The first official day of fall (as of 7:31 AM local time), and for the most part, our skies have seemingly begun to return to summer. Oh, the pall of smoke is in no way gone, but it clings to the horizon on most sides; only the atmosphere to the south now retains its dirty white veil. Overhead, the skies are shades of turquoise and cornflower, and monsoonal puffs of white climb the far side of the peaks to the east.
Perhaps Red Willow will see a slight return to whatever passes for normalcy now.
Seasonal change, of course, has been here for weeks already, months, even. The robes of the willows and cottonwoods and elms have been patched with gold since July; those patches are growing now, as leaves and green alike grow more threadbare by the day. By late August, the chamisa had flowered into a riot of yellow color to rival that of the wild sunflowers — stalks and stems still green, but the fuzzy tips of their globe-like shapes already molten gold against cobalt skies. Wings caught the image above on his phone in the waning days of summer last year, unretouched, unfiltered, unedited, capturing shades so brilliant and intense that the contrast seemingly turns simple gray stones to silver.
This is autumn at its best, even if it arrived far too early: a perfect, knife-edge clarity of air and a world washed in shades of color that are positively electric, almost too intense for human sight. And in this place, fall is typically still a time of Mother Earth’s flowering, dessert blooms and wild prairie blossoms and petals of sky to channel the light.
In other words, it’s the perfect season for one of Wings’s newest works, the only silverwork item featured today. From its description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
Petals of Sky Ring
The land flowers in the embrace of petals of sky. Wings sets a very old and delicate Skystone in a perfect clear blue with into a the petals of a scalloped bezel, atop the flowering vine of a sterling silver band. This stone, old, natural, and from his private collection, was labeled Dry Creek turquoise, and while it’s vanishingly rare to find material from that mine that is not matrix-webbed ice blue, there is some of the old stone that had more color. This long oval cabochon, flat and glossy, is a near-flawless sky blue slightly darker than the shade of a robin’s egg, traced with impossibly fine matrix lines in a pale golden-brown shade. It’s set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed with twisted silver, then placed atop and band of heavy-gauge sterling silver pattern wire, half-round in shape with a flowing vine pattern standing out in sharp relief, either end cut and split and stretched outward, freehand, to form an open embrace of a setting shaped like an Eye of Spirit. [The band’s detail work makes it unsizeable; a new band can be created in a different size for a $100 fee.] Ring is size 6; band is 1/4″ across; setting is 7/8″ long by 9/16″ across; cabochon is 5/8″ long by 3/8″ across (all dimensions approximate). Other views, including the underside of the setting and the open embrace of the band, shown below.
Sterling silver; very old natural American turquoise (labeled old Dry Creek)
$625 + shipping, handling, and insurance
[Note: Not resizeable; a new band can be created in any size for a $100 fee]
The band on this ring opens like a flower itself, each strand arcing outward to embrace stone and bezel. The stone, though? It’s all seasonal skies, the turquoise shades of dawn and dusk, paler but still rich, and webbed and fractured with filaments of golden light.
And it’s perfect for this threshold moment. It’s a season of summer petals, autumn skies, air clear and sharp and filled with promise.
Today, of course, the clouds have other ideas. Apparently reluctant to bid farewell to summer yet, they have returned in monsoon-season proportions, one large and roiling bank of thunderheads looming high over the eastern peaks, another solid wall of slate blue to the northwest, seemingly awaiting the command to rain.
It would not be out of place. Just yesterday, a squall fountained up above El Salto and the Spoonbowl, delivering a faint dusting of mid-afternoon snow to their ridgelines. Here in this place, especially now, each season seems disinclined to go it entirely alone, preferring instead to welcome its siblings and opposites for the occasional visit.
And that, too, is the essence and spirit of autumn here: a mercury that swings wildly between unseasonably hot and sub-freezing cold, a webwork of clouds trading space with hard blue skies, winds with a scalpel’s edge beneath a sun that still coaxes the petals into flower, a whirlwind melding of molten color and light.
Now, the last of the wild sunflowers still track their father’s face; the chamisa blooms bright gold between expanses of jade and turquoise. The aspen lines on the mountain slopes went gold yesterday, weeks early, and from their we shall track the rapid descent to winter.
But for this day, despite the chill edge to the wind, despite the thunderheads coalescing on either side, we have the luxury, the comfort, the beauty, the gift — of summer petals, autumn skies, and a world glowing in the light.
~ 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.
