We awakened this morning to a sunrise featuring a marked absence of visible sun but plenty of falling snow. Now, the world outside the window looks remarkably like the image above, save that the angle of the light is wrong. Wings captured it last year at day’s end, when the shadows fells from east to west, but aside from that detail, the eastern sky is already a similar shade of blue, and the band of clouds is present, too, albeit a little thinner now.
The forecast tells us it won’t last — indeed, we remain under an official storm warning until eleven o’clock tonight, and clouds are already amassing again in the distant west. More snow is predicted for tomorrow night, too. But for the moment, the sun shines, brilliant and intense, and the shadows are long and starkly-scribed upon the new half-foot of white.
The outside world tells us this is the season of love and hearts.
Our peoples have known this since long before any of the three alleged “saints” for whom Valentine’s Day is named were born . . . or before their religious tradition was born, either.
But in our world and ways, both “love” and “heart” are words with many meanings, and the romantic definition is, if not the very least of it, certainly the most superficial. In our traditions, both concepts go far deeper, or perhaps more accurately, are rooted far more deeply, in more complex connections than dominant-culture definitions of the day imply.
As the image above shows so clearly, life here at Red Willow in this season requires a great deal of heart: courage, strength, steadiness and persistence, a sense of appreciation and one of honor, too, all go far to making season and weather navigable and habitable in this place. The winds are harsh and the snows deep; the cold is bitter and cuts to the bone. And yet, its gifts are innumerable, and their value, incalculable.
For the snow that we were granted in the earlier hours of this day? That is nothing less than the gift of life itself — more, of life for the whole year to come. This new half-foot, by itself, is not enough to see us through, of course, but added and aggregated, piled up and accumulated? It becomes one more layer in the mountains’ annual snowpack, and one more contributions to the acre-feet of water that constitute the land’s runoff.
It’s the water that feeds the land, the crops, the animals, our bodies and our spirits too.
And sometimes, snow and light conspire to remind us of these truths, of the more elemental meanings of love and the broader purpose of hearts . . . as when the setting sun seizes upon a simple brand seated atop a wrought-iron gate and casts its shadow directly upon the snow-covered earth below. It’s light as art and earth as canvas and metal as medium too, drawing us the very picture of this greatest of gifts: love found in the shadows of well-forged hearts.
Speaking of well-forged hearts, and of love, too, today’s featured work, a pair of earrings, is a perfect manifestation of both. They’re also already spoken for, but they’re too perfectly aligned with the day’s imagery and themes top omit them now. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Braided Hearts Earrings
Love is found in braided hearts. Like sweetgrass, Wings weaves together graceful strands of silver in these vintage-style earrings, manifest as paired spirits entwined in passion and commitment. Each duet of hearts is cut entirely freehand using a tiny jeweler’s saw, edges filed smooth but lines left slightly irregular, symbolizing the uniqueness of each heart’s own identity. Each dancing drop is buffed to a medium-high polish and hangs suspended, via an organic hand-drilled tab, from sterling silver wires. Earrings are 1-5/8″ long by 1-1/4′ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver
$225 + shipping, handling, and insurance
SOLD
These hearts are forged of metal and talent, of creativity and love. But there are other hearts manifest at this season that braid together earth and light, shadow and dust.
This is the same shadow as the one on in the first image, from a different angle and on a different surface. Wings captured them only weeks apart, the first solidly in the snows of winter, the second during the drier days of spring. The only change in vantage point is that the former is caught with the gate fully open, the shadow cast upon the field beyond it to the east; this one, a yard or so to the west, with the gate closed and the shadow cast from southeast instead of due west.
And both, like the third image that separates them, became their own gifts: delivered via phone or by hand, the tangible embodiment of love itself.
It’s why I always insist that we should seek out what the shadows have to tell us, why we should never fear the storm or the dark. They all work in concert with the light, with life itself, and with love, too.
Because love is found in the center of the storm, and also in the shadows of well-forged hearts.
~ 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.
