After several days in a row of a cold perfect clarity, dawn broke this day in a dance with new clouds. Most were a thin veil, but the band of amber and coral fire that linked El Salto to Pueblo Peak at the moment of the sunrise was more reminiscent of October than April. Thereafter, the flames faded into a broad gray-white shelf of lenticular clouds amassed atop each other, stretching from north’s eastern edge to the whole of the southern sky.
According to the forecast, no precipitation is due until Tuesday. Gale-force winds, though, are another matter entirely: They’re supposed to begin tomorrow and blow for four days straight. Of course, we’ve already had a few gusts today and the breeze is steady and brisk, as though they are gearing themselves up for tomorrow’s performance.
The skies, though, are a marvel, bright turquoise, webbed now at midday with trailing bands of white. The presence of clouds generally indicates the potential for a change in the weather, but these evoke a sense of calm, of tranquility even: the soft-edged serenity of sheltering skies.
Today’s featured work, a pair of earrings, embodies exactly this phenomenon, even if it might not be obvious at first glance. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Sheltering Sky Earrings
We live beneath the protection of a sheltering sky. Wings honors its shape and shade and spirit with these earrings, long dangling drops anchored by a protective Skystone. Two rich blue squares of natural American turquoise, likely from Arizona, are set into spare, low-profile bezels and sit atop sterling silver posts. Each stone is the intense, electric blue of pale indigo, marbled faintly with white host rock and occasional whorls of coppery-red matrix. At the bases of each anchor stone hangs a long sterling silver pendant, each attached via a pair of silver jump rings: a flared skirt of sterling silver edged on either side with sterling silver triangle wire. The image of a bear paw, symbol of protection and healing, is hand-stamped at the base of each pendant, magnifying the sheltering effects of the turquoise. Earrings hang 2-7/8″ in overall length; cabochons are 1/4″ square; pendants are 2-1/16″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; blue American turquoise
$775 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Yes, I know, I said “soft-edged,” and the focal cabochons of this pair are as square as it’s possible to be. That seems hard, to say the least — all sharp corners and extreme angles. But look closer.
The way the bezels embrace the stone is gentle, allowing the faint doming of the stones to rise almost, but not quite, imperceptibly above their edges, giving each focal a rounded depth. The pendants are long, with straight-angled sides, true — but their ends are rounded, as are the bearpaw tracks that adorn each edge, and they dance, swaying with the breeze and the wearer’s movements.
And then there are the stones.
It’s the stones, really, to which I referred initially. Yes, they are perfectly square cabochons with sharp corners. But look at the softness of color and texture: a rich, deep sky blue, like the western sky at mid-morning — half teal, half indigo, the presence of the clouds keeping them not quite perfectly blended. And the clouds are indeed here, just like on an early summer’s morning, with puffs of white stippling the blue, and in the distance, the violet shades of the storm slowly gathering.
In this place, in this time of twelve-hundred-year drought, a sheltering sky is perforce one that holds the rain.
And the rain is medicine. So, too, is the sense of calm such skies impart, sure in the knowledge that there will be enough water — for the land, and for us.
We have no such assurances now. And so the presence of these bands of white that herald a coming change become valuable on many levels now: medicine, balance, the soft-edged serenity of sheltering skies.
We acknowledge their presence, we give thanks for them, and we will enjoy them for however long they last.
~ Aji
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