Days like these remind us just how much we need the water.
In the dark hours of yesterday morning, between five and six-o’clock, the forecast winter weather finally hit. It was not, mostly, what had been predicted, but the one thing the colonial experts did get [mostly] right was the wind. I say “mostly,” because while they forecast 40- to 60-mph winds with gusts around 70, we wound up with sustained winds in excess of 70 miles per hour, blasting a little snow, a bit more sleet, and a lot of hail on the horizontal. It was not, however, just the precipitation or the wind; the skies provided a light show like we have never seen here before, not merely bolts but balls of lightning exploding in the near dark just outside the windows, emitting tracers like the bombs and flares of wartime.
It was a stunning exhibition, sobering and exhilarating in roughly equal measure. And at six o’clock, the inevitable occurred: a sudden sharp series of shorts, and then the power was out.
All of it.
And with it, the water, too.
These days, well pumps are virtually all electric. Having any kind of bypass is prohibitively expensive, and so when our old [also electric] pump failed six years ago, what we could afford was the standard replacement. And so, when the power fails, whatever is in the pipeline, to use a quite literal turn of phrase, is all there is. It doesn’t last long.
It would have been one thing if the storm had actually produced any snow to speak of, but it delivered only hail and graupel and the faintest bit of powder. The winds, on the other hand, delivered a ground blizzard thereafter, and so the bare inch that actually landed was almost entirely blown out beyond the peaks before the day was out. By today, only the smallest amount remained, and only a few spaces where the earth could be said to have anything more than a faintly damp surface layer.
Winter weather, yes. Water? Not so much.
It’s a time to pray for the water — that which flows underground and pools upon the surface of the earth, and that which falls from the sky. We have precious little of the latter, and the former is now visibly in jeopardy. For peoples who know the value and sacredness of water, this is a painful state of affairs, indeed.
And yet, sacred waters remain. In the face of the catastrophic harms that colonialism has wrought and continues to wreak, the First Medicine still breathes life into the world. Nowhere is that more true that in this place, where the sacred is found in the breath of life and a blue lake.
Today’s featured work embodies both, and not merely in metaphorical terms. Wings created it over a period of weeks last month, intending it as a gift for his oldest daughter. It’s a figurative work, one manifest as both symbolic spirit being and a human-like form, and that dichotomy extends to its identity, and to hers.
But first, a bit about how it came to be.
The inspiration for the piece came from the second stone in the pendant, the teardrop-shaped cabochon. It’s a material known as Shattuckite, one of the many minerals found in copper deposits. It’s now possible to find what is labeled as “Shattuckite” sourced to many different mines around the world, but the original version of this stone, which is also a rare stone, comes from Bisbee, Arizona, named for the old Shattuck Mine there.
This is genuine Bisbee Shattuckite. It’s also the most spectacular specimen of the stone that either of us has ever seen.
Wings acquired it earlier this year, almost as an afterthought; he had asked me to find a few cabs in particular style for work he had in mind. There are a few master lapidarists who sell their work online whose skill, talent, and knowledge we trust implicitly, and one of them is in Arizona. I had found a couple of the pieces that Wings wanted, and I had come across this cabochon during my search. When I showed it to him, he was immediately intrigued, and asked me to add it to the order.
After it arrived, it sat in the open on his workbench for some time, awaiting inspiration. When it arrived, it was very obviously an example of a stone finding its own actualization: Sitting on the workbench in the natural afternoon light, what appeared in the stone’s layered depths were the intense blues of the most sacred of lakes, marbled on the surface by translucent white, like the late summer sun shimmering on its surface, or bits of ice riming the waves in winter.
Blue Lake is, of course, that sacred site for Wings’s people and ways. It is also part of his daughter’s traditional name, because she was born during the days of the annual pilgrimage to it.
It just so happened that a domed rectangular cabochon of translucent blue chalcedony lay on the workbench some distance above it. It’s a stone that seems to absorb light into its depths, refracting back a nearly opalescent glow in gradient shades from cornflower to ice blue to nearly white. And it happened to be the perfect size to sit atop the teardrop, the latter turned upside-down so that the two combined seemed to create a humanoid spirit figure.
Wings created a single backing for the pendant, linking head to body, with separate scalloped bezels set atop it to hold each stone. He edged each with twisted silver, and added a lightly flared bail at the top adorned only with a single stamp repeated: two long traditional arrows pointing toward each other, as though guiding one’s focus inward.
And on the reverse of the pendant, he chose his favorite stylized arrowhead stamp, the one that he loves to use to create microstamped patterns of waves, and created whirlpools with them on the reverse.
The pendant alone was powerful, but he hung it from a strand of beads designed to catch all the shades in the stones.
I have never seen (nor heard of) Shattuckite beads; the real material is undoubtedly too rare for that. But this specimen was manifest in an extraordinary range of blues and opalescent whites, the blues ranging from palest aquamarine to the teal shades of turquoise and apatite to the cobalt and indigo hues of royal gem-grade lapis lazuli. Marbled with the icy blues and glowing whites of what appeared to be a mix of chalcedony and a little quartz, cut by a master with a high dome to show off hidden depths, it was a phenomenon of a cabochon, a truly elemental jewel. Paired with the blue chalcedony, it needed a strand of beads of commensurate quality.
I had ordered a substantial selection of ultra-high-grade gemstone beads for him at about the same time as he acquired the cabochons that included the Shattuckite specimen, plus another lot subsequently. Several of the strands were intended for use with specific designs that he had in mind.
The blues and whites were intended for this.
The large round blue beads were fabulously chatoyant specimens of kyanite — a little larger than usual, deep indigo blue, and alive with a glowing silver shimmer throughout. At the center, seven of these big blue marbles alternated with the icy refraction of faceted rondels of rainbow moonstone. Single large rainbow moonstone orbs flanked by smaller faceted rondels of aquamarine as separators then extended upward into defined segments of blue and white: two sections each of eight smaller apatite spheres of similar quality, also intensely hued and just as intensely chatoyant, bisected by a length of four rainbow moonstone rounds separated, again, by faceted aquamarine rondels. Another single moonstone/aquamarine combination led to the anchor section, consisting on either side of four smaller round apatite beads, one aquamarine separator, and four tiny rounds each of diamond-cut sterling silver.
Together, it reminded me of a waterfall: rich blues rippling with white in the light of the sun. It also reminds me of the fall of the First Medicine from the sky, of the shimmering of snow falling upon its icy surface now, and of the blues of the monsoons that mark those summer days of pilgrimage.
Days for which his beloved and beautiful daughter is named, and her gift in turn, as well — one of the most beautiful traditional names I’ve ever heard: Born At the Time of Blue Lake.
Birth and rebirth. Healing and renewal. The first medicine and life itself.
The breath of life and a blue lake.
~ 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.
