The same clouds that created the corona around last night’s waning moon have lingered on into the dawn. The sky looks less like our usual clear autumnal indigo than a paler blue veiled now by a webwork of gray, much like the bare branches of the fruit trees.
It’s a haunted sky, less by the spirits who have lately been abroad than by the predatory cold of the winter to come, and perhaps by the deadly ravages of the world outside our door this day.
But if it seems haunted now, it is also beautiful, in the way that only autumn daybreak is in this place. Here at Red Willow, for much of the year, the skies belong to the setting sun, skies aflame and adance just before the fall of dark. In fall, it’s the rising sun who delivers such otherworldly beauty to us, provided we are awake to see it.
It’s one of the reasons I so detest so-called Daylight Savings Time: It saves no daylight for me (or for anyone else; it’s all a parlor trick involving the clock), but it does too often deprive me of those moments when the first rays of the sun light up the eastern sky. Fortunately, our world’s time, at least, is back to normal, if precious little else has followed suit.
These are dangerous times, and this day and the weeks to follow will be increasingly so for reasons entirely apart from the weather. It’s in the nature of colonialism, and its very form and shape and nature dictated that this would be at least a part of its end, although it will, of course, continue its devil’s bargain with time. Unless climate change (or perhaps its viral offspring) at last intervenes with some finality, we shall not live long enough to see its demise, but it is already collapsing under the weight of its own immanent corruption.
And that makes these dangerous days indeed.
Our peoples have been here before, of course. Our ancestors fought the overwhelming onslaught that accompanied its birth upon these lands. Our task will be to fight it now, this seemingly all-powerful beast that has wounded itself beyond repair. The rest of the world looks to high technology for inspiration and protection.
We have other ways.
Earth and sky have always held the lessons that we seek. Our teachings put them at the center, reminding us that we are responsible not only to the immediate and childish wants of what Freud would call the id, that animating spirit of colonialism itself (and of what passes for governance here now). No, our roots go deeper, our branches stretch wider, our leaves and fruits reach up to touch the sky. We are part of the world that birthed us, that shelters and protects us, and we are obligated to it as much as to community and clan.
It’s why eighty percent of the world’s species thrive in Indigenous-held lands, while the occupiers of colonial-held lands are intent on killing off the twenty percent they still control.
That alone is a stark reminder this day of where our duty lies. The teachings command generosity and courage from us. We have to be fruiting, protective, and strong: rooted firmly, to sustain, to shelter, to shield.
In that way, the local trees are instructive, because of course they are our teachers, too, whether in full leaf and heavy with fruit, bare and skeletal to survive the winter, or felled and dried and returned to stand tall as an old warrior — like the two that appeared here in yesterday’s image, ones Wings calls The Grandparents.
But we begin today with a smaller sort, the indigenous fruit tree above whose image Wings captured on a November day almost exactly two years ago. There are years now, thanks to this endless drought, when it bears no fruit. Most years, it bears plenty, but the magpies gorge themselves on it before it ripens enough to pick. But last year, it and its tiny companion tree produced a bumper crop: far more than one thousand small ripe pears on this one small tree, with a couple hundred more on its stunted sibling. I made (and gave away) endless jars of pear butter at this time last year. It was a lot of work, and a thoroughly unexpected gift, one that reminded us yet again of the Earth’s essential generosity to us, her wayward children.
And that is, of course, of the obligations of the old ways. My own people’s teachings make the command explicit: We are to be generous to others with what we have. Hoarding is not our way; if someone is in need, you share. It is, I think, a far more beautiful interpretation of the colonial religion’s exhortation to “be fruitful”: Not to seek dominance through reproduction and overwhelming numbers, but rather, to create and to give of one’s creations, so that everyone has enough to live.
Of course “fruit” is a metaphor, as the trees themselves know. What is created may be fruit for sweetness and sustenance, leaves for shelter and shade, flowers for beauty and medicine; all are essential, all worth creating, and worth sharing. The first of today’s two featured works of silver embodies this lesson in beautiful fashion. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Winter Blossom Cuff Bracelet
In the high country, the winter blossom survives the early snows. Wings coaxes it into existence for every season with this slender cuff, its petals wrought of sterling silver ingot. The slim, spare band is utterly plain save for faint rounding at the ends, just enough to make the edges silky smooth, and the surface is given a highly textured Florentine finish. The focal accent consists of a flower formed of a flat round backing, center stamen and eight surrounding petals all formed of ingot ball beads, each made entirely by hand. Beads and backing are given the same antiqued Florentine finish, rich in texture and shimmering glow, like snow in the waning winter light. Band is 6″ long by 5/16″ across; focal bezel is 7/8″ across; small ingot beads are 3/16″ across; center ingot bead is 5/16″ across (dimensions approximate). Side view shown below.
Sterling silver
$1,025 + shipping, handling, and insurance
We have precious few blossoms left now, of course; fewer leaves, too. Last week’s sudden heavy snow and bitter cold ensured it. Our world is much more bare than it was eight days ago, but “bare” does not mean that something is not of use. It’s certainly not without an animating spirit.
The trees teach us this, too, felled in the forests that encircle this place in an evergreen embrace, trunks dried naturally over a period of years, bark not stripped by allowed to fall off naturally. Here, such trees have a life beyond life, as lodgepoles, as latillas, as the shelter and sustenance of traditional arbors.
Arbors are used as drying racks, as shade from the hot summer sun, as a place to rest safely for a moment or an hour or a day. Our own arbor also served as the site for our wedding, a sheltering place of shadow and light in what Wings calls sacred space in which to commit our lives before the spirits.
The lines of the poles alternating with the light that shines through, rendering them in the stark relief of silhouette, reminds me of the lines of the second of today’s featured works of wearable art. As a cuff, it is necessarily curved, not straight, a shape reflected in its very name — but the arc of the light often looks very different to our eyes, and it bands into shimmer and shadow all the same. From its description in the same section of the same gallery:
The Arc of the Light Cuff Bracelet
From a rainbow of color to nearly pure white to shimmering silver to something invisible to our eyes, the arc of the light is always present, and always illuminates our path. Wings recreates the path along the arc itself with this small glowing crescent, a cuff hand-milled in heavy-gauge sterling silver. Cranked by hand through and old-fashioned rolling mill, the strand’s silver is displaces into two deep channels on either side of a sloping apex, its center spine standing out in sharp relief. Smaller peaks serve as borders, creating parallel range of peaks and valleys, all running with a river of pure refracted light. The inverse of the grooves are perceptible on the inner band, the ends are shaped, rounded off, and filed smooth, and the entire arc is oxidized and buffed to a shining antiqued shade just a bit brighter than classic Florentine. [Note: This cuff is designed for a small wrist. The outer band is a very scant 6″ long; the inner band is closer to 5.5″ (dimensions approximate).] Other views shown below.
Sterling silver
$385 + shipping, handling, and insurance
If the arbor poles belong to a November of two years ago, the next image of line and shadow belongs to November of last year (and each of today’s images is visible in corporeal form here now). The same poles that shelter and sustain us also shield and protect: latilla poles that create the random heights and irregular beauty of a traditional fence.
And this, too, is one of the oldest of teachings: that we are charged with protecting others, and not merely those who are human; we owe an obligation of protection, of stewardship, to earth and sky, to the land and to each spirit with whom we share its space.
And we are reminded that there is beauty in bravery, in standing up and standing strong.
We need more people who are willing to do so now.
This day will be fraught on many fronts. So will the days to come. There are no guarantees beyond the rising and setting fo the sun now, beyond the coming of the cold and the dark.
The only way to assure our own survival is to step up now, to stand strong and heed the teachings of the oldest of ways: to sustain, to shelter, to shield our Earth, and each other.
~ 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.
