We awakened this morning for the first time in days to a clear dawn, the rising sun unencumbered by clouds save the faint haze of woodsmoke, the daily inversion layer that clings to the valley in winter like a pale gray blanket. The air’s sharp perfect clarity drifted in overnight on winds clocking in at well below zero. The mercury still hovers at minus-one, even with the sun fully up and out.
Sunset will be another matter; by then, wispy bands of pale clouds will likely have floated into view. Tonight will be cold, but not as cold as this morning.
And in the hours between, calendar notwithstanding, we shall find ourselves performing some of the rituals of winter.
I don’t mean “rituals” in the spiritual or ceremonial sense, although at this season, there is plenty of that, too. Here at Red Willow, there will time enough for that in the weeks to come, as the village prepares for the vespers and bonfires of Christmas Eve, and the dances of Christmas and New Year’s Days. But each season pulls us inexorably into its own patterns and paths, and eventually, long repetition coupled with ancestral memory and current imperatives elevate such practices to something more than mere routine. There is joy to be found in performing the essential tasks of winter, and wisdom, too, if only we pay attention to the details of purpose and practice.
Here, much of it revolves around tasks performed the whole year: the feeding and watering of horses, dogs, chickens, wild birds; basic cleaning and clearing. But winter requires more of us. Winter is keeping the water troughs thawed and warmed, blocking out the wind from barn and coop, heating the frisbee inserts for the bedding in the doghouses. Winter is also salting the ice and clearing the snow, refilling propane tanks, chopping and hauling firewood. The seemingly most mindless of chores becomes somehow more mindful in winter, a combination of the need for greater efficiency and the mind’s need to divert part of its focus to warmth and safety, and so the process of stacking firewood indoors becomes a series of minutes for my brain to find a rhythm in the geometric aligning of the logs, a means to clear my mind of distractions as it works to fit the pieces together in the most efficient and effective way, thence to open it back up to the needs of the night: building fires, feeding animals, feeding ourselves.
And all within much less than half a day of light.
Like the Earth herself, the human body needs a yearly rest, too, and the long nights are certainly good for that. So, too, is the fatigue that follows naturally a workload simultaneously increased and compressed, more tasks forced into fewer hours available for their performing.
That truth alone makes the light more valuable now. It also lends it a mystical quality, one not merely present but tangible in this series of images: a sense of wonder that accompanies the dawn and especially the dusk, when the light unfolds like the wings of a butterfly, emergent, for the very first time — silver wings around the sun’s amber heart.
The first of today’s featured works, each drawn from a different category with a single bit of common fire, embodies this phenomenon perfectly. It’s a pair of earrings in the form of a chrysalis sun, silver wings of light spreading gently outward from a central fiery orb, they, like the world, newly transformed by its trajectory. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Chrysalis Sun Earrings
Dawn takes flight on silver wings, bearing the orb of a chrysalis sun. Wings summons the sun and the transformative spirit of the day with these butterfly earrings, newly emerged from the cocoon of night. Each drop drifts gently from side to side, its flared top and bottom adance in sharp relief. At the center of the wings sits a tiny amber orb, each cabochon as timeless as the light and glowing with its own cosmic fire, each set in the cool, secure embrace of a plain, low-profile bezel. Earrings hang 1-3/8″ long by 1″ across at the widest point; amber cabochons are 3/16″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; amber
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
And that, too, is a phenomenon of winter, this unfolding of a fading light. It’s a product of the clouds that gather here around a horizon that sits at 7,500 feet and higher, small swatches of storm scattered across an otherwise arid land that presumes to rise nearly to their level. As Father Sun descends, he performs Salome in reverse, a Dance of the Seven Veils donned, rather than shed (and perhaps represents an inversion of that icon’s more violent acts: no demand that the Earth produce some proof of death, but instead providing a gentle glow to send her to her rest).
In winter, that glow is its own enchantment, and at no time is that more true than in the midst of a soft and likewise gentle snow.
It turns the most mundane tools and structures into objects of mystery and magic. The weathered wood of an old pine ladder is transformed into precious metal, silver and gold studded with pearls; dormant vines climb and a weathervane spins beneath a curtain of diamonds.
From ladders to latillas, from firewood to its evergreen progenitors, the wood comes alive in the low winter light.
And the piñon and cedar, the fir and spruce, all find representation in the second of today’s featured works, one ornamented by green of bough and blue of night and amber of setting sun. From its description in the Pins Gallery:
Sunlit Cedar Tree Pin
A sunlit cedar welcomes the winter light. Wings pays tribute to sun and season, tree and earth on which it stands, with this little pin cut freehand from sterling silver. The flared and scalloped trunk stands sturdy and firm, while the tips of the branches reach upward slightly, as though to meet the sun. The orb’s rays, peeking out faintly from beneath snowclouds, garland the boughs, while the small flowery tips of the cones, hand-stamped, spangle the surface. At the middle, the evergreen’s rich hues show themselves by way of bezel-set cabochons of lapis and jade, while a fiery amber sun rests near the top. Tree stands 1-1/2″ high by 1-3/8″ across at the widest point; cabochons are 1/8″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; amber; lapis lazuli; jade
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The pin may be named for the cedar — indeed, one stands only a few yards due south of the latillas and the ladders — but inside their embrace sits the most magical of holiday trees, the spruce.
This one is a dwarf blue spruce, and at the time these images were captured in pixels, it fully inhabited its name.
Since then, it has nearly doubled in size, tall and strong and endlessly lush . . . and in the waning light of a winter’s snow, it turns each band of snow into a garland, each flake into an ornament. At such moments, its self-decoration, like that of earth and sky surrounding it, becomes an event — like a seasonal tree-trimming party, a ceremony of adornment, as if to prove the inescapable truth of winter’s beauty.
At this season, dusk is a time of winter rites and amber light.
The spiraling snow in the low winter’s glow is indeed a call to ceremony, in the many senses of the word. Both process and act are manifest in the third and final of today’s featured works, a spiral so named, a round dance of reverence for spirits at once fiery and gentle. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery:
Ceremony Coil Bracelet
We seek truth through prayer, through petitioning the spirits in the sacred fire of ceremony. Wings honors the fire, its purpose and effects, in this spiraling coil of flame. Manifest in the colors of the fire itself, it begins, small and red, with tiny freeform nuggets of angelskin branch coral that extend into larger freeform nuggets of highly polished carnelian. As the flames coalesce in color and intensity, they become spheres of chatoyant red tiger’s eye growing into the diffuse maroon and gold shades of mookaite. The fire concentrates into golden shades, freeform amber nuggets followed by luminous yellow tiger’s eye spheres, finally crystallizing into the pure gold fire of citrine. Memory wire expands and contracts to fit nearly any wrist. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji.
Memory wire; angelskin coral; carnelian; mookaite; amber; tiger’s eye; citrine
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This, like the others in their own categories, is one of my personal favorites, for reasons both tangible and symbolic. The cold gold translucence of a winter sun, set afire as amber’s molten liquid light, the scarlet and plum of the encroaching dark, all whirling together in a spiral of dusken flame. It’s a coil that takes shape as one of last off the images from that fateful new year’s day.
As I noted yesterday, Wings caught these images with his camera lens on the first day of a new year as the colonial world reckons it: Solstice already two weeks past, length of the light well on the upswing.
Our own new year, that of Mother Earth herself, begins four nights from now. When the sun descends on Saturday, its length and reach will be at their shortest, its glow, the lowest. The forecast, too, predicts snow: not a lot; just enough, perhaps, to turn the twilight into a world of magic once again.
Just enough, too, for the ceremony of the night, of renewal and rebirth, of winter rites and amber light.
~ 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.
