Today dawned perfectly clear, but now at midday, a few pale clouds are drifting in to hang a veil above the horizon. It was fifty-five degrees at 9:30 this morning; now, the mercury is above seventy and still climbing.
Winter seems to banished entirely, making space fully for spring.
It’s ephemeral, of course; the forecast this week is for rain on Tuesday turning to snow on Wednesday, with all the cold that typically accompanies it. But it’s fine, welcome, even — it means that the heat of these rare early days will not be permitted to dry out the soft, receptive earth.
It also means that we are likely to have unusual exhibitions of the fire in the spring sky now.
Most often, as in recent days, it’s simply a glow this time of year — as though the embers have already fallen below the horizon, leaving us with the orange-red radiance reflecting off the darkening skies. But occasionally already we are getting long trailing bands of clouds and a rare early-monsoonal pattern of thunderheads that ignite whole flames within sunrise and particularly sunset. And since our earth was, quite literally, at the square of the sun only days ago, it seems fitting that we should be able to see and acknowledge its fire now.
Today’s featured work, a personal favorite, embodies both the fiery glow of the alpine desert sky and the radiant silver shimmer of the flowing arc of the light. From its description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
The Square of the Sun Ring
The sun is no more square than the stone, but both make it possible to believe in a world with four corners. Wings summons angles at the square of the sun and the spirit of this ancient light in this ring, a sharply angular, yet high-domed rectangle of blood-red carnelian set upon a band of hammered silver light. The band is cut freehand in his signature scalloped design, then hammered by hand to give it a shimmering vintage look and feel. The carnelian cabochon, glossy and slightly translucent, hints at hidden depths as it rests securely in a scalloped bezel. The band is 1/2″ wide at the widest point and 5/16″ across at the narrowest point; the stone is 3/4″ long by 1/2″ wide (dimensions approximate). Sizeable. Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; carnelian
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This lot of carnelian cabochons, rectangles all, have been in Wings’s inventory for more years than either of us can remember, and no one knows where they came from, either. They are unusual, not merely in shape but in substance and spirit: Carnelian is one of those gems that manages to be at once opaque and translucent, and while there is no transparency in this stone, it still feels like gazing into red glass — or, perhaps more aptly, gazing through the brick red of flame.
It’s a color we see in the sky this time of year, and a hazily translucent quality, too, as a result of the dust light described here in yesterday’s Friday Feature: The trickster winds that haunt land and season kick up so much dust and dirt that it can hang suspended in the air, seemingly motionless, for hours after the wind dies down. Add to that the wildfires that have bedeviled this land in recent years as colonial-driven and catastrophic climate change tightens its death grip, and our spring air, once clear and fresh, is now too often filled with smoke.
The result is eerie, and beautiful: a perfectly visible sun, edges acutely defined, face a gradient of occasional golds and frequent reds. In such circumstances, it shows itself as a perfect circle, and suddenly our own angle to it becomes that much more sharply defined, as well.
It’s a humbling sight, for so very many reasons.
It’s a reminder, too, of all the work we have to do.
The only fire here so far this day has been what is presumably a prescribed burn on the lower slopes beneath El Salto. There have been such burns more days than not in recent weeks, but the plume of this suggests that it caught and burned more rapidly than expected, because it has been suddenly extinguished, save for a faint haze. It’s wise; the winds are likely to rise again before long, and while they will not be the violent gale of a few days ago, it only takes a small gust to whip embers into flames and ignite a conflagration here.
As I write, the bank of clouds to the southwest has expanded — not thickened, for they are still the pale and nebulous gray of a veil, but risen in height and lengthened at either end. They are, perhaps, the first indicator of the coming change in the weather; there will likely be more of their kind tomorrow and the day after.
But for this day, the air is warm and mostly still yet, sun bright and the scent of spring on the faint breeze. Perhaps the meadowlark will bring the season fully to us this evening. Whether he makes it this far or not, we shall see the fire in the spring sky tonight before the fall of dark.
~ 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.
