The cloud-shrouded peaks at dawn this day evoked the look and feel of volcanic climes: something Andean, perhaps, or at least the alpine habitats of other hemispheres. By midday, the only clouds remaining are the white puffs scudding across the sky, driven on the gale-force winds that have battered this land unceasing since this time yesterday.
The elements and the seasons have always had their own understandings here: Wind for the balance of spring, but only in the daylight hours; rain with the summer monsoons, a phenomenon strictly of the afternoon. But all those patterns have been upended, and whatever treaties existed between time and the forces of nature seem in tatters now.
It seems clear that there will be no rain today, but even that is no sure thing anymore. Still, it’s unlikely in the extreme, while other extremes shriek and dance all around us. The one great gift of this day, one granted by the rains of recent days, is the green everywhere, green backlit by silver sunlight.
By now, most of the trees are at long last in full radiant leaf — not every leaf yet, you understand, but enough to dress the branches once again. They are flying on the horizontal now, stretched fully out like flags before the wind, but still they enrobe and enshawl the aspens’ heads and shoulders, a small layer of protection against the driving chill. The lilac blossoms, too, are held in an emerald embrace, and the jade of the grass stands tall now, wind-bowed from its more usual right angles to the still-damp earth below. And the trees . . . evergreen of pine and cedar, piñon and spruce, the deciduous spangles of willow and maple and aspen and birch, all seem like lush stairs to a new green emergence now.
Today’s featured work embodies the green and the silver of the light, the spokes of te directions and dance of the winds, the stairs and the emergence too, all brought together with the fragile spirits of the season. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
From the Heart of the Earth Necklace
From the heart of the earth our whole world grows. Wings pays tribute to this evolutionary process with this necklace, a cross that is not a cross, but the embodiment of elemental forces and nurturing spirits. The pendant’s form is a very old design, one that circumvented colonial insistence on Christianity by appearing to adopt its four-spoked shape — and then adding an extra bar and a curving end to produce the form of a much older spirit: that of Dragonfly, a pollinator, a messenger, a symbol of romantic love and life’s abundance. Here, Wings has honored another old adaptation of the style, turning the curved tail at the base of the lowest spoke into a stylized heart. Above the heart, the pendant extends upward and outward to the Four Sacred Directions, each of the remaining five spokes stamped with a single thunderhead symbol pointing inward toward the center, a sign of the rain that keeps our Earth herself alive. Above the top spoke, the hand-made bail flowers into a lush green peridot; at the base in the center of the heart, the place of emergence, two tiny hand-stamped flowers are wedded into the form of a butterfly, a small spirit rising from its own place of emergence to continue the processes of pollination and prosperity. The cross is made of solid fourteen-gauge silver, and hangs 2-5/8″, the bail 3/4″ (the pendant is 3-3/8″ in total length; 1-1/8″ across at the widest point); the stone is 3/8″ long; the pendant hangs from an 18″ sterling silver snake chain (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; peridot
$1,150 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Within the spokes of the wings and the symbols of water they bear is Dragonfly, animating a precious but otherwise ordinary metal with its own powerful messenger spirit. Beneath the throat of the heart at the base of the pendant sits his cousin, Butterfly, formed of two flowering symbols of. medicine. Butterfly has been here already this season, small specimens and a young mourning cloak or two, plus a youthful swallowtail spotted in town where the winds are warmer than here. Dragonfly, however, will not be here for some weeks yet, in all likelihood; it’s too cold, and despite the rain, there is still far too little water, certainly none standing in the pond to provide a space for its kind to re-enact their own annual story of emergence.
But trickster winds and dilatory warmth notwithstanding, the recent weather suggests that we may yet have both spirits here in abundance. That would be a welcome change from the last three years, a return to normalcy of a sort. The sudden leafing and flowering of the green makes me believe, for the first time in four years, that it might actually be possible.
Colonial-driven climate change has dealt us no mere setbacks now, but more accurately, furious and deadly blows. But the reappearance fo the green reminds me that while cycles can be altered, disrupted, elongated beyond our lifespan or shortened as drastically as death itself, the fact of our world’s cyclical nature remains.
We have a hard road ahead, hard obstacles and tasks, too. But we have seen dark times before, and have always managed, eventually to find the light once more. It’s a matter of finding the way: like the leafy branches of the trees outside, ladders all, with rungs and stairs to a new green emergence.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
