli. Each is followed by slightly larger beads of chatoyant red tiger’s eye, shimmering in shades of luminescent red, extending inward to brightly translucent freeform nuggets of glowing yellow citrine. At the center sits an expanse of the first shade of the hoop, snowy spheres of white-lip mother-of-pearl shell as luminescent as the North Star itself. Memory wire expands and contracts to fit nearly any wrist. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji.
Memory wire; jet; lapis lazuli; red tiger’s eye; garnet; tiger’s eye; citrine; white-lip mother-of-pearl shell
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This is a hoop manifest in the shades of sacred directions, one that honors the differing versions found among our peoples. At the center are the white of the snowy north and the golden sun of the east, extending outward into the reds of the southern center, and ending in the two different shades that mark western roads and spokes of the wheel, lapis blue of the darkening sky, and the jet black of the night.
It’s a set of shades found, in their way, in the last image from today, one that shows the sacred hoop come full circle, when the waters are healed and healing for a world in harmony.
It’s the Great River herself, up close and personal, in the waning days of winter here and the early weeks of spring, when snow still lines her banks but the sun is already warming her rippling surface.
And its one of the small indigenous spirits of place, one whose kind make their home upon these waters the year round: a solitary goldeneye, black and white with the faintest hint of red in the gold of the male’s eye and the rusty feathers of the female’s head, a red replicated in the copper shimmer atop the waters, mingled with yellowing shafts of light.
When the river is well, the birds come: goldeneyes, snow geese, a rare sandhill crane, the bald eagle. Because we are mostly homebound, we cannot know which ones have appeared in recent days, but we do know that there will be more this year than last, because this enforced slowing of the frenetic human pace has led to a healthier earth.
It’s another bead of water along the sacred hoop, a hoop that here, more resembles a wheel, with spokes radiating outward across the land: life, from the sacred lake to the great river, and all the points in between.
~ 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.
