At last, the winds are [mostly] quiet.
Oh, they’re likely to rise again this afternoon, but not to levels of recent days. Which is good, because at the moment, we have more than 106,000 acres burning to our east, uncontained, and apparently no help coming from the federal government.
To say that I am disgusted would be understating the case by several orders of magnitude, but I am also unsurprised. Meanwhile, larges swaths of this rare and delicate habitat in a land older than time will be no more, and given the ravages of colonialism and the 1,200-year drought it has spawned? There will be no reclamation, no rehabilitation, no restoration in our lifetimes. This land, the animal and plant spirits that inhabited it?
Gone.
People forget exactly what that means, but they will be reminded again soon enough. It won’t be just the lack of animals, the missing elk and deer and coyote; it will also be the loss of the raptors and the songbirds, of the insects, of the lizards and the salamanders around watersheds now destroyed. It will, of course, make room for the borers to invade, non-indigenous insect species that feed off the trees that managed to evade the flames, thus ensuring a spreading and continual destruction on that front, too.
And the loss of animals and trees will not be all of it, either. There will be no stands of indigenous shrubs, no medicine plants, no alpine meadows and summer wildflowers, either.
I could weep.
I don’t dare.
Here, on this side of the ridgeline, we are more than lucky, more than fortunate now: We are blessed. At this moment, there is no real threat to us, despite what is said to be a small blaze burning southwest of us now. And the sight of the smoke plume from the gigantic and fast-moving Cook’s Peak Fire, having moved far enough north to be billowing now over Pueblo Peak, behind El Salto, and even up from the back of Lobo Peak, is a sobering reminder to be grateful for our relative safety.
And so today seems a good time to reflect upon the gifts of summer to come, to honor the beauty and medicine of warmer winds when the fires are at long last spent. This land, so stark and rugged and manifest in such harsh extremes of climate and weather, is nonetheless capable of a rare and delicate beauty. It’s a land of rocky crags and cacti, of sharp aridity dancing with monsoonal storms, yes — but it is also a land of alpine meadows adance with rainbow wildflowers beneath blue skies and silvered light.
Today’s featured masterwork, one of only two remaining in Wings’s signature series of necklaces, The Four Seasons, embodies these very gifts. It’s wrought, as were its three sister works, in big, bold form, but touched with the delicacy of a master, both in the smithing of the silver and in the organic creation of the stone. It assumes, again, like its sisters, a form of a shield-like shape that honors the spokes of star and flower, of the winds and the sacred directions, this one robed in the shawl and fringe of the summer spirits. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Summer: Wildflower Meadow Under a Midday Sky Necklace
The most vibrant spirits of the warm winds dance all season long. This is the best of the high-country Summer: wildflower meadow under a midday sky, an emerald earth and a turquoise expanse alive in the silver light. With this necklace, Wings calls the flowers to dance once more, from the earliest days of spring to the very end of Indian summer, robed and shawled in their finest dress. The oversized pendant is cut entirely freehand of solid sterling silver, shaped into the graceful looping arcs of a giant prairie blossom. Each of its eight outstanding “petal” cabochons, each an oval of high-grade malachite spectacularly agatized and scalloped in extraordinary patterns, is ringed with a flowering, radiant sun motif. Single wildflowers swaying atop graceful stalks are stamped freehand in a random pattern all across the pendant’s face, twining around the square center cabochon of intensely-hued chrysocolla in malachite and fluttering between the petals. Each cabochon is set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed with twisted silver; the pendant backing is buffed to a rich, velvety Florentine finish, as soft as the summer breeze. Small matched blossoms trace the simple, lightly-flared bail, through which are strung a phenomenal mix of graduated beads: ultra-high-grade chrysocolla, solid and heavy, alternating with malachite cube beads and silver-plated large rounds, extending upward on either side into more malachite cubes interspersed with deep blue turquoise orbs and small but solid sterling silver rounds and tiny indigo apatite spheres. Beads are strung over extra-sturdy tri-ply foxtail made of heavy nylon specially treated and encased in metal, then silver-plated for color matching; findings are sturdy sterling silver assemblies. Pendant including bail hangs 5″, 4.25″ excluding bail, and is 4.25″ across at the widest point; the bail is 3/4″ long by 9/16″ across at the widest point; center cabochon is 11/16″ square; cardinal cabochons are 1″ long by 1/2″ across; ordinal cabochons are 3/4″-7/8″ long by 7/16″ across; bead strand is 22″ long, excluding findings. [All dimensions approximate.] Designed jointly by Wings and Aji; third in The Four Seasons Series. Additional close-up views of pendant and strand shown below.
Sterling silver (setting and findings);
malachite; chrysocolla in malachite (pendant cabochons); tri-ply silver-plated foxtail (to hold beads);
chrysocolla; silver-plate; malachite; sterling silver; turquoise; apatite (beads)
$2,000 plus shipping, handling, and insurance
This work really does call to mind a shield, a piece of talismanic power, the punctuation of the bead strand the sort to facilitate meditation and prayer. It seems possible to count off one’s blessings upon it, reminded by varying shape and size of the great diversity of blessings our world, and the summer season, bestow upon us.
And then there is the pendant: protective, yet delicate, set with jewels of ribbons and lace, and somehow as timeless as the flowering earth it represents.
We need reminders of such timelessness now.
Even as conditions for battling the blazes improve, the plumes continue to grow and stretch and coalesce, all of it occurring now not in the nebulous world of what we know exists beyond the mountains, but squarely within our sight. It reminds us just how fragile the presence of these gifts can be, and how much we need to do to support their ability to live and thrive. For these are gifts, no question — blessings, all: the beauty and medicine of warmer winds, here for the shortest season of our year.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
