Today, the only storm we’re likely to get is a ferocious heat.
There are warnings out for half the state today, and in theory, we are not included, but despite that, we expect the mercury to rise well into the nineties here. It’s common for us to hit the mercury’s century mark perhaps once or twice a summer, at the very most; we often go years without getting out of the nineties, and indeed, temperatures over ninety used to be relatively few. I won’t say “and far between,” because our patterns here have typically been to front-load the high heat at the beginning of summer, mot of it in the latter half of June, at which point the monsoonal patterns would take over and the rains would cool the air before it had a chance to reach such highs.
We don’t have such patterns any longer, and we cannot depend upon the rains to arrive in the first place, never mind cool air and earth besides.
Still, the forecast for rain tomorrow remains in place, even if the percentage is steadily dropping. Our more worrisome summer storms here now involve wind and fire, and even as we mourn the loss of our norms, it heightens our gratitude for the small amounts of rain we do get.
Yesterday, the air here was filled with cottonwood pollen, which looks exactly as the name would lead one to expect: white cottony puffs that float through the air, adrift upon the winds . . . until the winds gather speed and power and create what looks like a summer snowstorm. I can see the pollen outside the window now, and evidence of those rising winds once more, but at least it’s blowing out the haze of smoke from the various fires ablaze to the west of us. If that is the only gift this day grants us, it will be a good one.
But the winds also whip up the dust, and all it takes is the slightest shift from them to return the smoke pall our way. Whatever else the day brings, we can likely be sure of flaming sunset skies tonight, and the possibility of a red moon, too — products both of summer’s perfect storm of dust and fire.
This week’s #TBT featured work, dating back some fourteen years or so ago and an entry in one of Wings’s longest-running signature series, the Pueblo pin, embodies exactly this sort of night sky. This is, after all, the season that my own people call the Budding Moon, and relatives call the Strawberry Moon, one that often possesses a pink cast in its full phase. The signal differences now is that our own phase is waxing but not yet full, and it’s less likely to be pink than the fiery orange-red of coral, a product of dust and smoke.
This is Wings’s original Pueblo pin design: all freehand saw-, score-, and stampwork, with a single cabochon as an accent. It’s a design that served its purpose well for decades. A couple of years ago, however, he was inspired to try something slightly different: Instead of stamping the traditional ladders on the surface of the pin, he tried fashioning a fully three-dimensional one from fine-gauge sterling silver wire — round, half-round, or triangle, usually of mixed gauges, each post wrought individually and each rung, too, the latter of a gauge finer still. Once cut to size, he solders each together into a single piece in the form of a ladder, then overlays it against the front of the pin. It has proved extraordinarily popular, with only two currently in inventory; all the others have long since sold.
But this is the old style, the original design, and despite the lack of an overlay, it’s a beautiful design and a beautiful work. All of them are based loosely on the iconic architecture of North House, the more than one-thousand-year-old multi-story house on the north side of the plaza, one of two such buildings and the one into which he was born.
He cuts it free of the surrounding silver using a jeweler’s saw with a filament-thin blade: stairstepped rooflines, perfectly straight and even, forming a crenellated topline from end to end; straight sides for the walls and ends of the lower edge, too; a broad, sweeping arc saw-cut across the center of the bottom edge, the better to imply the way in which the homes are centered around the plaza, and in practical terms, to provide a better fit, allowing the pin to lie properly across the surface to which it is fastened. The pin itself is domed lightly from the reverse, and that lower arc allows its edges to lie flat without snagging or tilting. He chooses a starting point and cuts the entire outline, always moving forward, never back; that includes the small, tightly-formed cutouts that serve as the doors along the bottom edge.
The stampwork consists of textured scorelines at the rooflines and along the walls, delineate each home from its neighbors in spare but elegant form. Very short straight horizontal lines form the windows, proportional to the very small size of their real-life counterparts. Tiny circles, made with a divot-end stamp, create the vigas, the large round trunks that serve as beams to support each structure’s ceiling and roof. And here, of course, the ladders are stamped using extremely narrow scored lines: There are two, each with longer tapered lines of irregular lengths for the posts, and shorter ones for the rungs that are, in real life, lashed to the posts with sinew.
Then, after doming and adding the pin assembly on the reverse, he fashions the bezel for the stone. The stones vary widely, from turquoise and coral to lapis and malachite, garnet, moonstone, hematite, opal, jade, more. Each is always offset from center, and it is the choice of stone that typically provides the animating spirit of a particular piece. In this instance, he chose coral set in what would be, in real life, a somewhat westerly direction — perfect for the setting of the first full red moon of summer. This was an exceptionally fine specimen, crimson, but much more red than orange.
It was the color of fire . . . and of the setting of a moon set alight by dust and smoke.
As I write, a quick check of the weather shows that we have gone from 85 to 92 degrees — a 7-degree jump in the space of only fifteen minutes. It will get much hotter before this day is done; we might in fact approach the century mark yet, should the clouds not intervene. We are blessed to have the adobe to keep our home cool, but even so, fall of dark will be a gift on a day such as this, red moon and all. Climate collapse has given us a perfect storm of dust and fire, and we must find our ameliorations where we can.
And for tomorrow, we shall be ready for the rain.
~ Aji
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