At sunrise, the craggy face of the landmark we call The Old Man looked much like the image above, clear and glowing in the dawn light beneath a slender fringe of puffy clouds. The air this morning is warm, almost impossibly so, and the earth is warming with it, and El Salto’s face welcomed the sun fully.
By sunset, it will likely look more like the image that closes this post, cool serene, and dusted again with white.
Here at Red Willow, this is a time of transitional seasons, transformational spirits — a constant series of elemental shifts, unsure and unsettled and no less a gift for that.
The changes are more drastic now, it’s true, and so are their effects, but in truth, this has always been the hardest season of the year, the one when it feels as though fate holds sway and when survival seems least sure.
And so, while I was out of doors this morning in a long-sleeved T-shirt and perfectly comfortable, it’s now too cold to venture outside without a jacket, despite the sun floating high and bright in the sky and a mercury that insistently continues to rise. Why? Because spring is the season of the wind here, and while the calendar still claims winter’s identity, other elemental powers are already jockeying for position and jousting for space. And it is precisely these high cold winds that will sweep the snow into our own small space tonight, recovering an earth now only patched here and there in soiled and tattered remnants of white.
I come from a land where the change of seasons used to be more discrete, if not precisely discreet: a place where one could bank on a steady range of temperatures in their given times, the surety of snow in winter and a mosquito-ridden humidity in summer. Spring and fall were less transitional spaces than their own solid identities, a warming and cooling of earth and air within allotted time frames. Now, even there all bets are off; climate change has led to winter days in the seventies and a resurgence of wildfires in summer, interspersed with heavy bitter weather off once great lakes now populated by colonial invaders and lowering water levels. Here, though, I know to expect these threshold seasons to be hard and harsh, in keeping with the stark geography and geology and atmospheric conditions of this elevation.
And still, I have to remind myself to look for the beauty in it, because it is so easy to become swamped by its effects.
Today’s featured work embodies both the transitional nature of this season and the transformational powers of the spirits who inhabit it. It’s also a reminder in itself that there is beauty in change, in decay and in renewal, in the sure things and the unsettled nature of a season whose tomorrows are not promised to look like today. From its description in the relevant section of the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Changing Seasons Necklace
Autumn in this place is a whirlwind of color, changing seasons linking green grass and brown earth with the red fire of turning leaves and the icy rime of early snow. Wings gathers them all in a single strand of elemental shapes and shades and spirits. The center of the necklace features graduated wood focal beads of genuine red-brown mahogany from Malawi alternating with rondels of flame-colored carnelian. On either side, the reds flow into browns, earthy orbs of marbled picture jasper alternating with smaller round bloodstone beads in rich reds and deep forest greens. Each end is anchored by a length of tiny round spheres of ocean jasper, translucent and aswirl with bands of green and rust and snowy white. All beads are strung on sterling silver bead chain with sterling silver findings. Necklace hangs 20″ long (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Part of The Beaded Hoop Collection. Coordinates with Turning Leaves earrings. Long view shown below.
Sterling silver; mahogany; carnelian; picture jasper; bloodstone; ocean jasper
$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This necklace was created at the last threshold season, in the darkening days of autumn when fall is not merely a metaphor and the leaves turn in more ways than one. The earrings that coordinated with it sold to a friend who holds the same affinity for long, dangling, dancing earrings that I do, but, they, too, would suit this transitional time as well. Our leaves are turning in a different way now: turning up, shades of brown and gray long since buried under repeated snowfalls, now a natural not-quite-mulch able to turn its collective face one more to the sun.
Humans tend to regard decay as a negative, a dark marker of death, but in truth, it is an essential part of life, and just like the lines in an elder’s face or the weathering surface of The Old Man himself, it is animated by its own elemental beauty. Leave aside for the moment that those decaying leaves are part of what summons the new green shoots from the earth; have you ever looked at in ice-rimed gray aspen leaf in the waning winter light? It’s a hauntingly beautiful network of silvered veins and diamond arteries, the Earth’s body and breath in microcosm, limned that we might better see what sustains us.
The necklace embodies all of these tiny refractions of beauty, but more, it is, like the inherent change in the season, beauty itself. There is the rich red-brown earth, now mostly mud but in a land riddled recently with drought, that is good news; the reds and pale golds of the sun’s warming fire; the dark evergreen of bloodstone, itself in some cultures a marker of spring; and the shimmer of snow and ice that illumines the tiny ocean jasper anchors from within, their presence now receding but still vital to the earth’s good health and harmony.
For hits moment, it is the browns that predominate outside the window, but the clouds are amassing steadily to the west. By nightfall, the white of the snow will be ascendant once again.
At this season, counterintuitive though it may seem to others, the arrival of the snow signals rest. Wings captured both of these images on film nearly a decade and a half ago (perhaps a month later, in actuality, than now), to catch the difference a few hours, perhaps only minutes, and a little snow can make. The early shot is entitled Before the Snow, the truth of its arrival assured by the clouds descending to embrace the summit; the later image, simply, Peace. One need only look at it to understand its essential truth, as well.
For the moment, blue skies and bright sun notwithstanding, there is a sense of anticipation upon the wind, the tension that accompanies awaiting some great shift. Even the wild birds seem less active now, as though nesting early in preparation fro the storm. And the snow, when it arrives — if it arrives — will allow the world to breathe again, secure in the knowledge that the seasonal shifts have not gone too far, nor ceased to provide what the it needs to survive.
The spirit of spring is one of transformation, but so is that of winter. As hard as this season is, it is a gift to be blessed with, and by, both.
~ 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.
