Taos is “famous” for all sorts of things, most of which are nonexistent; the few that are owe their existence to the Pueblo and its presence. Were it not for the people who eventually decided, more than one thousand years ago, to build a permanent settlement on this land, there would be no “Taos,” no county, no town, no arts colony, no magnet for tourists. Even the name is a corruption of those first people’s words.
But there is one thing for which the area now named Taos is famous, at least locally — as old as time, and dependent not at all on humanity for its existence: the famed Taos light.
It really is different here. Part of it is the altitude; part of it is the air here is relatively clear, compared to most parts of the country; part of its is the existence of the mountains and the specific regional wether patterns, which cooperate to create an interplay of sun and clouds and shadow in a way unique to this spot.
As we head into autumn, the light here really comes into its own, with the remnants of the monsoonal weather patterns still delivering occasional passing storms interspersed with a clarity of atmosphere found only in the time the leaves turn and fall.
I’ve seen the light here described as magical, mystical, mysterious, ethereal — I’ve used those words myself — and it’s all of those things, yet none of those things. It’s a phenomenon of Nature that is beyond human description; there are no words, because words are wholly inadequate to do it justice. It exists in a place beyond words, beyond mere description, beyond reproduction in — reduction to — literary generalizations and artistic representations.
The most we can do is approach it at a distance, the same sort of distance the visible spectrum of light bears to our ability to see it. We can reach out a hand, but we can’t touch it, not in any tangible way. And yet, it touches us. physically, casting light and shadow, and in a way deeper still, at the core of being. It can felt as much as seen, experienced in a way that few other phenomena can.
And it is its own blessing, its own gift, never more so than to peoples whose lifeways, and indeed lives, revolve in part around the presence of the light.
Once in a great while, another element of Nature comes along to reflect that light in a way that only something natural can. And so it was with the piece in the photo at the top of this post. The stone was half of a pair that we found about a half-dozen years ago while stocking up on materials and supplies. It’s called rutilated quartz, so named for the long, thin, ice-like inclusions, known as rutiles, that are visible in the stone. Quartz, of course, comes in a host of colors and forms; while they are all “crystals,” in a sense, they take opaque, crystalline, clear, and rutilated forms (the last of which is visible only in clear bits of quartz). i’ve seen rutilated transparent quartz, more colorless than white; in red quartz, a deep garnet shade; in smoky quartz, a golden brown that resembles topaz; and here, in this golden shade, called “yellow quartz” but not really yellow at all.
It’s the color of the Taos light.
And so the stones’ pieces were named almost even before they were created. There was a bracelet, too, one designed as the necklace is, with an ajouré seat of the bezel, cut out to permit the feel of the stone against the wearer’s skin. it was a beautiful piece:
The same pattern, evocative of a Morning Star, chiseled out of the silver backing, allowing the glowing stone and its icicle-like rutiles, tiny shafts of light, to rest against the skin.
It glowed like the dawn sky as the sun answers the call of the people’s prayers; like the slanting golden light of an October sunset.
It sold very soon.
Such was not the case with its twin, set into a matching bezel but hung instead like spun gold from a thread of sterling silver. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Capture and keep Taos Pueblo’s mysterious golden light when you wear this oval pendant of rutilated quartz. The sterling silver bezel’s reverse bears a hand-cut ajouré diamond that resembles a Morning Star, allowing the stone’s glow to shine through to the skin. Reverse shown below.
Sterling silver; rutilated quartz
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Strangely (to me), the necklace has not yet found its home. I like to tell myself, as I pass it every day atop the display case, that that’s because it is home, in this place where the light blesses us daily with its own exhibit. But I know that that is not the case, and that someday it will leave this place, taking a bit of our magical, mystical, mysterious, ethereal light with it to brighten someone else’s days.
~ Aji
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