As was the case yesterday, today’s skies have filled with clouds, but there is not a drop of water of any sort in sight.
Here at Red Willow, these early days of June are typically when our wildflowers bloom, but there are precious few in evidence now. The lack of rain, to say nothing of anything remotely resembling irrigation, has seen to that. I mentioned yesterday that the fields were yellowing rapidly; what I omitted was the concurrent yellowing of the grass closer to the house. This is the season when the spirits of land and sky should be hard at work on their art, painting the earth with petals — but so far, we have yet to see much in the way of pigment, or even brush.
One of my favorite parts of the first two weeks of June here has always been the emergence of Indian paintbrush, an indigenous [and Indigenous] plant that flowers all across this land mass, in a variety of shades and used for a wide array of purposes, ranging from art to medicine. In the lands of my home, it’s most often white, occasionally yellow or pale pinkish-coral. Here, the fire shades predominate, with a little pink, more red, and most common of all the flame-orange coral shades shown in the image above.
By now, we should have a at least a few by the roadside, but here, at least, there are none to be found.
Wings shot the photo above digitally twelve years ago almost to the day. I can fix the date with such assurance because I was not here; I had had to be a four-hour drive away for several months at that point, helping an ill relative. And knowing that I would miss the flowering of some of my favorite medicine, Wings e-mailed me the photos so that I could share in their emergence, even from two hundred miles away.
My own people have a particular name for such flowers, one that I will not reproduce here. The colloquial name is more than enough: It fits perfectly for a plant whose petals do indeed rise in a brush-like arrangement, in bright summer shades that many of our peoples do indeed use as paint. But what image and name alike call to mind for me is not the drying and grinding and mixing of pigments, but rather, of the Earth herself choosing to paint her summer shawl in such vibrant animated and animating shapes and shades. These delicate-looking petals, so slender and elegant, evoke the art (and the spirit) of traditional dance, too.
The first of today’s two featured works of wearable art embodies this beautiful flame-petaled medicine — in style and substance, yes, but also in its very name. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Indian Paintbrush Cuff Bracelet
The first soft weeks of summer are when the red medicine flowers: Indian paintbrush, the crimson petals of desert and prairie. In a week when they are in full flower, Wings honors their color and medicine, the water and light that calls them from the earth, with this heavy silver cuff set with fiery coral. The band is nine-gauge sterling silver, slender yet solid and substantial, its entire surface chased with deep, heavy, graceful freehand stampwork. Down the center, two rows of curving lines arc in and out like the path of the Great River, the silver between as clear and luminous as the Río’s surface. From either edge up to each flowing line, the band is texturized with deep single stamps, scores of strikes of the jeweler’s hammer rippling its surface. Between each break in the water’s path, paired flowers rise from either edge, stems curving and petals dancing in the light. Across the top three round, highly-domed, bezel-set, richly textured cabochons of natural sponge coral evoke all the shades of the flowers that serve as one of our most ancient Indigenous medicines. At either end of the band, paired wildflowers dance in the embrace of deeply textured earth. The band is 6″ long by 3/8″ across; the coral cabochons are each 1/4″ across (dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; sponge coral
$1,500 + shipping, handing, and insurance
The water lines reproduced here remind me this day that the weather “experts” are nonetheless forecasting a change for next week, predicting rains in the actual monsoonal pattern that more typically attends this season. And that, in turn, ignites hope for the birth, or rather, the emergence, of these fiery petals after all.
For now, though, we have precious few flowers anywhere. The lilacs are already gone, fallen victim early to late-season cold. Even the alpine dandelions have left us nothing but their puffballs now.
This second image, also shot digitally, dates back only two short years — again, almost to the very day. Wings caught this, along with a few others, in early June of 2020, in those first deadly months of the pandemic, when he was up in the backcountry. It’s not unusual for the dandelions to have blown petals and color alike by this point in the season, but we typically have a few stray golden medallions here and there.
But not then, and not this year.
What we did have, aside from the delicate mandala-like symmetry of the fragile puffballs, were the small white blossoms shown out of focus in the background. We have them now, too: the blossoms of a particularly tough form of bindweed, one of the few plants seemingly able to survive any level of drought here . . . and capable of siphoning off any available resources from more necessary plants by the simple expedient of choking it out of them. The bindweed flowers are quite beautiful, actually — shades of pale pink that turn white with maturity, set at the center with tiny bits of gold.
But their survival too often means the lack thereof for that which is more vulnerable, and far more necessary to the habitat’s health.
Still, they are among the first wild petals of the season, first showing themselves not long after the alpine dandelions begin to flower. Only then do the petals of the Indian paintbrush emerge, Indian blanket and Mexican hat following suit not long after. By month’s end, if we are fortunate enough to get real rain, we may have coneflower and cornflower beginning to bloom, as well, all the smaller prairie blossoms a lead-up to the fabulous stands of wild sunflower that adorn the landscape later in summer.
The early blossoms are manifest in a second featured work of wearable art —one of Wings’s newest works, a pair of earrings that, while not designed to match the cuff shown above, certainly possess a complementary spirit. From their description in the Earrings Gallery:
The First Wild Petals Earrings
In a volcanic land of lakes and rivers carved through mountains emerged from timeless seas, of formations built atop ancient shell mounds, the alpine prairie flowers bloom with the first wild petals of summer. With these earrings, Wings summons spirits older than time to dance with newborn blossoms in the fiery shades of genuine sponge coral and the silver of the light. Each geometric sterling silver drop is hand-rolled in a brash, looping floral pattern, equal parts Art Deco and Flower Power and all summer medicine, then saw-cut freehand into a spoked pattern that honors the four winds and the sacred directions. At the center of each, bezel-set and edged with twisted silver, sits a bold round cabochon of sponge coral in soft rich shades of flame-red stippled with hi ts of orange and bronze and plenty of natural texture across the surface. Sterling silver jump rings link them to sterling silver earring wires. Earrings hang 2-3/8″ long, excluding wires, by 1-3/4″ across at the widest point; cabochons are 9/16″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; sponge coral
$625 + shipping, handling, and insurance
These earrings are wrought in vintage style, cut and milled by hand in an even more ancient shape designed to honor the sacred directions — and, of course, the winds that carry seed and pollen alike across these high alpine prairies, the better to dress them in their bright regalia of summer. Despite their size, they are not as heavy as one might expect; the silver is lightweight enough to permit such wear, without being too flexible to hold their shape.
And if the color of the natural sponge coral cabochons looks like Indian paintbrush and their texture like that mandalas of the puffballs, the shape of the floral millwork is all cactus blossom now.
Wings shot this image of a prickly pear in full early and radiant flower on the same day as that of the Indian paintbrush shown at the outset. We have scattered stands of their kind throughout our distant fields, as well as along the roadside: most pink and purple, a few white, even fewer shades of yellow . . . and once in a great while, the great gift of this sunlit scarlet, like faceted rubies flashing in the light. their centers, too, are brightest gold, and their spines are every bit as sharp as they appear.
It’s one of the truths of the natural world that something capable of inflicting such great pain upon the body is also equally capable of presenting the spirit with such otherworldly beauty.
I have not been very far out into the fields this season; the wind and the dust (and, of course, the pall of smoke from nearby wildfires) have made them an unwelcoming space most days lately. The drought and the damaging effects of the winds have also left the ground’s surface increasingly uneven and risky for walking. But at some point, I need to put my jeans and Ropers on again and venture out into those corners of the land to see what has managed to survive, even thrive, in this twelve-hundred-year drought.
After all, when it comes to painting the earth with petals now, the work of these spiky artists may be all we have left.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
