Yesterday’s golden sun turned fast to an enveloping gray blanket, an autumnal equinox whose shapes and shades spoke more of winter than of fall. At this elevation, we don’t often get solid gray skies, save for those days in the cold season given over to the snows.
The rain finally arrived in late evening, a steady but fast-moving storm that blew out to the east within a couple of hours, leaving star-beaded skies in its wake. This morning, though, we awakened to a gray veil of another sort: fog, on all sides, dense enough to block out anything more than a few dozen yards away. It was like waking up in a cocoon, needing to find a place of emergence.
By mid-morning, of course, the fog had mostly lifted, leaving a few low-hanging bands around the peaks, clouds parting overhead to reveal a turquoise sky. And once the light caught the land, our small world here was touched with magic once more, with all the mystery and medicine that is autumn at Red Willow: all sharp angles and shimmering light, paling greens fast giving over now not only to gold, but to amber and copper and crimson and bronze, as well.
It was a given, of course, courtesy of last night’s rain, that the shift in the colors would be remarkable today. With lows now in the thirties and a wet earth shivering in the night air, far more of the foliage has gone amber and brown just overnight. There is still a great deal of green, but it’s different now — wan, weak, as though it has made an offering of its jewel-toned intensity to the spirits of fall. And it has, of course.
The offering is the same every year: moisture and suppleness, color and life itself, in exchange for the chance to do it all again next year, when the trees have had their rest and the world with it. But the pace at which climate change’s effects have accelerated here, observable in real time, mean that the rhythm is different, pace and tempo at least as likely to interrupt and disrupt each other as they are to create a coherent melody, much less any sort of harmony. We find ourselves now having to look for new patterns, or none at all; to adapt in a year or a moment; to appreciate what is for however long it lasts even as we make ready for what we can no longer predict. For where the spaces of sun and storm and season were once sharply silhouetted, limned by golden autumn light, forecasting has become a fool’s errand, an excuse to avoid that which we must face and solve.
Today’s featured work is a piece that captures both the light and its haunting irregularity now, a work whose embrace reminds us that there is light in the storm, however fierce, and our task is to use it to bring ourselves, and world, safely through the other side. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Light In the Storm Anticlastic Cuff Bracelet
It is in the eye of the storm that we are afforded a glimpse of its passing, when the clouds part momentarily to let the light descend. Wings has captured the glow of those rays in this anticlastic cuff, as big and bold as the storm itself, as bright as the light that transcends it. The band is wrought of sixteen-gauge sterling silver, heavier than usual for the shaping required of an anticlastic band, and sloped gently upward on either side. Its surface is free of adornment save a row of chased traditional symbols that run its entire length: stylized thunderheads paired together at their bases to form a sig of the Four Sacred Directions, each mated pair embracing an Eye of Spirit, that which watches over us even in the fiercest storm. At its center, elevated upon a small sterling silver cylinder, rests another representation of Spirit’s Eye: the light itself, caught and held fast in a massive cabochon of dove-gray labradorite. The stone possesses breathtaking depth and clarity, shot through with angled inclusions like sheets of rain and refracting the light into a gold-tinged rainbow of color. Hand-stamped stars of various shapes and sizes spread stardust along the cuff’s inner band. Band is 1-11/16″ across; cabochon is 1-3/4″ long by 11/16″ high (dimensions approximate). Other views shown below. First in Wings’s new series, The Light Collection.
Sterling silver; labradorite
$1,800 + shipping, handling, and insurance
As a child of the storm, clouds don’t bother; indeed, I embrace them. But I realize that for most people, stormy skies and wintry weather are less welcome — something to be ridden out and gotten through rather than enjoyed in the moment. But our inauspicious start to fall here reminds us that there is beauty in both.
It reminds us, too, that the storm is not forever. We may have to wait a bit longer than usual; we may, as this morning, be denied a view of the dawn. But eventually, the fog lifts, the clouds part, and the turquoise skies show themselves again.
And when they do, they reveal a world beaded no longer only with the remnant jade of summer, but with the gold and copper fire of fall. These are the spaces of sun and storm and season, and, like our fiery foliage now, they sometimes last but a moment. Even in this hurried, harried time of planning and preparation for winter, if we take the time to recognize, acknowledge, and honor those spaces, our world will be better for it, and so will our ability to face it.
~ 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.
