The forecast was for snow tomorrow and Monday, but this morning we awakened to cloudy skies — feathery waves of gray rolling like a gentle tide above the northern peaks on their journey eastward. Now, of course, the forecast is altered yet again, any real chance of snow pushed ever further out, but the last snow has at least left the soil soft, even if all else is painfully dry.
Cloudy mornings are a rarity here, or at least they used to be. In fall, those retreating sky spirits on the dark hours partner with the light to create a positively glorious dawn: October, particularly, but even into November, is often marked with sunrises in electric shades of gold and amber, coral and flame red. We had fewer of those this year, mostly because the cloud cover either lingered into the daylight hours or was simply nonexistent.
But now, as fall turns inexorably to winter, they seem to have returned — not, it must be said, to reconstruct the flame-hued skies of fall, but instead to open each new day with the cold fire of the first winter’s light.
Here at the feet of the mountains, it’s a special kind of fire, and a special kind of light: one routed between peaks and slopes and filtered through the millions of needles of the conifers that blanket them . . . even if that blanket has grown threadbare by now, far more visible patches of earth and craggy rock now visible than only five years ago. It’s one more casualty of the drought, which sounds small, but in fact it’s the entire ecosystem rolled and rolling across the slanting walls of our small world, and when the evergreens die, much of that world dies with them.
And so every day that the first forest light shows us the greens and blues of living, thriving spruce and fir, juniper and Ponderosa pine, is a day to celebrate — an occasion for joy and hope, to be sure, but also to recommit ourselves to the work of keeping them that way.
Today’s featured work, one in Wings’s newer informal series of pendants, embodies this daily gift. From its description in the Pendants Gallery here on the site:
The First Forest Light Pendant
Dawn breaks through the the twilit-blue boughs of pine and fire, cedar and spruce, to dappling the mountains in the first forest light. With this pendant, Wings summons the blues of a boreal dawn to dance with the golden rutile of pine cones glowing in the newest sun. The focal cabochon, beautifully asymmetrical, is formed of a wafer-thin slice of actual pine cone set into the swirling blues of shimmering resin. The whole cabochon rests gently in a scalloped bezel edged with twisted silver, the backing extended organically and scalloped to follow the lines of three glowing drops of pure sunlight: small round cabochons of yellow-gold rutilated quartz, each set into its own saw-toothed bezel to catch and refract the light. The bail is hand-milled in the lines of a petaled floral pattern, cut freehand into a slender and subtly graceful flare that lets the stones beneath it speak. Full pendant, including bail, hangs 2-1/2″ long in total; bezel is 2″ long by 1-1/4″ across at the widest point; focal cabochon is 1-3/4″ long by 1″ across at the widest point; bail is 1/2″ long by 3/8″ across at the widest point; small cabochons are each 1/4″ across (all dimensions approximate). Ships with an 18″ sterling silver snake chain.
Sterling silver; pine cone in resin; golden rutilated quartz
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
As I’ve noted before, it’s vanishingly rare for Wings to use resin or other non-natural materials in his work; he has always been drawn to the native gifts of earth and water and sky. But occasionally, we’ll encounter an artist whose work is outstanding, and in this case, combines the two forms of material: a slice of natural pine cone, ephemerally thin, embedded in a swirl of teal blues created by human hands.
It is, perhaps, a lesson in itself, a reminder that we are here, in part, to work with our world — to create, with it, an environment of beauty, of healing, of harmony. It’s a way of engaging with the world that is notably absent from colonialism, which seeks to exploit, to profiteer, to use up and discard and hoard into extinction. It’s a worldview that never sees the first forest light; it doesn’t know how, and cares even less.
Which is why we value the perspective of this place so deeply. We are surrounded on all sides still (over the objections and best efforts to the contrary of the continually-invading colonial population, it must be noted) by beauty, by the sacred, by some of the best that earth and sky have to offer. Now, we awaken every day to the cold fire of the first winter’s light, and it’s a light to warm the heart, the spirit, and our world.
~ Aji
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