Up before the sunrise this morning, and a glowing river of coral flowed across the sky from behind the northeast peaks, a cascade of cloud and light stretching westward toward the heavy smoke haze at the horizon, fading to amber and then to peach as the seconds ticked past. Today seems to mark the first of the fall skies: shades of fire before a turquoise dawn, and if the air is not as clear as it should be now, the edge to wind and the rainbow of color are still welcome.
In truth, our days have mostly not been as they should be for some time now. We have grown to expect that what we thought of as seasonal norms are now solidly in the past, taking our cues from the wild migratory birds who are adapting quite literally on the fly now. We have been blessed with an unusual number this year, mostly of unusual duration, too, and a few that have never been here before have decided to avail themselves of refuge here.
We count returning spirits among them, too: Yesterday, smoke haze notwithstanding, the whole piñon jay clan, some twenty or thirty birds, alternated between aspens and feeder. More crucially, we have a pair of Western scrub jays this year, once regularly in residence throughout the winter here but mostly absent over the last half-dozen years or so. This pair is young, their slender bodies proof of the bare newness of maturity, but they seem happy to be “back,” with that same sense of ancestral memory the land uses to call its own. They are larger, with gray undersides and hints of rust red like their smaller cousins, but the flash of their upper body, their wings and tailfeathers, too, is purest turquoise, the deep indigo blue of the high desert sky and the stone named for it.
Today’s featured work embodies the flash of feathers and vaulted expanse that mark a radiant fall morning here — indigo and silver like the petals of some cosmic flower, opening, cascading, like the light that falls from an autumn sky. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Turquoise Dawn Earrings
One of the jewels of the desert is the turquoise dawn. Wings invokes its beauty and power with these classic earrings, wrought in traditional fashion of silver and stone. The sterling silver settings are formed of bright oval medallions, polished to a mirror sheen and edged all the way around in hand-stamped sunrise symbols to catch and refract the light. At their centers, in spare, low-profile bezels, rest a pair of stunning free-form Turquoise Mountain cabochons, brilliant sky blue and dusted with bits of earthy red-gold matrix. Each earrings hangs 1-5/8″ long by 1-3/16″ across at the widest point; each cabochon is roughly 7/8″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point.
Sterling silver; Turquoise Mountain turquoise
$775 + shipping, handling, and insurance
These have long been a personal favorite: big and bold, yet astonishingly simple, set with two of the most beautiful blues I’ve ever seen, freeform and dancing in the embrace of radiant silver light. The cabochons are extraordinary, the richest, deepest blues of the western sky at morning, webbed and whorled with the earthy fire of the clouds at dawn. They manage to be substantial without being heavy, and they glow from within and without.
Now, as the sun ascends the southeast sky, the pall of smoke has moved in, a pale yellow-gray ashimmer with particulate matter . . . and begun to move out again, to just the slightest degree. Such air movement as we have now can only barely be called a breeze, but that will likely gain a little force as the sun makes its way around the sky. At least the aspen line is visible on the north side of El Salto, perhaps a promise that we shall see clear skies yet this day.
For now, the gift of dawn is enough: shades of indigo contending with coral fire, much like the stones, unrestrained and full of power, that rise from the centers of today’s featured work. This is the light that falls from an autumn sky, a once-yearly event of enormous power and ethereal beauty, and we will enjoy it while it lasts.
~ Aji
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