Dawn came softly this day, wrapped in a pale gray blanket. Looking outside the window, it seemed a much softer morning than yesterday, but appearances are deceiving: Despite the near-total lack of movement among the tree branches, a wind with a scalpel’s edge is driving from the south, and the air holds a bitter chill. The forecast suggests more snow tonight, and a decent accumulation throughout the day tomorrow.
Winter is not done with us yet.
The irony is that we seeing more of winter now in her waning days than we ever did at the season’s heart. That has been the case in most recent years, with the ravages of the drought staving off any hope of real weather until the Pacific gins up the first of its real rainy season. But it does mean that our internal patterns need adjusting; we are still conditioned to expect real cold and snow in December and January, not March and April, by which point we are accustomed to being weary of it all and ready for spring.
It’s always amazing to me how many people come to colonize this place and then complain about the harsh extremes of weather. That’s what this land is; if you came solely on the strength of a one-week visit in early June with mild temperatures and sunny blue skies, you made a rash decision. It’s the extreme climatic conditions, in part, that create the beauty and mystery that make this place what it is.
Of course, none of it should surprise me in a broader culture whose chief characteristic seems to be a lust for control — over everything. It’s a way of living antithetical to our own. By that I don’t mean some mystical Hollywood nonsense about “harmony with nature”; I mean that in our way, the varied spirits that make up what the rest of the world calls “nature” are in fact our relatives, and our way is to coexist with them accordingly.
It’s a humbler, and humbling, way of being, actually, this recognition that we neither own nor control the world of which we are a part. Each being, each spirit indigenous to our small world here has its own part to play in this land’s healthy, harmonious, and collective existence. The same is true of the seasons, just as extreme in this place as every other aspect of life: In their very refusal to remain neatly compartmentalized by the colonial calendar, they help the land thrive.
It’s part of a worldview that recognizes that there is value even in those aspects of of our world that seem inconvenient. Spring winds are trickster forces, but they pollinate the land, and occasionally usher in a new weather system, too. The monsoons of summer will undermine every attempt to make outdoor plans, and occasionally deliver a little wintry ice in the form of hail, but they keep the land alive through the hot season. Autumn’s chilly clarity will steal your breath, but it will give you in return the most ethereal light you’ve ever witnessed. And of course, the deep snows of winter, albeit less common now, do nothing less than rebirth the land for spring. The seasons, like us, travel the steps in the circle, the daily dance that forms the way of the hoop.
Today’s featured work embodies way and hoop, steps and circle, and the elemental forces that make them possible and keep them in their proper form and shape. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
The Way of the Hoop Necklace
Our peoples call it by various names: the path, going well through life, the Good Red Road — different means of describing the way of the hoop. It’s the way of our ancestors, given to us by the spirits, a sacred path that, if walked carefully, with a good heart and a strong spirit, will grant us a life of harmony and balance. Wings gives form and shape to the journey, and to our own very personal stake in traveling it, with this necklace, a pendant wrought in the shape of a hand, overlaid front and back with hand-made coils of fiery copper. The pendant is cut freehand of solid sterling silver, thumb and fingers articulated clearly and expressively. On the front, a dual coil formed of a slender length of warm glowing copper is soldered securely into place, the large coil over the palm and the smaller one extending atop the fingers. On the reverse is a second, smaller pair of coils both wound and aimed in the opposite direction, the larger one over the back of the hand and the smaller one extending upward toward the wrist. The hand itself hangs from a hand-made sterling silver bail, lightly flared and hand-stamped in a repeating pattern of conjoined thunderhead motifs, creating a symbol that points to the Sacred Directions. The pendant is suspended from a shimmering chain of solid sterling silver. The pendant, including the bail, is 1-1/8″ long by 1-1/16″ across at the widest point; the bail itself is 1/2″ long by a 1/2″ across at the widest point; the chain is 20″ long (dimensions approximate). Reverse shown below.
Sterling silver; copper
$825 + shipping, handling, and insurance
One of the great gifts of this work is its duality: double-sided, reversible; either way, possessed of a secret between pendant and wearer. But there’s another aspect to this piece that’s not immediately apparent, and it has to do with the bail and overlays in combination.
As the description notes, the stampwork on the bail consists of thunderhead motifs conjoined at their open bases; together, they create a symbolic tribute to the sacred directions. But they also evoke the crenellated parapets and kiva-steps patterns of the village’s own ancient architecture and art, and in so doing, perhaps also summon the imagery, and all the mystery and medicine, of sacred space. They certainly call to mind the stair-stepped rooflines of the thousand-year-old homes rising above the plaza, at once keeping a watchful eye upon and bearing witness to every celebration, every dance that occurs in the circle below.
It’s a stylistically simple, symbolically complex work, one that summons ancient spirits of history and memory into the circle with contemporary ones of medicine and healing. And it reminds us that these are united with the spirits of the future, as well: the steps in the circle that make us one with our world.
~ Aji
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