Three days from the new calendar year, and it’s all blue skies and too-warm temperatures.
There are a few trailing bands of white here and there, mostly contrails diffused into something that looks more natural than they are. Behind Pueblo Peak, it looks as though one shelf of lenticular cloud is forming, but if so, it won’t be enough to develop into the First Medicine of winter that this land so badly needs.
In truth, there are two “first medicines” in our world, at any season. One is the water; the other, the light. Neither is sufficient without the other; together, they form life and breath for us all. We have had light in glorious abundance this year, but the water has been severely lacking for too long now.
We know, of course, that such conditions will only get worse. The only way to reverse it is to reverse the trajectory that the colonial world so recklessly and insistently pursues, but we also know that that will only happen when the choice is removed from those in authority and control. And as romantic as many think it sounds to talk of revolution, the truth of the matter is that when at long last it finally occurs, it will be global catastrophe that causes it, not human resistance.
But that resistance remains crucial to survival, and even small acts matter.
As this planet enters its newest calendar year in a matter of days, it would seem a propitious time for people to commit themselves anew to such work. We do and have, although for us it’s a worldview and way of being, not a single decision or act nor a reaction to outside forces. This is how we were taught to live — what it means to have a life well-lived. It’s not about what the world misunderstands as power but is in fact merely authority and control, which are antithetical to a healthy world. It’s certainly not about money or financial wealth or the accumulation of material things; were that what drives us, we would adopt the colonial approach instead. And it’s not about honors or public accolades our attention, either; indeed, we were both raised with a worldview that the purpose of the work is to do what’s right, that public honors are also antithetical to that goal, and that those who seek public attention or roles of “leadership” are generally the least suited to either.
It’s a hard position to maintain in a society, and a world, that reverse both colonialist behaviors and their capitalist subsets, that privilege “winning,” and “getting ahead” above all else. Both of those terms are very much bound up with such a culture [and not with our own], starting from a premise that pits one against others by very definition, rather than a lifeway of cooperation and care that ensure that all have what they need to survive without turning it into the deadly zero-sum game that the outside world insists must be the case.
We are living the endgame, so to speak, of this attitude here. The half-life of colonialism is decay disguised as “progress,” death cloaked in the trappings of “life,” and our small world here is an object lesson in such mortal injuries now. All the invocations of “love and light” in the world will do nothing to heal these wounds; this requires work, and a commitment to what the outside world would regard as sacrifice.
In truth, for us, it’s not much of a sacrifice. We don’t travel; it’s no longer safe, given the multiple pandemics afflicting the world, and our aging bodies couldn’t handle hours on a plane or train or in a car anyway. Our carbon footprint is exceedingly small. We don’t misuse or overuse the gifts Mother Earth provides; in a twelve-hundred-year drought, when there is no snowpack to speak of and no summer rainy season, it’s pointless to try to grow the lush hay that used to fill our fields. We have scaled our gardens back substantially . . . and even so, the soil gave us more squash this year than we could possibly use ourselves, leading us to give away a great deal of it.
And when the water comes, we tret it with the respect and reverence it deserves, collecting it in rain barrels in the summer, moving the snow [when we get any accumulation at all now, which is vanishingly rare] so that it can melt into the ground where it is most needed. However important the rains are to this lands survival, the snows are even more crucial, and every snowfall is a gift, a blessing, medicine.
Today’s featured work is the embodiment of this gift in beautiful form. It’s a cuff bracelet wrought in classic style, set with the stones and shades of storm and sky and surface waters, too, one whose name reflects the humility we hold in relation to its power. From its description in the Cuffs and Links and Bangles section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
When the Water Comes Cuff Bracelet
Pond or lake, rain or river, the ebb and flow of the tides: When the water comes, it comes as the First Medicine. Wings honors the medicine as he summons the rains and the pooled waters of the bluest of lakes with this cuff, hand-wrought in eighteen-gauge sterling silver. The band is hand-scored on either side and hand-stamped in a repeating pattern of radiant crescents connected by tiny sacred hoops; between the scored borders is a flowing water motif, connected at the ends by tiny petals in flower. The space between stampwork and edge is hand-texturized on either side, via hundreds of tiny dots struck individually by hand. At the center, elevated slightly from the bands surface, sits a breathtaking cabochon of lapis lazuli, set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed in twisted silver to offset its extraordinary cobalt blue infused with shimmering pyrite. The focal stone is flanked on either side by a pair of Skystones, each a small square of Sleeping Beauty turquoise, surface freeform in texture, color the blue of the desert sky adrift with more bits of pyrite amid an inky black matrix. The band is 6″ long by 1-3/16″ across; the bezel for the focal cabochon is 1-1/2″ long by 1-1/4″ across at the widest point; the focal lapis cabochon is 1-1/4″ long by 1″ across at the widest point; Square Sleeping Beauty cabochons are each 7/16″ across (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli; Sleeping Beauty turquoise
$1,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The silverwork on this piece is extraordinary. a perfect mix of finely detailed ornamentation and elegant unmarked space, a stunningly beautiful rendering of this land’s earth and waters and sky, all in silver and stone. The stampwork itself is spare, long, flowing lines that signify the water linked by radiant arcs of light. The borders are scored freehand, all using a single short-chisel-end stamp, chased repeatedly and meticulously to emboss clean lines deep into the surface.
And the edges? Those are a marvel of freehand texturization, all accomplished with a single divot-end stamp struck hundreds of times with the jeweler’s hammer. It’s heavy, labor-intensive work, and the result is a richly textured, otherworldly shimmer that frames the entire cuff.
And then, of course, there are the stones. The giant oval of royal lapis lazuli was part of a small parcel imported from Afghanistan, if memory serves — impossibly rich cobalt and royal blues with subtle matrix patterns in indigo and violet throughout the whole of stone, punctuated here and there by tiny sherds of calcite and the stardust shimmer of iron pyrite.
The square Skystones are natural Sleeping Beauty turquoise, both with rolling freeform surfaces, a bit like the waves and crests of the water flowing along the Great River. Each retains bits of natural matrix, some in shades of inky purple-black, others a sunny golden hue, the combination of colors and textures suitably rich for the stone they frame and the band that holds them all.
This was a work envisioned more for the medicine of summer: the monsoonal rainy season that used to be an annual daily occurrence for three months or more. But it works at least as well for winter, too; after all, it’s the snowpack that provides the majority of our surfaces waters with the thaw . . . or so it was when we had real winter here.
Neither summer rains nor winter snows are a given any longer. It’s hard to believe, at an elevation of nearly eight thousand feet even at the base of these alpine peaks. that our historical weather patterns have been so upended, completely inverted, in less than a decade. But these are the conditions we have now, and it’s up to us to adapt — not to become accustomed to such new patterns, which are not healthy for land or waters, plant or animal relatives, or us, but rather, to adapt our mindset, our commitment to the work, and our daily actions in a way that conserves what is now so much more scarce even as we keep at the obligations of restoration and renewal now.
On this day, through the birth of the new calendar year, and for the next half-month that the extended forecast shows us, we will have the blue skies and plenty of light. We will also have virtually no chance of snow.
But this land needs the first medicine of winter, and so do we. And it needs all of us, including those who live elsewhere, to seize the opportunity this new year affords us: to commit to changed worldviews and ways of being, to restore this wounded world that still sustains us to health and harmony now.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
