We awakened this morning to a complete lack of any visible smoke plume from the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Wildfire Complex. Even knowing that its absence was owed only to a shift in wind direction, it still seemed cause for hope; perhaps they achieved more containment overnight.
It was not to be.
A few minutes ago, the official reporter for wildfire events in this state announced that the fire had consumed some 1,500 new acres yesterday, while the needle remained unmoved on containment.
Since today is supposed to be a day of unusually high and powerful winds, with tomorrow bringing more of the same, it’s not good news.
Even now, the wind is rising, although it’s still not much more than a brisk breeze; the full extent of its true trickster nature is unlikely to show itself much before noon, at the earliest. But where a few minutes ago, we had dared to hope for the best, now we are readying minds and heart and spirits, yes, and bodies, too, for the worst out of this day.
But not all spring winds carry trickster spirits.
June is rapidly approaching, and by now there should be plenty of the water in the pond, filtering out slowly across the land. That is clearly not to be this year (more worrisome is the possibility that it will never be again, but we can’t let our thoughts go there just yet). I saw two ducks wending their way southwestward over the land yesterday, and mourned the fact that they would not be stopping here, as their kind historically have done. They can see from the air that there is no water, so they were making their way, most likely, to the river.
They are not the only spirits who no longer visit.
We have had no herons visit, no cranes flying overhead, certainly no wayward ibises off their usual migratory path. But we have also had precious few bees and butterflies so far this year, and no dragonflies at all. Even last year, with the dearth of water that accompanied the deepening drought, a couple of damselflies found reason to visit the catmint, and a few dragonflies buzzed around us throughout the warm months.
Perhaps there was a message on the wind a year ago.
Of course, we know that there was; these particular tidings have been delivered to this world repeatedly for years now, and still colonial forces and systems and structures stubbornly refuse to heed it. The difficulty comes in divining the more specific message for this bit of land here: Is it a warning, telling us that we cannot do the work? Is it, rather, an urging to do the work? Is it both at once? Is it something else entirely?
At the time, I could not help but wonder whether these giant darners would be the last ones we would see here. The coming weeks will tell us more, but these small spirits are urgently needed now, not merely for the messages they may bring, but for the fact that their presence generally also means the presence of water.
This week’s featured #TBT work, a throwback to the summer season eleven years ago, assumes the form and shape these tiny wingéd emissaries in beautiful fashion. It was one in a small informal series of pendants (sometimes with chains included; sometimes alone) that Wings created between, say, 2010 and 2012, all iterations of Dragonfly, but each one unique.
This is one carried the rain on its wings, with two eyes made of Skystones, rain hardened as it fell to earth (in this case, either Sleeping Beauty or Kingman turquoise). Wings created virtually all of them (I can think of only one exception, a commissioned piece) with heavy-gauge sterling silver triangle wire bodies, cut to length and shaped to taper at the lower end. Some were plain, some were scored throughout, and some, like this one, were scored only near the heart: here, five extremely deep lines created with a plain chisel-end stamp, carving the silver all the way around to create four separate ridges, honoring the winds and the sacred directions. It made for a simple, spare, extremely elegant center to the piece, nothing busy or distracting about it
The wings themselves he cut freehand of lighter-weight silver, but first would come the stampwork: initially, a single long line on either side, one with a gently curving gradient, to delineate the upper wings from the lower ones; then, a single motif in a similarly gentle arc, this one in the form of a radiant sunrise, turned ninety degrees so that the curvature was vertical rather than horizontal. This Wings stamped repeatedly along each of the four wings, turning the ends of the “sunrise” curve outward on either side. This created the “veins” of the wings, translucent in Dragonfly’s real-life counterpart; here, the silver shimmer created a similar effect. It required scores, perhaps hundreds, of repeated strikes of the hammer to create this effect, and when he was done? It looked very much like rain.
Once the stampwork was complete, Wings set about freeing the dragonfly wings from the silver. He created them as a single broad expanse, shaped freehand as he moved the saw forward: almost, but not quite, flat on the top, with only the faintest curvature, then an end deeply curved inward, then suddenly outward again, this time with a sharper point, and a visible lower arc on either side along the bottom edge. In cutting them free of the surrounding precious metal, he used a jeweler’s saw with a filament-thin blade, always moving forward, never back, even in the tightest points between the paired wings. These would become an underlay beneath the body, soldered securely into place beneath the bail; the bail itself was organically formed by hand-drilling a perfect circle in the top of the triangle-wire body.
Lastly, for the smithing portions of the work, Wings fashioned the two bezels that would hold the eyes. If you’ve wondered why Wings consistently used triangle wire for the bodies in this series, and not, say, round or half-round wire, wonder no more: The sides of the “triangle,” slanting down from the apex, are the perfect angle for the placement of gemstone “eyes.” He created plain bezels for these, soldered seamlessly into the “wire” so that they appeared to rise organically from it.
Structure complete, he oxidized the joins between bezel and wire and all of the score- and stampwork on the wings, and buffed the piece to a medium-high polish, enough to catch the light and refract it back, but not so much that the oxidation of the stampwork was erased; that darkening of the edges allowed the “veining” of the wings to pop, and thus also to catch and refract the light.
All that remained was to set the two Skystone “eyes” and bless the piece traditionally. I no longer have any idea who acquired this one; it’s been too many years, and would most likely have been an in-person purchase in the gallery. Whomever wears it now, however, wears the spirit of one of the messengers of summer season here.
I still look forward to seeing them arrive this year; hope is a stubborn thing. But if they do not? Well, that, too, is a message on the wind, and one the world will need urgently to heed.
~ Aji
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