I am up this day before any proper dawn, a moon that has been on the wane now for more than a day still riding riding high and cold in the western sky. But what is still a clear expanse of darkest blue there has already turned silver in the east, and there is not so much a single cloud anywhere. The air is sharper than a scalpel’s edge, and if you dare to step outside, it has already cut bone-deep before your skin has time to feel a thing.
It won’t be long now before the light returns to our small world for, if quite a bit longer before the sun clears the ridgeline to show its face. The birds are already returning to the feeders, anxious to get on with the work of feeding. This day, sunrise and moonset will occur at near the same moment, as the world explodes once more with color.
It will not, of course, be the color to which we are accustomed here at Red Willow this time of year. That has not been the case for three or fours year now, as summer telescopes ever smaller in the drought. By “Summer,” I refer to the calendrical season, not the heat; we have had high heat extending far into autumn in recent years, interspersed with period of deep and bitter cold far earlier than what once was our norm. It has played havoc with much more than just the temperatures; now, our foliage begins to turn as early as June, and by November, when we might normally expect to see the spirit of the flames dancing across the landscape, the trees have already shed their robes for a skeletal winter’s sleep.
And so on this first day of December, the branches are as bare as the ground, bones stretching skyward as though in supplication to the spirit of they sky, hoping to induce the snows to fall.
Our maples, shown in today’s three featured images, were a gift from Wings some years back so that I would have something from my homelands to surround me. They were full red by September’s end, and bereft of all leaves by the middle of October. Wings captured these three images on September’s penultimate day, each shot with his cell phone: The one above is the older and larger of the two, a fire maple already grown tall and strong beneath a cobalt desert sky. In spring, its sweet sap drips from the branches; in fall, its leaves turn to scarlet flame, blood red and white bone weathering the elements, lifting the offering bundle of their leaves to the blue: praying for breath, offering fire.
It’s a process we re-enact each day with our own petitions to the spirits: kindling a fire, in the woodstove or in a small sprig of cedar, sending our prayers spiraling upward to as we seek to sustain a life of the body, and of the spirit. It’s a process made more difficult now, as colonial dangers encroach from all sides, adding their weight to the simpler burdens of winter. Today’s featured works of wearable art are part of the same collection, and share more than a family resemblance in shape and shade, both spirals of reds and blues like fire and sky. The first is the more intensely-hued of the two, one that embodies the elemental forces that teach us humility, at once sustaining us and forcing us to contend with their powers by seeking the aid of the spirits. From its description in The Coiled Power Collections section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Weathering the Elements Coil Bracelet
Little teaches us humility as effectively as extremes of weather and climate. With this spiraling spangled coil, Wings calls upon these powerful forces for aid in weathering the elements. Each end begins with tiny polished free-form nuggets, little more than chips of sky blue turquoise in earthy matrix, each separated from the brilliance of more valuable blue turquoise by the golden artifice of iron pyrite — fool’s gold, a gift of the spirits to keep us humble when greed threatens to overtake good sense. Beyond the blue of Skystone and rain comes the power of fire — first amber, representing the golden edges of the flame, then bright red Mediterranean coral nuggets, the fire itself, all flanking a center row of bold doughnut-shaped rondel beads carved from impossibly chatoyant red tiger’s eye, like the very heart of the sun. Beads are strung on memory wire, which expands and contracts to fit virtually any wrist. Another view shown below. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji.
Memory wire; red tiger’s eye; Mediterranean coral; amber;
blue turquoise; blue turquoise in matrix; iron pyrite
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The blues and reds of this work are echoed in the second of today’s featured images, one of the younger, smaller maple, its leaves ablaze in the midday light.
This tree, younger and still a bit more fragile, showed a broader range of fire shades in its turning leaves. Where its larger sibling moved from green to scarlet this year with astonishing rapidity, the leaves of this smaller spirit shifted first to amber, then coral, then copper, then crimson. They were pure scarlet when the first full hard freeze pulled them to the ground. It did not, in fact, take long this year for the spirits of winter to accept any of the gifts our small world presented, sending the trees early to their rest to prepare for another year of life.
The second of today’s featured works of wearable art is a jeweled manifestation of this latter process, one of offering something of value to the spirits, in supplication and in gratitude. From its description in the same section of the same gallery:
Offering Bundle Coil Bracelet
In our way, to give an offering is to show respect: acknowledgment and gratitude and honor to those from whom we seek assistance, whether people or spirits. In some of our cultures, even the artistic and cultural embodiment of animal and other spirits may hold an offering bundle, a collection of feathers or gemstones or shells intended to show respect for their power and gratitude for the possibility of sharing it. Wings pays tribute to the value of its role with this small spiral of shell and traditional jewels, all in the traditional colors of such gifts. Anchored at either end by dark translucent olivella-shell heishi, it flows into bright pale blue turquoise nuggets, freeform and substantial. The Skystones give way to round, highly-polished orbs of mother-of-pearl shell, centered by a bold expanse of freeform nuggets of natural Mediterranean coral, flame-red and as old as time. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji.
Memory wire; olivella-shell heishi; blue turquoise;
mother-of-pearl shell; Mediterranean coral
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s a work that likewise embodies our prayers and what we hope to receive in return: blood and life, breath and fire, from the forces of earth and sky, water and time.
It’s the hope of all living beings, and our relatives, the trees, show us the way each year.
This last image shows the same smaller maple tree from a different vantage point: lower sky a less fiery blue, leaves a lighter flame against the backdrop of the peaks. On that day at September’s end, the mountains were bare of all but tundra and the evergreens; now, the snow is only a dusting, but it is there, proof of prayers answered in real time.
When I sat down to write in the moments before dawn, not a single cloud marred the surface of a flawlessly clear sky. The expanse outside the window was a brilliant blue, as clear and near as dark as in the images above . . . and yet, a newly-altered forecast suggested that we may have a dusting of snow before this day is out.
And in these moments just before morning’s end, the clouds have suddenly begun to emerge, to coalesce, to shift from a soft and fragile white to something darker, more weighted with the possibility of snow.
It is our way, this praying for breath, offering up fire.
Perhaps the offerings have been well-received.
~ 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.
