There is a little good news today on the wildfire front: 12% containment on the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire Complex, 18% on the Cook’s Peak Fire, and 40% on the 25,000-acre Mitchell Fire to the east. Small mercies, but we’ll take them.
Despite the smoke haze everywhere, it’s been a calmer morning, and that, too, is welcome. Now, though, with the arrival of the sun at its highest point of the day, the winds have returned, and progress will be that much harder come by. Meanwhile, the Cerro Pelado Fire over at Jemez remains at zero percent containment, and there are smaller blazes all over the state, to say nothing of those in Colorado, Arizona, and California that are sending their smoke our way.
Here at Red Willow, it seems as though the world is held in abeyance, the earth’s very breath held with it. Part of it is defensive, of course, proof against the smog of ash and dust and particulate matter that is enveloping the valley now. Part of it is the nature of this season even in good times, so-called “ordinary times”; it is, after all, an entirely unsettled space in which summer and winter contend. Their compromise is spring, but it’s an uneasy space in which no one seems happy with result, not climate and weather or season and time, not the winds or the directions or the elements that keep this world alive.
This is a land whose spirit has always been prone to extremes, but it’s always been one of medicine, too: places and spaces of healing for the Earth, and for her children. Even those are being stretched beyond their boundaries now, warped by the catastrophic effects colonialism continues to inflict upon the planet. And so we find ourselves in a gap of sorts: not a vacuum, for it is well animated, but an uncomfortable and indecisive holding pattern that cannot let go of winter even as it attracts the wildfire worst of summer, as spring slogs inexorably onward.
Today’s featured images place us squarely in this gap now, this interstice, this space between — lacking its own image, and so reckoning by what has come and gone and what we hope still lies ahead. They are linked by a single work of wearable art, one possessed of its own gaps and spaces, and yet full and flowering in spite, or perhaps because, of it.
Wings shot both photos digitally on separate spring days two years ago — when, as it happens, our world here had still begun to flower and leaf earlier and more steadily than it does now. The one above shows Pueblo Peak and the surrounding ridges and slopes from a slightly different angle than those found here on our own land. He shot this one from backcountry tribal lands between here and the village, the snow-blanketed caps seen through a greening fringe of buds upon the trees.
For the middle of March, that seems extraordinary now.
Oh, it’s true that the trees in town began budding and leafing weeks ago, but here, our elevation is enough higher to take a few extra weeks, and this year they seem particularly dilatory. The birds seem to have anticipated it, too: Our first chokecherry bird of the season arrived only yesterday, more than a month later than normal, accompanied by the first visit of the yellow-headed blackbird on his migratory journey. And on the opposite end of the scale, the first hummingbird arrived a few days ago, much more than a month early. We have put out a feeder for it; its tiny body will need fuel to survive these cold winds. By contrast, our one true marker of spring has not appeared at all: We have had not a single meadowlark to sing the land awake and to rest this season.
It seems an unsettling mix of impending doom and insistent hope.
If ever there were a place for the latter to defeat the former, this is it.
Today’s featured work of wearable art both inhabits and embodies just such spaces, and it, too is possessed of a transcendent spirit. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Earth, Flowering In the Light Cuff Bracelet
A healthy Earth, flowering in the light, creates a world in harmony for us all. Wings honors both spirit and goal with this cuff bracelet, sterling silver in full flower. The band is scored freehand into seven separate spaces, a sacred number that in some traditions is the number of the directions, the clans, and the spirits. The inner spaces are boldly oxidized, then lightly polished and left smooth, with wing-like ajouré excisions flowing gracefully down either side. The two outer spaces remain whole, and are hand-texturized by hundreds of strikes of a tiny jeweler’s hammer, dotted earth embracing air and water. At the center of the band, an extraordinarily low-profile tube is soldered into place to elevate the setting slightly above the band’s surface. The setting itself is formed from a traditional concha wrought in Wings’s signature style, a blossom pattern cut freehand with scalloped edges that turn hand-scored rays of light into the petals of a flower. At the end of each “ray,” fitted into each scalloped edge, rests a hand-stamped sunrise symbol, each edge connecting it to the next by a single hand-stamped hoop. The concha is domed slightly, repoussé-fashion, then set at the center with a simple, elegant low-profile bezel holding a beautifully banded malachite cabochon in shades of earthy, fertile emerald green. The band is 5″ long and 1″ across; ajouré designs at either end are 1.5″ long and begin 3/4″ across at the widest point, narrowing to 1/8″ at the end; concha setting is 1.75″ across; cabochon is 3/8″ across (dimensions approximate). Side view shown below. [Note: This cuff is designed for a narrow wrist.]
Sterling silver; malachite
$1,025 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This work began life as a wholly different design, one that, it turned out, would not fit its wearer, and so Wings took it apart to create a new band for it, turning this one to new purpose. At the time, he had also created a pair of flowering concha earrings set with malachite that turned out to be so popular that he received multiple orders for the single pair, plus one from a friend for a larger bolo in the same style. He set about making the earrings, with unique variations to each, of course, then turned his attention to the bolo . . . and rejected his first effort as insufficiently large and bold.
That was the focal of this piece.
But it was a fully formed focal, cut and stamped freehand in the same flowering pattern, petals hand-scored and -scalloped, bezel already fashioned and awaiting the stone he had planned to use in it.
And so was the cuff.
But the cuff, at that point, was whole: a solid band of silver of a substantial gauge, with six lines cored freehand down its entirely length to create seven rows, the outer ones texturized by hand to the tune of scores, perhaps hundreds of tiny divot-end stamps, the five central ones left polished smooth. A beautiful design, unquestionably . . . and one that was too heavy for the delicacy of the flower blossoming atop it.
And so he set about lightening the band, cutting open space into each side in matching arches reminiscent of Art Deco’s elegant geometry. The effect was immediate, lightening the whole piece in both physical weight and a more psychic, aesthetic, even spiritual sense — allowing the work to blossom like an actual spring flower, in need of air and light as much as soil and water.
A bit, in fact, like the whole of the land itself.
This image is another one from tribal lands, taken nearly two months to the day after the one at the top of this post. It’s a panoramic shot from the highway that leads in to the Pueblo, one that has been closed for more than two years now to outsiders because of the deadly risk posed by a pandemic that colonial governments refuse to check.
The day that Wings shot this photo was classic May here: sunny and bright, with clear air and bright blue skies studded with a smattering of puffy white clouds, not enough to produce rain but enough to adorn an otherwise unbroken blue, with a by-then-rapidly greening earth spread out beneath like a blanket. You can see the trees to the right, already in full leaf, but the color of the leaves still that young green, not yet fully matured into the emerald robes of summer.
It’s the kind of day when everything seems possible: when hope is fully alive and the world filled with promise, in a land full of places and spaces of healing.
We have not had much of that this year. Given the catastrophe unfolding around us, it will be a while yet before we do. But it’s time for the work even now, of prevention, and of restoration. Because once the fires are spent, and the winds with them, we’ll be moving from this gap in seasons into full summer — and with a little luck, the rainy season that will allow the healing to begin.
~ 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.
