Two days into what the outside world calls spring, and winter has returned with a vengeance. Oh, there’s no snow, either on the ground or falling fro the sky, but it’s a ferocious trickster that drives hard now from the northeast, dropping wind chills to something more suited to December than to the end of March.
And I daresay there will be no visit from Meadowlark today.
Still, logic dictates that this small indigenous spring spirit’s first appearance cannot be far off, no matter what chaos the winds have in store. The sun still rises, the earth still turns, and the sound of the song at the heart of the light is inevitable at this season, even if its arrival is unpredictable.
What is not unpredictable, of course, is the pattern the notes take, an instantly-recognizeable melody — nor, generally speaking, are the hours in which it is sung. The meadowlark’s song is a melody to bookend the days, a song of dawn and dusk: the clear shimmering notes of a dewdrop heart at sunrise, and a lullaby to send a tired orb to its rest at sunset. In between, it’s mostly silent, although once sung, we know that our land will rock in its embrace, for the spring bird’s pattern here is to arrive as part of a pair, and they take up positions on either side of our land to sing us awake and asleep in their own particular rhythm of call-and-response.
Until coming here, I don’t think I’d ever actually seen a meadowlark. Oh, I’d heard them for most of my life, but they are shy spirits, given to finding a perch at a remove from human habitation, or at least concealed from it, from which to call to their kind. It’s a wise move on their part in a place where colonial encroachment has overtaken nearly everything, and is hell-bent on seizing the rest, too. But here, they have the same sanctuary the other birds find, the elk and the rare bear and the occasional salamander or snake — even Coyote, provided he does not disturb the chickens.
Many years ago, Wings pointed them out to me so that I would know firsthand who produced such a beautiful collection of clear and bell-like notes. He captured their image in several photos over the years, then passed that task to me. I still recall one spring when a giant example of these skittish birds, outsized and with a chest glowing gold with all the light of the setting sun, allowed me numerous close-up shots from multiple vantage points as he sat, singing, in the gnarled old tree at our south boundary. I gave him his space, of course, using the zoom lens rather than trying to approach directly, but he certainly knew I was there, and seemed to trust that I would come no closer.
I took my photos, thanked him, and left him to his evening chorus.
But today’s two featured photos are by Wings, of course, and these are much older. I believe both were shot with his digital camera, which would put them no older than the spring of 2007, but if memory serves, they actually date to somewhere between 2009 and 2011. The one above, showing this beautiful bird in silence, or at least between notes of its song, has always seemed a bit pensive to me, even tentative: as though, perhaps, it was unsure whether our small world here at Red Willow was ready for spring. It is, however, an equally beautiful image, one that limns this small spirit in the low light even as each line and bar and blended shade of its plumage stands out in sharp relief.
If I remember correctly, Wings caught this shot late in the day, facing south/southeast, the meadowlark perched atop the highest branches of one of the young aspens, only just beginning to bud. [Those were years, not so very long ago, when migration and leafing both occurred on fairly steady schedules and kept mostly to established patterns; those days are, for the moment at least, entirely gone.] But if memory does indeed serve, this would have the evening song, the lullaby, as the cornflower sky slowly darkened, sending the world to dreams of the dawn to come.
And today’s featured work is certainly a work for the dawn, especially at this season: a moment of stillness, before the spring winds rise, when the light emerges from behind the southern slope of the mountain to set the new blades of grass alight with the liquid gold of the dew. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Dewdrop Heart Necklace
At the center of the dawn is the dewdrop heart, the pulse of the new day crowned with water and adance in the light of the rising sun. Wings calls the water, the sun, and the heart to the circle with this necklace, a dancing heart carved from the sky and webbed with golden light. The pendant is formed of an ethereal specimen of Hachita turquoise, pulled from the earth of the southern reaches of this land now called New Mexico, all sky blues and mottled mountain greens marbled with sunny golden-bronze matrix. The focal cabochon, cut into the shape of a dancing heart with the tail flying in the wind, is set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed with twisted silver, then crowned above the throat with a round cabochon of sunny translucent citrine. The slider-style bail is cut into a subtle flare and stamped freehand in a pattern reminiscent of an eagle’s feather. The pendant hangs from a cascading strand of ultra-high-grade gemstone beads in all the colors of the morning sky: blue spiderweb turquoise alternating with faceted citrine flowing upward into repeating gradients of electric green chrome diopside, rich light green jade, more citrine and webbed sky blue turquoise, and sterling silver accent beads. Each side is anchored by alternating chips of translucent green peridot and tiny rounds of blue spiderweb turquoise, culminating in a small series of tiny diamond-cut sterling silver miniature rounds. Pendant including bail is 2-3/8″ long by 1-3/4″ across at the widest point; bail is 3/8″ long by 5/16″ across at the widest point; heart cabochon is 1-1/2″ long by 1-1/2″ across at the widest point; citrine cabochon is 3/8″ across; bead strand hangs 25″ long, excluding findings (all dimensions approximate). Full view shown below.
Pendant: Sterling silver; Hachita turquoise; citrine
Bead Strand: Blue spiderweb turquoise; faceted citrine; chrome diopside;
jade; sterling silver; peridot; diamond-cut sterling silver
$1,400 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Aside from an errant snowstorm or two, the dew is usually the only moisture the land sees here in spring, at least until the monsoonal patterns begin to form in June. Oddly, though, when Sunday’s clouds began to break apart, they left a summery system of thunderheads in their place on all sides, leaving us to wonder whether we shall have an even better planting season this year than we had dared to hope.
But that time a some weeks off yet — a couple of months, actually, virtually to the day; traditionally, we have begun our planting here in the third week of May, when at last the nights no longer guarantee a hard freeze and the earth has warmed enough to receive the seeds. There is much to do between now and then, many stages of this unsettled season yet to navigate.
And of course, our seasonal lodestar is not yet here. For us, that means that while it may not technically be winter, it also is not yet spring. This day’s wintry air is proof of that.
There may have been dew this morning, or more likely, hoarfrost; it’s a land that shimmers daily with the sunrise. But there was no morning song from the golden throat of the spirit that embodies spring in this place. I suspect that they don’t like the wind much better than we do, bitterly cold and blustery enough to knock even the largest of raptors off their perch.
But one day soon, we shall walk outside in the warming light of the rising sun and hear the clear and rhythmic notes of their call and response. Perhaps we shall be lucky to see one of them atop the blue spruce in the pale dawn light, as in the image above — an evergreen then much smaller, yet still high enough for this small spirit to feel comfortable serenading this space from it.
His is, after all the song at the heart of the light, one to carry through these lengthening days until we reach the warm winds of summer.
~ Aji
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