October’s end is still four days hence, and nearly two feet of snow already blankets the ground here.
Oh, the official counts are lower; mostly, they’re centered around the town of Taos, which is a couple of snow lines south of us. Even the surrounding villages at our elevation report lower official totals, but they don’t have acres’ worth of flat fields not subject to windbreaks and blocks and drifting. Late yesterday afternoon, we measured roughly seventeen inches in just such an area, and still the snow continued to fall throughout the night. Wings has estimated twenty-one inches here, and the forecast insists that there is more on the way.
After such a drought-ridden year, no water to be had for love or money or even the most devout of prayers, any inconvenience the white stuff presents melts into utter insignificance compared to the gift it brings.
The good thing about a snow this deep, and temperatures this cold, is that it won’t disappear soon; it will melt gradually, allowing the ground to absorb it slowly and thus put it to use. No, it won’t solve the problem of next year’s snowpack, nor will it return to us the planting time and harvest lost to us this summer. But it will be indescribably good for the earth now, and it will, perhaps, save a few more of the indigenous trees.
Here at Red Willow, saving the trees, the red willow stands, the medicine plants is a gift beyond price.
The outside world tends to think of this broader land now organized as a “state” and labeled “New Mexico” as desert — that is, when it thinks of us at all. And it’s true, so far as it goes, but what most of the outside world doesn’t realize is that much of it qualifies as “high desert,” which is a very different thing. We still have the sandy soil, the windstorms and the dust, the extreme aridity of air, even the high heat. But we also have full-scale watersheds and four discrete seasons, all of them punctuated and defined by their own collection of abundant flora, of fall wildflowers and aspens that go gold in autumn, of giant stands of red willows and lush forests of evergreen.
And this year, they have all been at risk. At least, that’s true of those that managed to survive.
This was the first year in living memory that whole stands of red willow failed to leaf at all. Some died. In a land where both people and place are lent their name, it seems particularly ominous; all the more so in a year that has brought an endless stream of outer-world horrors to our door. And so the snow is welcome, yes, but it’s more than that. It feels like refuge and rescue simultaneously, renewal and reclamation too. But such is the case with the elemental spirits, a sometimes chaotic, often extreme collection of opposites that nonetheless weave seamlessly into a life’s blanket — at this season, a blanket woven with needles of ice and evergreen.
The three photos featured here today are ones that Wings captured on a winter’s morning less than a year ago, a morning marked by one of the few real snows of recent years. We had been trying to capture the look of one of his new works in natural light, and so had taken the velvet display pieces out of doors for photographing beneath the cloudy skies. And just as we finished, the snow began to fall.
We’ve both seen individual snowflakes somewhat regularly; we’re familiar with their crystalline form, a delicate mass of needles and spokes, wheels and hoops. But neither of us had ever seen such a perfect collection of them, those needles outlined in sharp icy relief against the black velvet, showing elaborate branches reaching to all of the sacred directions. Knowing that he didn’t have long to capture their image he shot three photographs in quick succession: the first, shown above, from an ordinary distance, displaying the stark contrast of pure white on jet black; the other two, close-ups from slightly different angles, graying the background and enhancing its visible texture, but also summoning the detailed design of each flake into sharp relief. They looked like tiny beads of spun glass — like ornaments dropped from the sky, unbroken, rich enough to adorn any evergreen.
It’s an image that brings us to the first of today’s two featured works. These are not a matched pair, but they are of a piece with each other, pins that are part of one of Wings’s longest-running signature series, the holiday tree pin. In truth, in a place such as this, they’re perfect year-round; this is, after all, a mountainous land, one robed in piñon and juniper, in a rich diversity of cedar and fir and the most majestic of the Ponderosa pine. Wings has been creating these small whimsical pins for between two and three decades now, all sharing a distinctive family resemblance but each one unique in substance, style, and spirit, cut entirely freehand, stamped with its own design and set with its own collection of jeweled and ingot “ornaments.”
There were four in his most recent assortment; one sold early on, one we featured on Sunday, and the other two are featured in this space today. We begin with the first, accented in a mix of the black and white of the snow-spangled photo above and the turquoise of a late-year sky. From its description in the Pins Gallery here on the site:
Icicled Juniper Tree Pin
An icicled juniper shines with tinsel made of snow and light. Wings honors the shades of winter green and the power of the light with this tiny tree, cut freehand of sterling silver with upturned boughs and and flared trunk. The small but steady rays of the winter sun garland its branches as the scattered blossoms of remnant berries, hand-stamped, peek through; a winter butterfly, a bit of holiday magic, floats past beneath the twinkling star at its top. The icy tinsel shimmers in a single moonstone, while the jade and turquoise of the evergreen shows through above, all by way of small round bezel-set cabochons. Tree stands 1-1/2″ high by 1-3/8″ across at the widest point; cabochons are 1/8″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; jade; blue turquoise; moonstone
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
As I said on Sunday, these little trees always make me think of those in the old Rankin-Bass children’s Christmas special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: unique, distinctive, each lively and dancing to the music of the winds. In a similar vein, this trio of photographic images brings to mind the snowflakes, both on the trees and aloft on the winds in the story’s fabled storm. We think of such animated renderings as too perfect, too elaborately symmetrical to be realistic, but in fact these images show us that, if anything, our imaginations do not go far enough in conceiving the beauty of these microscopic gifts.
They say that each snowflake is unique. What’s perhaps more interesting, though, is the degree of family resemblance they share with other designs of the natural world. In the photo above, particularly, the needles remind me unquestionably of evergreen needles — sharp, pointed, delicately flared and evenly arrayed. Each branch of each snowflake looks like its own tiny evergreen tree, all rooted together at center, tips extending to all of the sacred directions.
Our second work of wearable art reaches and dances in similar fashion. The boughs are lively, the tree itself garlanded with stampwork, a single stormy lapis and two hand-made ingot starburst ornaments stretching outward toward the light. From its description in the same gallery:
Snow-Wreathed Fir Tree Pin
A snow-wreathed fir stands strong in the blue of a winter’s twilight. Wings summons the spirits of tree and storm in this diminutive pin, a tree for the holidays adance beneath the falling flakes. Cut freehand from sterling silver, the little fir’s boughs are garlanded with chased symbols of a sun setting beneath the clouds. Flowering snowflakes are scattered across its branches, three hand-stamped and two formed of overlaid conchas, tiny repoussé sterling silver starbursts fanned out in crystalline form. In winter holiday tradition, a hand-stamped star twinkles from the treetop. Tree stands 1-1/2″ high by 1-3/8″ across at the widest point; cabochon is 1/8″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The last of today’s trio of featured images brings the needles and spokes and the unique patterning of the individual flakes up close and personal. The largest single flake, at center left, looks like something out of pure fantasy: otherworldly in tis beauty, and in its perfect crystal symmetry.
Of course, there is much in this world that shares similar symmetry besides frozen water, much, too, that shares its needle-like formation. There are the crystals of the mineral world, quartz and schorl and various forms of rutile, tiny fragile sceptres glistening in the light.
It’s a pattern that repeats throughout this earth and ancient cosmos, and in this land particularly: the winds and the sacred directions; the spiral of the storm; the shimmer of the stars; the magical spokes of their earthbound counterpart, the staurolites; the faceted wands of flake and crystal. Together, they create the protective and healing blanket that enfolds our world now, a blanket woven with needles of ice and evergreen.
~ 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.
