Moments ago, a ninety-degree sun beat down upon us mercilessly, air so oppressively heavy that even the hummingbirds had retired from view.
Now, the thunderheads that have been building on all sides all day long have suddenly gained the sun, veiling it in shades of iron and violet. The wind has not yet risen, and yet the mercury has dropped appreciably, a new cool in the air driven by the rains that are now not far off, the clouds bearing them already moving inexorably overhead.
The forecast rain is nearly here . . . and in its advance, the hummingbirds and butterflies have returned, the better to stock up before the storm hits.
Here at Red Willow, such are the patterns of the beings who belong to summer, wingéd messengers and personifiers of rain and crops alike: attuned to the minute changes in the elemental forces that drive our world around on its axis and keep it firmly in its orbit in the sky. They are delicate beings, yes, often associated with the Feminine, but like women everywhere, they are strong and courageous, too, unbothered by the prospect of a little heavy weather and hard at work on the tasks assigned to them by more powerful forces. Like the warmth, and like the rain, the season’s gifts are delivered by these spirits in brave and fragile flight.
Still, some are rare, at least in number: The monarchs come immediately to mind, given the risk to their numbers worldwide. At the moment, I have been able to spot only one, and perhaps one viceroy, its smaller and more modest imitator. I’m waiting to see whether our lonely royal being, the one with wings like the sun, acquires a mate before the time to migrate arrives.
Perhaps in its honor, Wings created his own small version of wings like the sun, a pair of earrings wrought in flaring Florentine silver, around a fiery amber heart. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Chrysalis Sun Earrings
Dawn takes flight on silver wings, bearing the orb of a chrysalis sun. Wings summons the sun and the transformative spirit of the day with these butterfly earrings, newly emerged from the cocoon of night. Each drop drifts gently from side to side, its flared top and bottom adance in sharp relief. At the center of the wings sits a tiny amber orb, each cabochon as timeless as the light and glowing with its own cosmic fire, each set in the cool, secure embrace of a plain, low-profile bezel. Earrings hang 1-3/8″ long by 1″ across at the widest point; iolite cabochons are 3/16″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; amber
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love these not only for their substance, but for their spirit, as well. The symbolism of a new day, a new sun, emergent from its own cocoon of night, speaks to me at a level of ancestral memory. Among our own peoples, origin stories of emergence, not only from the dark but from a void of some sort, or from some oppressive cover, are common to numerous traditions. They bespeak gifts that seem accidental, even arbitrary, yet demonstrate planning and purpose and the love of the spirits. And the notion of each new dawn as a means beginning anew, transformed and transcendent, is itself a powerful message of hope in dark days.
But sun and fire and transformative power belong not only to the royalty of the earth. Those of us whose lives and days can only be called ordinary, even humble, hold within our very selves the capacity for transcendence.
The painted lady is, to me, a perfect illustration of such power and possibility. They, too, are common here — perhaps more so this year than others, given their outsized numbers in places as widely spaced as California and the United Kingdom. But this image was captured three years ago, late in the season, at a time when most butterflies would ordinarily have long since vanished.
And this one stopped on the concrete, and stayed, unbothered and unafraid: to sun herself and soak in the warmth on an autumn day, but perhaps also simply to greet another fellow being. And as bright and beautiful as the monarchs are, this smaller spirit, with subtle gradations of color on her more modestly-patterned wings, seemed to glow. It was a morning, in October, if memory serves, and her wings seemed to have captured the light on the early sun, internalized it, and set it radiating outward to the world by new means.
Brave and fragile spirits, indeed.
It brings to mind another work built in part around a flaming amber sun, one that assumes the form and shape of all the power of the Feminine, sacred and mundane. From its description in the Pins Gallery here on the site:
A Radiant Medicine Warrior Woman Pin
The sun lights the earth with a radiant medicine. The latest entry in Wings’s signature Warrior Woman series, created in memory of his mother and to honor the courage, strength, and power of women, evokes the powers of the elements and the spirits of earth medicine. This feminine being holds the sun itself in her right hand, a radiant orb of brilliant flame-colored amber; in her left hand, the moon is adance with images of medicine in the form of Bear’s own prints. Eyes of Spirit accent her cuffs, a motif replicated in the second fiery sun that illuminates the front of her traditional dress. Above her heart rests a thundercloud, delivering cooling rains, while that water spirit, Serpent, coils over her right shoulder in the very embodiment of flowering abundance. The pin stands 2.75″ high by 2 inches across at the widest point; the cabochon is 3/16″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; amber
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This warrior is the pure fire of the sun. She reminds me of another fierce spirit of the season, and one of the smallest of its kind: the rufous hummingbird.
I have seen complaints from elsewhere in the county that the rufouses have not returned this year, but that’s untrue. Oh, perhaps they have not appeared at specific feeders or yards or even neighborhoods, but out here beyond so-called “civilization?” The whole extended clan is here.
Of course, they know that in this place, they are safe: no predators save those they engage anywhere and everywhere; plenty of food and water and shelter for their young.
In short, a sanctuary.
And so they come, these tiny fierce messengers of powers and forces beyond our comprehension, sharing with us the radiance of a reflected sun upon their wings of flame.
They were, perhaps, subject and object, model and muse, of and for another of today’s featured works, one that likewise bears the sun on its wings. From its description, also in the Pins Gallery:
On Sunny Wings Hummingbird Pin
Summer departs and autumn arrives on sunny wings. The small fierce spirits of this threshold season infuse this work by Wings, a tiny silver hummingbird who carries the sun itself. The wingéd one is cut freehand out of sterling silver, with wings outstretched in full hover and dagger-like beak at the ready. A triangular point defines the beak; a single lengthy score line separates the wings. Sunrise symbols in two sizes delineate body and edge of wing feathers; the tailfeathers are formed by a flowing-water motif and edged with arrowhead points. Where wings join body, a single small round cabochon rests in a saw-toothed bezel: fiery orange amber, the color of the autumn sun in a place and space of magic, mystery, and medicine. Pin stands 1.5″ high by 2-1/8″ across at the widest point; amber cabochon is 3/16″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; amber
$625 + shipping, handling, and insurance
But these tiny beings of pure flame are not the only ones of their kind to join us this season.
There are others, too, who have elected to make their summer homes with us this year: the ruby-throat, the black-chin, the broad-tail. The last wears its own feathers of flame, invisible in this image but no less present for that, bright orange inner tailfeathers rimmed in black and tapered to knife points. They look like the tailfeathers, wrought in miniature, of their much larger cousins, the red-shafted flicker — also powerful spirit birds, often with their own messages from the spirits.
The hummingbird, like the flicker, is a medicine bird in many Indigenous traditions. They are not, of course, the only bearers of medicine (nor of messages either, for that matter). Some such spirits are those of other seasons, but their symbols are potent year-round. One such is Bear, whose tracks trace the surface of the moon in the next of today’s featured works, a melding of feminine power with healing power. From its description in the Pins Gallery:
A Flowering Grace Warrior Woman Pin
In spring, the world dances with a flowering grace, an earth newly healing in harmony with the light. Wings captures healing and harmony, grace of motion and flowing dance, in this latest entry in his signature Warrior Woman series, created in memory of his mother and to honor the courage, strength, and power of women. In this iteration, she sways gently with wind and light, her body turned ever so slightly in profile as she moves to the drumbeat of the earth’s own heart. Her heart is defined at the top of her body; beneath it, flowers bloom in a repeating pattern between the folds of her dress. In her right hand she holds a simulacrum of the sun, a small round peach moonstone glowing gently with the nascent dawn; in her left, the crescent moon bears the traditional symbols of healing, a bear’s paw repeated around its arc. Sterling silver pattern wire stamped with stylized, flowering Eye of Spirit designs, forms the spirit over her right shoulder, itself a symbol of spring-like prosperity and abundance. The pin stands 2.75″ high by 2 inches across at the widest point; the cabochon is 3/16″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; peach moonstone
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love this one for its grace, and for its subtle, almost earthy radiance. In that regard, it’s a bit like those dancing spirits of the season, Dragonfly and Damselfly, embodying perhaps the most visible expression of strength and power to be found in physical fragility.
The damselflies are smaller, but no less beautiful for that. Like their larger counterparts, they can balance on the tiniest stalk, weightless, effortless, their bodies catching and holding and refracting the light. And while I tend, thanks to the colonial names, to think unconsciously of damselflies as female and dragonflies as male, the truth of the matter is that both species manifest in both sexes.
Still, today’s featured iteration of this small strong spirit has always seemed to me essentially, elementally feminine. From its description in the Earrings Gallery:
A Dance For the Dawn Earrings
The warmer winds bring Dragonfly, here to perform a dance for the dawn, wings ashimmer in the light. Wings captures the soft glow of a summer sunrise with these earrings embodying the small summer spirit of flight. Each dragonfly is formed of a length of slender but solid sterling silver triangle wire, meticulously hand-stamped down the length of its curving spine to create a body as reflective as that of its living counterpart, and as agile and motion-filled, too. The wings are cut freehand and milled in a lined pattern that evokes both summer rains and rays of light. At the top, each small spirit’s head is formed of a cabochon of beautifully gentle peach moonstone, their color as fragile as the first rays of dawn light. Each earring dances from sterling silver wires via a single silver jump ring. Earrings hang 2.5″ long (excluding wires) by 1.75″ across at the widest point; cabochons are 3/16″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; peach moonstone
$425 + shipping, handling, and insurance
In this place, we get multiple species of both beings. Of the dragonflies, the darners are bright, if fewer and farther between; the skimmers mostly spiral too fast for either human eye or camera lens to capture fully. But there is one exception, one manifest in brighter shades of the peach and silver above — crimson and copper, in a more deliberate, less skittish display.
It’s called the red rock skimmer, and its indigenous to this area (as well as many other regions). Whether by nature or by acquired learning, the red rock seems less afraid of a human presence, calmer, more ready to stop and sit and enjoy the rays of the sun. It draws its name both from its color and form the fact that is can so often be found sunning itself on rocks or ordinary dirt, as though drinking in the warmth and light are what will give it its fiery color.
To me, it’s perhaps one of the best examples of the wisdom of the natural world when it comes to questions of power. Colonial humanity, as an old friend, a warrior and elder, once told me, confuses “power” with “authority and control.” In our way, power is nothing of the kind; it transcends our puny understandings of such limits. Power is of spirit, and power simply is. And thus, there is no contradiction in the phenomenon of strength and delicacy, bravery and fragility, found bound up in the same body and being.
Vulnerability is not synonymous with weakness; aggression is not the same as strength.
This is a harsh land, one given to extremes of climate and weather and landscape, with much of the year given over to hard conditions. Summer, with its warm and gentle days punctuated by fierce storms, is the one brief moment given to us to remember that there is no conflict between being vulnerable and being strong.
And the message is delivered by those who share the land with us at this season: spirits in brave and fragile flight.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
