Some days, the true value of the first medicine makes itself known with force and clarity.
I had to have bloodwork done this morning, the kind that required fasting. No food; no water. And I had a four-hour wait between awakening and the labwork itself.
And so I spent this morning abroad beneath a brilliant sun, the roads running with the water of a six-inch-deep thaw — like the Ancient Mariner, surrounded by it, without a drop to drink. I’ve made up for lost time in the two hours since.
But that is the great luxury of our own small world: The water, the first medicine, is there for the taking, clean and clear and ready to drink, irrespective of weather or season. Oh, a wide-scale power outage will take out the well pump, of course; drought deprives us of the fast-running flow of irrigation waters.
But under ordinary circumstances? Turn on the tap, and the water comes. Being deprived of it for ours this morning has, once again, given me a renewed appreciation for the pain of the Earth in recent years.
Outside our own small space here, the earth shows through on all sides — roads wet and slick, verges brown with mud and residual slush. Inside our fenceline, the fields are still blanketed with white, but the temperature has already transcended the fifty-degree mark. By week’s end, the only snow still in evidence will be that which lies outside the sun’s reach.
And then the next storm is slated to arrive.
For today, though? Spring is here. You can feel the Earth stirring, coming awake and alive beneath a fading white blanket, already beginning to don her warmer shades of brown and green. The river will be alive today, too, racing downstream in a boiling flurry of activity, white caps splashing out of its mobile green surface as it dodges rocks and boulders and shifting sandbars along the way. On days such as this, it’s possible to see the Rio Grande for herself: a medicine river, rising and falling, flowing and pooling, ready to heal the land for another year.
It’s a marker, phenomenon and process alike, embodied in today’s featured work — works, plural, in a sense, since the pieces are paired, earrings built around boulder and Skystone from the same bit of earth, manifest in the flow and pool of the waters of the river itself. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Medicine River Earrings
Water is life and it flows in a medicine river, creating pools of abundance, prosperity, and harmony. Wings honors the water and its many gifts with these earrings, each flowing with a green ribbon of water emptying into three pools of rich jade. These bold drops are formed around a matched pair of ribbon turquoise cabochons, each a freeform oval of host rock, earthy brown and beautifully matrixed. Down the middle flows a river of bright green turquoise, glowing with near-opalescence and limned with shades of gold and bronze. Each large cabochon is set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed with simple twisted silver. At the bottom of each drop sit a trio of lagoon-like drops, pools of jade set into tiny scalloped bezels, part of the larger setting cut freehand. Suspended from sterling silver wires, the earrings hang 1-3/8″ long overall by 13/16″ across at the widest point; ribbon turquoise cabochons are 1″ long by 5/8″ across; jade cabochons are 3/8″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; high-grade green ribbon turquoise; jade
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I was born a child of the autumn storms, and I feel most at home in fall and winter. But even for me, the season begins to wear after a while — usually right on schedule, as the cold season begins to negotiate its departure with its successor, spring. This early season is not mine; too unsettled, too owned by the winds of caprice. Summer is better, when the warmth has finally settled in and we have reason to hope for the extremes of storm and light that accompany the monsoon season.
But this year, I am beginning to feel ready even for this threshold time when the trickster spirits reign. This year, we once more have hope for the waters, for irrigation and planting and the fruits of the earth.
The thaw is early this year. Perhaps it’s necessary: a run-off become rivers of medicine, to heal a drought-ridden land . . . and our world with it.
~ 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.
