We had to go out of town this morning — not far, just some small distance north, yet enough for a slightly higher, colder elevation. Up there, more snow was still visible on the lower slopes, with sizeable patches scattered throughout the pines that line the highway. It was sunny when we left, warming and almost blindingly bright, but before it was time to head home, dark clouds had already begun to amass overhead, dimming the icy light with the promise of winter’s return.
The change in the weather is here in time and season; the forecast is for rain tomorrow, more on Friday, and snow by Saturday, a last dance for winter before the calendar, at least, shunts it aside for spring.
Of course, it’s never so simple, not so black and white. Here at Red Willow, the land lives by nuance as much as by arbitrary extremes, a caprice as capable of subtlety as of a brazen flamboyance. Winter’s end is a time of wild swings in temperature, of a dance of brilliant sun and sudden storms, but the trend toward spring drives the passage of our days: snow and ice succeeded now by melt and crack, pool and flow, and a steady warming light.
The image above was, if memory serves, captured at just such a season — some twelve or fourteen years ago, when entire winters here were mostly white. It was one of those days when the underlying chill loses its edge to a sun warm and near enough to cast twinned trees across its surface and to turn ice crystals to water.
All of today’s featured photos were taken from close but distinct vantage points at the edge of our pond, facing westward: shadows on a still-deep snow; the first appearance of the water through receding ice; banks of dormant wild sunflowers finding their reflection beneath a cloudy sky; and their sister flowers silhouetted in the glow of sunset and gathering storm. The gemstone bead jewelry pieces featured here today are much newer: dating back only a scant two weeks exactly, they are a coordinating and complementary, if not perfectly matched, informal set, holding the most recent place in each of Wings’s three newest signature series: The Standing Stones Collection of earrings; The Coiled Power Collections of bracelets (plural because their entries have been many and varied, some clearly related in discrete subseries); and The Beaded Hoop Collection of necklaces. We visit each with an internal logic that flows with the order of the photos, from winter to spring and sun to newest storm. To that end, we begin with the earrings, wrought loosely in the shades of the image above. From their description in the relevant section of the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
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
The colors and luminescence of the earrings are replicated in the image below, one of the same willow taken from a slightly different vantage point on a subsequent day — cloudier skies and less visible sun, but the same blues and greens and golds and grays, all shimmering, all reflected in a subtler light.
By the time this was taken, the snow was gone, at least from the pond’s surface. So, too, was the ice, save for bits fractured but yet unmelted around the edges, accumulated pockets of cold gathered around leaves and grasses, the primary sheet long since cracked and parted to reveal the willow’s reflection in the light.
At that point, the waters were mostly still — unusual in this season, when the winds typically reach gale force by afternoon on a daily basis. It’s part of why spring here is so cold; the ambient air temperature is reduced drastically by a wind chill often bitter, always dusty. But at this moment, the pond was filled with warming waters, a beneficiary of warmer winds that cast only the faintest ripple across their surface, permitting a clear view of blue sky and willow branch.
Our second work, the coil bracelet, captures the shades and shapes of wind and water on the threshold of spring. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery:
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
This piece is a vortex of storm and sunlight: the purples and blues and grays of the gale in a whirling dance with the gold-red fire of a strengthening sun.
The next two images were taken a short time apart from two separate vantage points along the east bank of the pond. In late summer, the banks and the berm beyond are aglow with the golden light of wild sunflowers, the small unhybridized kind indigenous to this land and so much more of this continent. They mostly flower in August and September, and throughout the fall, the late pollinators make use of their drying brown heads at the center of equally dried petals, gathering seeds and spreading them far and wide. By autumn’s end, all that remains are the stalks, spindly and yet somehow graceful, frozen in their final twist toward the last of the fall light.
On that particular day at winter’s end, the clouds were much in evidence again, pale skies overhead and gathered banks banding the horizon. It’s unlikely that the latter amounted to much here; spring rains are a relatively new occurrence, and such as we had then never arrived with the night.
All that has changed in the last couple of years. Even now, at this very moment, the bright gold and blue shades of this morning’s sunny skies have ceded territory to a storm early by any measure: predicted for tomorrow, yet the rain arrived a few minutes ago, and there is snow falling on the peaks as I write. And despite the lack of visible sun, the stormlight seems somehow to have intensified the shades of the season, the greening earth more starkly apparent, the gold of the weeping willows glowing against the violet of the thunderhead skies. Meanwhile, a momentary clearing to the west is making space for the flames of sunset, now only a few hours off.
In other words, our world at this moment is rendered in the shades of tour third featured work, a necklace cascading with color and fire. From its description in the relevant section of the Necklaces Gallery:
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
There is no red in the western sky yet, only a hazy golden glow. That will change before twilight, when the clouds that have gained the horizon don robes of amber and coral, copper and scarlet, a fiery herald of the stormy weather yet to come.
These images, of course, are the embodiment of another marker of climate change: There is no water in the pond, and there has been almost none for two years now. What once naturally accrued to this small space, flowing high and hard and fast down a ditching system as ancient as this place itself, has dried to less than a trickle in the deepening drought. It is only by the grace of the spirits and the snows that we have any hope of water for the year to come, and the gifts of these smaller storms besides. And so while the winds are more usual, we welcome the rains in what we might once have called the off-season; spring showers now are a gift beyond price.
And spring has arrived here, two days ago now, on the wings of Meadowlark and the notes of her distinctive song. In this place, it is she, not a paper calendar from half a millennium ago and half a world away, that heralds the season’s first appearance. Now, clouds and rain notwithstanding, the air is alive with the contrapuntal clash of birdsong, each species seeming ready to outdo the next in volume and complexity. The goldfinches remain, a migratory spring woodpecker seems ready to nest, raptors large and small are on the hunt. Twice in three days I have seen small numbers of ducks and geese flying northward, in search of readier waters in the mountains, for here, our streams are still mostly bone-dry.
And now, as quickly as it came, the storm is dissipating for the moment: gray skies backlit by a pale but strengthening light, an earth barely dampened readying itself for heavier weather over the remainder of the week.The snow has melted almost entirely now, no ice left to crack. We have as yet no water to pool, but we hold out hope for the mountain flow. And outside the window of pair of young flickers balance precariously on the thinnest aspen branches, eyeing the feeder and the suet, bright orange feathers glowing in a steady warming light.
~ 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.
