If yesterday’s photo meditation illustrated the ravages of the current drought, today’s featured imagery shows us the abundance that once was a feature of this time of year.
It’s a welcome sight, if an unrealistic one now: In a twelve-hundred-year drought, this is less a season of genuine thaw than one of potential wildfire . . . and as we learned last night, it’s no longer potential. Yesterday evening, the newest one ignited on the other side of our southeast ridgeline — in Mora County, in the same area that was devastated at this same time last year by the historic Hermit’s Peak Fire, even before it merged with the Calf Canyon Fire to create the largest wildfire complex in the state’s recorded history.
It’s still burning this morning, despite unforgiveably false social media reports last night to the contrary. And the same folks who lost so much last year, lost whatever resources they might need to cope with a new threat and evacuation, are in the direct line of danger once more.
And that’s on top of smoke emanating from town yesterday morning, an exploding water heater that destroyed a family’s trailer home in Ranchos yesterday afternoon, and a new and active smoke plume from lands much, much closer to us again this morning, presumably a prescribed burn.
Combined with the weekend’s river-based tragedy, it’s been a bad few days here in terms of the apparent human ability to gauge the power of the elements with any accuracy.
Per reports from the tribal administration, the Río Pueblo now no doubt looks much like it did in the three images featured here today. The difference, of course, is that this has not been the river’s pattern at this season for some years now — and, indeed, as noted yesterday, its resurgence this year is not indicative of a return to normal patterns, but rather the very opposite of that.
The three images that appear in this edition of Red Willow Spirit are ones that Wings shot exactly fifteen years ago, and I do mean exactly: May 9th, 2008. He was at the village early in those days, prepping for the reopening of our then-gallery in a new location, and when he needed a break, he’d take his camera and shoot images of the mountain, the river, the shadows and light, whatever caught his attention and gave his spirit a momentary respite. And on that day, the river was running hard and high and fast, the thaw in full swing, and the rest of spring, too.
It’s a marked contrast from how our small world manifests here on this day, in this year.
Then, the trees were in early but already-full leaf and the grass abundant, plenty of bright green arrayed against the deep blue of the sky. It provided the perfect frame for the water, tinting its silver surface with the shades of the season, the colors slipping effortlessly around the white caps of the waves and crests as it all raced downstream to meet up with the Río Grandé. Now, a decade and a half later, the trees are only beginning to leaf — indeed, this day has brought us the very first aspen leaves here in our small space. Only on a couple of trees, and only the first; there is much more to come . . . or at least there will be, if we can maintain a healthy enough balance of weather and climate.
That’s not guaranteed.
The image above, though, shows the Río Pueblo at its most animated . . . and it shows exactly what happens to all those drops from the sacred lake so high and deep in the mountains. It’s a phenomenon manifest in the first of today’s two featured works of wearable art, pendants both, this one named explicitly for those self-same drops. From its description in the Pendants Gallery here on the site:
Drops From the Sacred Lake Pendant
The monsoonal rains of summer animate new ripples, waves, and the splash and spray of drops from the sacred lake. With this pendant, Wings honors the cobalt blues of lake and sky and the fine droplets that rise from its storm-textured surface. The oval focal cabochon is formed of genuine Afghanistan lapis lazuli of extraordinary color and size, its surface marbled with still deeper blues and shimmering with inclusions of iron pyrite, like the light reflected upon the waters. It’s set into a low-profile scalloped bezel and edges with twisted silver; the hand-scalloped bezel backing extends organically to hold the three tiny round raindrops, each a small cabochon of brilliant blue lapis. The pendant hangs from a fine, slender bail, hand-milled in a a pattern of feathery light and cut freehand into a graceful flare. Full pendant, including bail, hangs 2-1/2″ long in total; bezel is 1-3/4″ long by 1-3/8″ across at the widest point; focal cabochon is 1-5/8″ long by 1-1/16″ across at the widest point; bail is 1/2″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point; small cabochons are each 3/16″ across (all dimensions approximate). Ships with an 18″ sterling silver snake chain.
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The royal lapis cabochon at its center is an extraordinary pool of blue, just like its namesake. It’s a reminder, too, that the water’s beauty depends, in no small part, on the earth and sky that surround it: blue skies, silver light, the blue-green algae and embrace of the earth that paint our world, within the waters and outside them, with color.
Color like those found in the the image above, and these two below.
When Wings reviewed these photos after taking them, he rued the sudden appearance of the car, advancing to make a U-turn right in the frame just as he snapped the shutter. I understand; the appearance of people, cars, houses, human-made items and structures in my own photography is a never-ending source of annoyance. He was trying to capture the contrast between blue sky and green-edged water from a continually narrowing perspective, and once you ignore the splotch of red, that landscape gradient shows clearly across the series.
But this one, better than the first, also draws the eye to the thousand-year-old homes on the right: human structures, yes, but ancient ones made of adobe, their walls formed of the same area earth fro which they seem organically to rise. In this place, the homes are part of the landscape, not a disruption of it. This is an earth, land and water alike, that lives in the sky’s embrace . . . sheltered, yes, but also thriving.
At least in the good years.
The second of today’s featured works manifests this truth in tangibly beautiful form. It, too, is found in the Pendants Gallery; from its description:
In the Sky’s Embrace Pendant
The peaks and waters of a rich green earth rest in the sky’s embrace. With this pendant, Wings calls to the dance the mountain and the seas, the medicine of petaled flowers and the blues of sky and storm. The work is built around a single spectacular focal cabochon of deep green chrysocolla, an unusual combination of emerald and spruce marbled with hints of jet, as mysterious as forest and the ocean depths alike. This outsized oval nestles in a simple scalloped bezel whose edges extend far beyond it, scalloped freehand all the way around to hold sixteen separate small round cabochons, half in bright, clear Sleeping Beauty turquoise and half in the thunderhead blues of lapis lazuli. The modest bail is cut freehand in an elegant flare, stamped deeply with an old traditional motif meant to signify the mountain peaks that ring these lands. Full pendant is 2-1/4″ long, including bail; without bail, 2″ long by 1-3/8″ across at the widest point; bail is 3/16″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point; chrysocolla cabochon is 1-3/8″ long by 1-1/16″ across at the widest point; small turquoise and lapis cabochons are all 3/16″ across (all dimensions approximate). Ships with an 18″ sterling silver snake chain.
Sterling silver; deep green chrysocolla; Sleeping Beauty turquoise; lapis lazuli
$1,025 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The chrysocolla at the center of this work, for me, has always called to mind the dark alpine forests that blanket the slopes of the mountains, echoed in the smaller evergreens that dot our own land.
But it strikes me that it also stands in perfectly for the larger land here, too: mountains, meadows, prairies, yes, and rivers, too, greens of every shade held gently on all sides by the blues of the sky.
Greens that filter into the soil, and into the waters.
I love this third shot for the sense of sanctuary that it seems to impart: a quiet, private place where the only sound is that of the river, burbling, whispering, laughing in the breeze as it races home.
It’s not, of course. This is an open area, clearly visible to tourists even if the reaches that it shows are thankfully not accessible to them. But on that morning, there were no tourists, at least not yet; nothing in the line of Wings’s camera lens save the new green that lent its shade, and shades, to the waters beneath.
And it reminds us just how much our world’s elemental forces depend upon each other, how they collaborate and conspire as often as they contend. These are waters held by earth, sheltered by sky, that keep our world alive.
Our task is to defend them all now.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
