The day has dawned bright and sunny for the first time in several days. Clouds lurk around the horizon on all sides, already building into thunderheads, but above, they sky is clear and blue. Our chance of rain today is pegged at only 30%, and while relying on forecasts here this time of year is a fool’s errand, letting the earth dry out a bit from recent cloudbursts is a welcome prospect.
This time of year, all sorts of visitors stop by, sometimes for a few moments, sometimes for days. The coyotes, of course, are constant companions; every night, their chorus fills the air as the elders teach the newest generation to sing their songs as old a time. Over the last year, they’ve moved steadily closer, despite the presence of the dogs. Whether it’s forced by climate change or encroachment into their habitat, or simply, like the magpies and orioles, a growing trust of the two furless, featherless creatures who share this plot of land, who can say?
Last week, a serpent paid us a visit.
Early morning; Wings was feeding the horses. There’s a narrow walkway between the hay barn and the old barn-turned-chicken-coop, where the trash bin and various tools and farm implements reside. At the back of the coop is a ProPanel-bounded area for the chickens to run free outside (although the “coop” has run room the size of a small barn, with two internal coops for them to sleep in at night). As he was walking between the two structures, the guy shown above slithered out right in front of him, no more than a couple of inches from his feet — making straight for the back of the chicken coop, of course. Not only are there seventeen chickens there, but last week, the fourteen young ones had just begun laying: beautiful, tiny little brown baby eggs. Snake knew what he was about.
Our visitor last week was a big guy. Not a rattler, although the markings are very similar to those of a couple of the rattlers found here — perhaps an evolutionary defense mechanism for this species. Garden snake, bull snake, whatever, he was large enough to be intimidating, and certainly a predator for the chickens and their eggs.
CONTEMPORARY VISITORS
He’s far from the first. We had another like him show up a couple of years ago, although that time, it was late August, which is usually when we’re more likely to see them. The moisture from the monsoons brings them out. But five years ago, we had one show up in June, and it was a rattler. [That, as it happens, was a bad year for rattlers; that summer, a number of them showed up in the old village, which is exceedingly rare.]
This day was a Saturday; Wings was at the gallery, and I was home working in the herb garden on the south side. Suddenly, the two “puppies” (both about a year and a half old by then) went streaking past me into the alfalfa field. Not unusual; She-Wolf and Raven are both avid hunters, and there are plenty of prairie dogs and voles in the fields, even when the alfalfa gets high. I watched as they cornered something, clearly happy and excited; assuming they’d found a prairie dog hole, I went back to my work.
Then Major, our big older dog, and although a hunter too, not especially known for his bravery, went bounding past and threw himself between the two puppies, snapping at them to get back.
I took off running.
Sure enough, Major had it in his mouth, snapping, flinging it hard and fast while She-Wolf and Raven bounded excitedly around the two and their deadly dance. I chased the puppies away, got Major to drop it, and flung it away where it landed on its back, bite marks on its abdomen. It appeared dead, but I couldn’t be sure, so I checked Major quickly, found not blood drawn, herded him back, and corralled the puppies. I went to check on Major again and found him staggering.
Rattlesnake bite.
Cell phone service is often iffy here. I couldn’t get hold of Wings, nor the vet’s after-hours service. After leaving a a frantic message for Wings, I got Major confined, examined him closely, and found the fang marks on the left side of his muzzle. There was nothing else for it: I began the old suck-and-spit routine, hoping fervently that I had no cavities or any abrasion anywhere in my mouth. By the time Wings got home, I’d drawn everything drawable, the dog was resting, and I’d put some of my own people’s traditional medicine on the fang marks. We loaded him into the truck and I drove to the vet, where both our own and the on-call vet met me. I carried him inside, 100 pounds of dog, and we got him up and the table.
The on-call vet said, “Where’s the bite? I can’t find the bite.”
There’s a reason we call it “snake medicine.”
I showed her where it was, they were shocked to find fang marks but no swelling, and virtually no inflammation. They cleaned the area thoroughly, then explained our options with regard to antivenin treatments. A full course was entirely beyond our means, but the bite looked so good that our vet thought we might be able to get away with a half-course, so we opted for that.
Major lived nearly five more years, to the ripe old age of 15. We lost him to cancer on February third, after a lengthy battle on his part. For an exceedingly large 100-pound dog, and a rescue at that, one whose early years before coming to us were fraught with abuse and terror, he defied the odds many times over.
Major saved his younger adopted siblings from being bitten by a young prairie rattler. They’re particularly venomous; a bite can kill rapidly. Fortunately, this one had just eaten, so much of the venom was already expended.
Such was probably not the case with the prairie rattler that bit my boot a couple of years ago.
It was monsoon season, and we’d just gotten the hay dropped, turned, and baled, beating the rain. We came home late the afternoon under a lowering sky, and we raced out to the fields to begin staking bales and get them in before the clouds broke (which they did as we were working). While Wings hooked up the trailer, I began hauling bales into small stacks of two to four to make pick-up more efficient. At the far side, I grabbed one with the baling hook, hauled it around, and stacked it upright against another; I was racing the rain, and didn’t bother to look at the bale’s other side.
When Wings brought the trailer over to begin loading, I stepped around to grab the bale and he said, “Watch out! There’s a snake.” I thought he was yanking my chain and simply laughed . . . and then saw the expression on his face. I looked down, and stuck in the twine on the underside of the bale was the front half of a prairie rattler; he’d gotten caught in the baler and bisected. I said, “Oh, he’s dead.”
And he lunged for me, catching the sole of my boot.
It was his now-rattleless death rattle; a last futile strike before dying. But had he caught me above the boot line, I might have been on my way to the human version of the vet.
ANCIENT TRADITIONS
Serpents play a variety of roles in indigenous cultures, and their significance varies widely. For many southwestern peoples, that significance is entirely negative. perhaps a reflection of people’s recognition of certain species’ toxic power.
You’ve heard the expression “Never get cross-wise with a snake?” It refers to staying off the radar, or at least on the good side of, a bad person: a cheat, a thief, a swindler, a liar, a trickster; someone dangerous. I’ve often wondered whether its origin, at least in this country, lies in certain Native peoples’ practices of not stepping over a snake’s path (i.e., the markings left in the desert sands by its method of travel).
For the Apache, snakes are something to be avoided entirely. At the Mescalero’s Inn of the Mountain Gods, covered here briefly a few days ago, people are instructed not to bring onto the grounds any objects made of snakeskin. Must annoy the Texas high-rollers not to be able to wear their favorite cowboy boots to the casino.
For other peoples, Southwest and other wise, it’s more complex. Some honor them with dances. For others, serpents of all kinds feature in the old stories; we have a a blessing story involving a water serpent and the gift of copper. For some, their spiritual leaders use the rattles in ceremony. For some, medicine bears Snake’s name.
In the old stories, of course, the tension involves power and the need to respect it. As with everything else in life, balance is required: Great power requires great care and responsibility, and serpent is nothing if not an exemplar of great power embodied in a being of very small physical stature.
SERPENTS, SYMBOLS, AND SPIRITS
Wings has used this symbolism periodically, an invocation of power and a reminder of the need to honor and respect it, to keep it in perspective and in its proper place in life: In balance, in harmony, neither too little nor too much.
One of his signature series is the Warrior Woman pin. There’s a touching backstory to the creation of the very first such pin, and one we’ll cover at a future date. But one of the aspects of every one of the pins is the serpent that the Warrior Woman carries over her right shoulder. It’s meant to invoke prosperity, but perhaps not in the usual sense: Rather than monetary blessings, it perhaps better signifies the spiritual gifts of a life in balance, able to walk in two worlds without being corrupted by negative influences, a life in tune with the powers of both the tangible world and the spiritual one. An example is the sole one currently available. entitled, serendipitously enough, Love In the Balance:
The first Warrior Woman was conceived and created as a gift for Wings’s mother, to honor her courage and strength. Every subsequent pin in this signature series is made in her memory, and in honor of the strength and power of all women. Here, she epitomizes the archetype of Harmony, of Balance: In her left hand, she holds a crescent moon, traditional symbol of The Feminine, accented with the pawprints of Badger, known for her fierce protectiveness. In her right, she holds a small round cabochon of palest rose quartz, a stone of gentleness and peace. Her regalia bears symbols of the Sacred Directions, both cardinal and ordinal, tracing a path up the length of her dress to culminate in a large heart made of lapis, the stone of leaders — a sign that whatever the direction, whatever the path, love leads the way to balance in all things.
Sterling silver, lapis lazuli, rose quartz
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The serpent over her shoulder is yet one more reminder of the need for balance, and it’s undoubtedly no accident that she appears over the shoulder holding the stone of peacemaking. It’s a reminder that true leadership wields power responsibly, in the service of peace, not conflict.
It’s far from his only use of serpentine imagery to make the point, although it’s perhaps his most poignant one. It’s the sort of piece to wear over the heart, where perhaps the message speaks most fluently. But head and hands likewise need reminder of the lesson, and those appear, too, if in slightly different ways. These earrings, entitled Sun Serpents, combine the combine the respective powers of earth and sun via the coiled scales of Serpent on his path:
Father Sun, unreachable by mortals, daily crosses a threshold in the sky between this world and more powerful ones, to touch us with his blessings, and his power. So, too, Serpent crosses such thresholds on the Earth.
Here, both are made manifest in long, highly-polished sterling silver ovals, hand-cut in a blossom design and edged with hand-stamped sunrise symbols. The repoussé centers, slightly domed, are chased with a repeating pattern of serpent’s scales: reminders both of the unbroken Infinite and that power must be handled carefully and in harmony.
Sterling silver
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And of course, despite the best intentions of head and heart, our hands can get the best of us anyway. That’s covered in a simple piece made for his recent show, entitled simply after its exemplar and namesake, Serpent:
Wings tries to capture the stories that form the base of our cultures in the ancient symbols and patterns that give shape to his silverwork. The great lessons of the spirits, writ small on a slender silver band, bring the universal to the individual. In traditional cultures, Serpent plays many roles: sometimes a bringer of prosperity; sometimes a trickster; sometimes a source of fierce strength and awesome power; but always, a reminder of the need for balance in all things. Rendered here in sterling silver, his scales form a pattern that reminds the wearer of each of these roles and lessons, and as the pattern chases the length of the band in repetitions of four, it provides its own balance in the form of the sacred number.
Sterling silver
$225 + shipping, handling, and insurance
As is always the case with his work, I learn something new every time I examine it. I also find new links between it, its symbols and signifiers, and the world around me daily.
And both art and earth bring their own visitations: sometimes human, sometimes animal, sometimes earth and plant, sometimes spirits unidentifiable. No matter the form, all have something to teach me. But one thing I learn from all is the lesson of life’s essence, and its essentiality: Balance. Harmony.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
