It’s been a day.

Not the good kind, for the most part; that would be too easy, apparently. It’s not enough that the world is on fire and the Nazi arsonists in D.C. are doing their absolute best to burn the rest of it down in real time. No, it has to be a day that promised snow but delivered two dozen flakes and a few seconds’ worth of graupel, but plenty of gale-force winds; a day in which my complex of autoimmune diseases decides to flare on every conceivable front; a day that required multiple errands in spite of that, leaving me more fatigued than ever; and a day in which one of our dogs has come up inexplicably unwell, with no indication of what or how or why, but clearly unwell enough to necessitate an emergency vet visit in the morning if she’s not better.

And, of course, all of that has conspired to make it impossible for me to work until now, nearing eight o’clock at night.

The rest of the week isn’t looking all that great either, to be perfectly honest.

Some days, the fact that the news is unrelentingly bad makes it hard to find something to focus on that brings us something of beauty, joy, healing — something that can bear the suddenly-onerous weight of hope. We cast around on all sides for it, but hope is at a premium these days. So is faith.

Charity, or love, whichever translation one chooses?

There’s none of that in our current body politic; only its opposite.

And so we look beyond such colonial concerns, beyond its systems and structures and even its people: We look, instead, to our natural world, so badly wounded, too, for any shred of evidence that there remains cause for hope in these dark days.

And here at Red Willow, we know that we are always sure to find it.

This week’s edition of Red Willow Spirit winds up being more than just seasonally apt. It consists of three photos, an informal series that Wings shot in digital format six years ago this month, on the same day and of the same subject, but at two different times and from two different vantage points. These were taken on February 7th, 2019, on a trip that we were forced to take to Santa Fe that day, not for a supply run or a day out, but for extensive medical testing at a time when I had been mistakenly diagnosed with cancer. I have since learned, a couple more such errant diagnoses later, that certain autoimmune diseases, including my own, very often mimic certain types of cancers, and I’ve undergone a few more invasive biopsies in recent years than I’d like as a result. But on the day we made that trip, we had no reason to doubt the assessment in question, and so, despite the brilliant sunlight, it seemed a dark time indeed.

And yet, we could not fail to stop along the way, to acknowledge and appreciate the glorious view that the Great River and the Gorge that embraces it had granted us. It’s distraction, yes, but also medicine, a bit of healing for the spirit when everything is rough. And our initial stop, early in the morning on the way down, produced the view you see in the first image, above: an absolutely extraordinary blend of blues, a morning-sky gradient of turquoise to cobalt, caught by the fast-running river below, transformed into a mix of cornflower and lapis with hints of indigo and violet.

It’s framed by fantastic beauty, too: the evergreens of piñon and sage studding the rich brown earth, dusted in between with the white of remnant snow; the more distant reds of the cliffs, hints of purple underlying them; the gold of sunlit bare branches in the foreground and the russet shades of the red willows that give place and people their name. But it’s the blues that capture the eye, and the spirit, too — the breathtaking magic that occurs when the waters call the sky . . . and the sky answers in kind.

It’s magic, yes, and no small amount of mystery, too, whatever science might explain. But most of all, it’s medicine, something of the sacred that inhabits and infuses and animates this place, the earth and waters, air and sky, and everything among, upon, and between them.

It inhabits today’s featured works of wearable art, too, both of them named for just such natural wonders here, both wrought in silver and Skystones from the same parcel and beautifully matched. We begin with the larger of the two works, the cuff whose focal manifests in a miniature version of the sacred spring from which it takes its name — one of many, actually, that bubble up from these alpine lands, emergent alongside larger watersheds or forming their own. From its description in the Cuffs and Links and Bangles section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:

Sacred Spring Cuff Bracelet

This is a land of holy waters, of great river and sacred lake, of sacred spring and the First Medicine in its most powerful forms. With this cuff, Wings pays tribute to the local watersheds and the hot springs  arising from them, delivering healing medicine to those who seek their gifts. The band is wrought of solid sterling silver of a decently heavy gauge, just light enough to allow the wearer to adjust it with some ease. The entire outer surface is hammered by hand, then buffed to a high polish, evoking the appearance of local waters in the sunlight. The focal stone is a freeform cabochon of Cripple Creek turquoise from Colorado, nearly half-moon in shape, manifest in the rich blues and greens of lake and river and hot spring, too, and finely webbed with the reds and golds of shoal and riverbank and local clay. It rests in a bezel wrought entirely by hand, each segment saw-cut individually, filed smooth, and shaped to the stone, the whole edged with a slender strand of twisted silver. Along each edge of the inner band, repeating lines of half-moon crescents echo the shape of the stone and the pull of the tides. Band is 6″ long by roughly 3/8″ wide; Bezel is 1-1/8″ long by 11/16″ high’ cabochon is 7/8″ long by 1/2″ high at the highest point (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link. Cuff coordinates with Sacred Waters, Sacred Sky earrings, set with stones from the same parcel; together, they would create a subtly powerful, classic matched set.

Sterling silver; natural Cripple Creek turquoise from Colorado
$1,400 + shipping, handling, and insurance

The turquoise blue and stippled white, the greens and rusty red-brown of the matrix, all the shades of tis stone appear in the photo above, and the band itself shimmers like the river. In truth, though, the colors and textures are more obviously represented in the second of today’s featured images, one of two that Wings captured from the same spot that same afternoon, where we had stopped once more on our way home.

No, it doesn’t look like the same spot, but it is. Where the first and third photos are of the exact same view, facing northeast and looking upriver, this one is of the view of the river as it ran directly before us. Instead of facing rightward, he aimed his camera directly ahead of where we stood, showing only a hint of bright green river in the foreground, the snow-blanketed opposite bank visible above it, along with the paler slopes and cliffs washed by the rays of the afternoon sun.

It’s a good illustration of just how thoroughly shifts in the light can alter the water’s appearance, turn it from lapis to emerald and back to indigo again [as in the third photo, below]. It’s a matter of angle and time of day, but in truth, nothing along the Gorge ever looks exactly the same twice. Every moment, every day, week, month, year presents us with something slightly different, always breathtaking, always beautiful.

But the colors of the second image show the most green that was visible to us on that day, at any point or place. And it’s a series of shades that appears in the second of today’s featured work, one of sacred waters, sacred sky, the blues of the latter backing the rich earthier shades of the former. It’s a pair of earrings, built around slightly freeform stones that are matched (coming as they do from the same parcel as that in the cuff), but not perfectly so, each part of the pair maintaining its own integrity of identity and animating spirit, too. From its description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:

Sacred Waters, Sacred Sky Earrings

In these lands, rain and that which brings it is life, breath, medicine: sacred waters, sacred sky. With these earrings, Wings honors the turquoise blues of the alpine desert skies, the marbled white webbing of clouds that become the storm, and the rich greens and browns of this thriving mountainous land. Each compact drop is built around a freeform cabochon of natural Cripple Creek turquoise from Colorado, part of a larger parcel of cabochons acquired some years ago. These stones are beautifully matched, but not mirror images; their vaguely triangular shapes show material of classic sky blue, with Cripple creek’s hallmark white host-rock stippling and patchy bronze and green matrix. Each cabochon is set into a low-profile scalloped bezel edged with a slender strand of twisted silver, with an organic bezel backing that extends at the top into hand-drilled tabs, through which are threaded sterling silver coil-and-ball-bead earring wires. At the lower end, that backing extends at side angles into two scalloped arc, saw-cut freehand, to accommodate the two hand-made ingot ball beads overlaid atop them. Each bead is stamped with a flowering motif, raindrops as petals opening. Earrings hang 1-1/8″ long by 3/4″ to 7/8″ wide at their respective widest points; cabochons are 3/4″ long by roughly 1/2″ across at the widest point; ingot beads are 3/16″ across (all dimensions approximate). Earrings coordinate with Sacred Spring cuff bracelet, set with stones from the same parcel; together, they would create a subtly powerful, classic matched set.

Sterling silver; natural Cripple Creek turquoise
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance

With earrings of this nature, there’s no real way to match the band on the cuff, certainly not in terms of its hammered-silver effect. But the two hand-made ingot drops at the base of each earring work perfectly for that purpose. And while they are stamped with an image like the petals of a flowering opening to the light, it seems to me that it also suits the photographic imagery here today, from the snow-studded cold of early morning to the full thaw that exposes the green in late afternoon.

Green that’s clearly visible in this last image, even though it seems more subtle, less obvious now.

That, of course, is because there’s no snow covering the barer spots of the earth, allowing the shades of olive and sand to blend with the evergreen growth that dots them. The afternoon light, too, casts the purples and reds of the cliffs into something more gray; absent their contrast with the coniferous growth, and with the afternoon light shining directly on the slopes from the west, it all seems muted compared to the fiery reds of the willow stands, never mind the silver-tipped indigo of the river itself.

But it is the river here that keeps all the rest alive, and so much beyond it in all directions, too. As we say, water is life and breath and being, nothing less than the First Medicine itself.

But it needs help to maintain itself, as well. Sometimes, when the waters call the sky, the sky responds with deepest blues, sharing a swirling kaleidoscope with the river’s depths.

And sometimes, it shares something more: drops of rain, flakes of snow, adding to its depths, adding to the land’s lifeblood, the river’s respiration, the survival of us all.

On that day six years ago, survival was not assured for me, and I felt the weight acutely. It’s true, of course, that it’s never truly assured; we are not promised anything beyond each moment, each breath.  But six years on, [and several diagnostic errors later], I am here for this moment, at least. So is the land, and so are the waters, however wounded they may be.

We may not be promised more than this moment, but that need not stop us from the work of building a better world, a better future for it and for us and for all the generations yet unborn.

And they need that work more than ever now.

~ Aji

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2025; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.