San Geronimo’s Eve.
In an ordinary year, the church would be readying itself for this evening’s vespers, in preparation for tomorrow’s feast. The church still casts its shadows in the clear autumn light of this day, but there will be no public service.
There will be no public feast tomorrow, either. The pandemic has forced closures that once would have been unthinkable, that even now are without precedent in living or ancestral memory.
As we have always assumed, there will still be a feast; as I have qualified all along, the key word is “public.” The Pueblo’s usual practice is open its doors to the outside world both for evening vespers and for the feast the following day, with food and song and drum and dance, but this year’s celebration is limited to Pueblo members, and all pandemic restrictions and safety measures will be strictly maintained.
It will, I think, be a good thing.
And after yesterday’s clouds, today has dawned clear and bright, exactly as one would expect on this day. It’s cold, yes, far colder than the norm — by mid-morning, still only forty-one degrees. But most (though not all) of the smoke haze is gone, the skies are clear and blue, and a golden light has set the aspen lines aflame upon the ridgelines.
That change in foliage is early this year, too, a combined product of the drought and the early freeze a few weeks ago . . . but at least there is perceptible process of change. Too often in recent years, the trees have gone early from green to brown, no fire in between, but this year, we are getting to see all the shades of fall: gold and amber, copper and crimson, scarlet and bronze.
This morning, the rising sun lights El Salto’s craggy face and the golden fire on the slopes before and behind even as those same rays cast long shadows across the land at the mountains’ feet. By late afternoon, as the village makes ready for its private observation of the traditional vespers service, the direction will be different, the angles sharper yet, the glow even more intense. As the sun begins to set behind the old church, it will send the shadows of the crenellated towers to fall against the courtyard gate in stark relief, its stepped pattern echoing the same pattern that edges the aspen leaves, now crisp and going gold as the sun itself.
This is the time when this land is at its most magical, a few short weeks of otherworldly beauty granted as a last gift before winter. It’s a time that, despite its name, today’s featured work embodies, and in a way, its elemental opposite, as well: the flowering of the sun, shadows leafing in the light. From its description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
The Flowering of the Sun Ring
The high desert thrives beneath the flowering of the sun. Wings brings together its shapes and shades and elemental spirits with this ring formed of an elegantly floral band set with an extraordinary matching stone. The wide band is crafted of sterling silver pattern wire of a heavy and substantial gauge, the Art Nouveau-like pattern of poppies dancing from slender stalks standing out in sharply-textured relief. The focal cabochon is set atop an extended bezel backing that traces its own round outlines, creating a lightly layered effect. But the stone is the true jewel, a phenomenal round tiger’s eye specimen so chatoyant as to be utterly without banding, the golden shades’ flowing edges reminiscent of the petals on the poppies that line the band’s surface, and every bit as sensual: a large, fluttering petal of pure sunlight opening to stretch in the wind across a darkened sky. The band is 5/16″ across; the setting is 1/2″ across; the tiger’s eye cabochon is 3/8″ across (dimensions approximate). Sizeable. Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; tiger’s eye
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The pattern on the ring’s band certainly evokes the notion of flowers and petals, but at this elevation, there are wildflowers that bloom in autumn, and flowering and fruiting vines, too. We have one vine that grows in two or three different places that bears beautiful purple berries in fall, a perfect contrast to the leaves gone deepest scarlet now. But it is the stone that presents the greatest natural motif, a chatoyance that evokes, on the one hand, fluttering petals . . . but that could just as easily embody the curling amber leaves of the aspens now.
Most of our aspens are still green, only the tops and western edges having begun to fade. There are patches of gold here and there among them, true, and there are branches and the better part of one entire tree that never leafed at all. It is the smaller, young clones that are turning at the moment, green near the base still, but tops yellowing and, in some cases, already edged with metallic bronze.
And those leaves are already beginning to fall. The grass, still largely green if significantly paler now, is dotted with the narrow fronds and crenellated peaks and hearts of willow and aspen leaves gone thoroughly gold. Every rising wind catches a few more and casts them down to line the shadows that scribe the land now. And so it was a surprise, three days ago, to see a small brown-edged golden aspen leaf spiraling past, only to realize that it was no leaf at all, but a new butterfly, one we have not seen her before. It fluttered around me for a moment, then traced a spiraling trajectory southward, and I have not yet been able to identify what it was.
But it was one of those magical autumn moments of this place: a tiny temporary gift, just long enough to catch a glimpse and no more. In a year when dangers loom low and forbidding, it was a gift of light and of lightness too, a reminder that while our world going forward will be different, it will still be beautiful.
That is, of course, one of the inherent lessons of autumn itself, one the world seems to need to relearn every year. Humankind’s tendency is to look backward, to a faulty memory of good old days that mostly never were, to see in the shadows the embodiment of the past looming over the present and keeping it in the dark.
On these days, our small world here shows us the falsity, and the folly too, of such misunderstanding. In terms of pure elemental beauty, the aspens only come into their own at this season, when they turn their cloaks to all the shades of the sun . . . only for weeks, sometimes even days, before what the world also misconceives as “dying.” It’s no death, only dormancy: a well-earned and much-needed rest through the cold months before opening oneself to the world again.
The same is true of light and shadow now. We fear shadow as we fear dark, but it’s an atavistic response. Indeed, the shadows now are our guides, inscribing the earth so that the light is clear and bright between. The shadows are not a memory of a past we shall never be able to meet, looming over our lives and blotting out the sun; they look forward, pointing the way of our own path.
In the face of this most terrible year, the people have found their path; the village, too. They will mark their feast as always, in the illuminating glow of autumn. And the shadows will cast their lines across the land, not closing it off but rather allowing it to open to this last golden dance before the snow flies: shadows leafing in the light, a land lit by all the shades of the sun.
~ 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.
