Sometimes, conditions send our expectations rapidly awry.
Based on the accumulating clouds yesterday — gray shrouds for the eastern peaks; low but substantial bands of sunlit white to the west — we expected a fiery sunset last night. The wind, though, had other ideas, and by the time of the sun’s descent, nearly every scrap of water vapor had vanished from the whole of the western horizon. There were a few brief moments of rich rose reflected upon those to the east, but the west presented us with that perfectly clear, icy gradient of gold to blue whose center is an unlikely but very real green.
And then, of course, our expectations were defied once more, as clouds moved in again in the dark hours, veiling the stars in a still-moonless sky.
Under cover of such darkness, the elk returned in the early hours of the morning. On an ordinary night, we would expect to see them graze beneath the stark diamond-like points of Big Dipper and North Star, but instead, a haunting gray-white glow spread across sections of the sky, bands of clouds iridescent even where there was no light from the ground to illuminate them — as though the aurora had decided to venture southward once again to dance across the cold black night, where the goddess of the dawn becomes Salome and her seven veils are formed of water vapor.
It seems a celestially, atmospherically perfect dance for this alpine place that seems to exist simultaneously beneath, within, and at the crossroads of the stars. Perfect, too, as a manifestation of the subtly bold shimmer of winter night skies here, a gift in whatever guise they choose to wear.
Today’s featured work is manifest as gift and light, stars and dance, a glowing arc beneath an indigenous bit of the local earth’s own artistry. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
At the Crossroads of the Stars Cuff Bracelet
Our world sits at the crossroads of the stars, a cosmic map of the skies scribing lines and paths upon the earth below. With this cuff, Wings honors that greatest of stars in our solar system, the sun, tracing a band that falls from a jewel of a cross indigenous to this land, formed and shaped by Mother Earth and her elemental sibling spirits. The band, wrought of solid nine-gauge sterling silver, is stamped freehand in a repeating motif of a triangular radiant sun emergent from behind the clouds; Wings has created mirror images paired at their open bases to form spectacularly illuminating Eyes of Spirit, then chased the twinned motif all the way down the band’s outer surface. In between each set of angles, the band is bordered with lodge symbols stamped deeply along each edge. The inner band is chased with more spare and slender Eyes of Spirit formed of paired long and short points, and the ends are gently shaped and filed smooth. At the very center, set into a bezel elevated minutely above the band and edged in twisted silver, sits a a natural earthy crossroads: a perfect natural staurolite drawn from the very soil of this region, a three-dimensional, non-cruciform cross created over time on a geologic scale by heat and pressure, infused with metallic flecks of local mica and — invisible on the surface, but plain on the saw-cut underside seated in the bezel — shimmering inclusions of garnet chips that glow like red glass. Band is 6″ long by just over 3/8″ across; the bezel is 1-1/16″ long by 7/8″ wide; the staurolite gem is 7/8″ long by 7/8″ wide and rises 3/8″ high from base seated in bezel to its highest point (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; staurolite
$1,375 + shipping, handling, and insurance
We speak of the sun as though it is sui generis, a thing entirely unto itself in our cosmos. Natural, perhaps, as it is our solar system’s center, the point around which our world, and we with it, quite literally revolve. But we forget that it, too, is a star, the nearest one to this spinning orb we call home.
And so perhaps it’s fitting that the arc of the light that constitutes this cuff’s band should remind us: radiant suns emergent from bands of clouds across the outer surface, each one paired to form guiding, protective, watchful Eyes of Spirit; more diamond-shaped Eyes of Spirit in two separate forms, all wrought freehand and linked across the inner band in a trail of guiding stars braided together.
And then, of course, there is the focal stone.
Speakers of English might naturally think that its colonial name, staurolite, is rooted in the word “star,” but in fact, its etymology lies in the ancient Greek for “cross.” But our own ways of comprehending stars often resemble crosses: four spokes, eight spokes, lines and bands of light reaching to cardinal and sometimes ordinal points. As children, we are even taught the “criss-cross” method of making stars out of pen and paper, although that produces an oddly-number five points.
But this particular material is very different. Either interpretation suits its shape perfectly; it is at once both and neither and also something more besides. Staurolite is a rare material, found in only a very few places on earth, and this is one. And it’s especially apt that its dusky gray-black mass should be shot through with the faint but unmistakable shimmer of the mica that infuses the clay of this place.
And that is, perhaps, a reflection of the great dark expanse overhead, in its way: the subtly bold shimmer of winter night skies caught by, infused into, and refracted back from the walls of homes a thousand years old and more, and the hand-made vessels therein made to hold food and water, too.
It’s starlight, and earthlight — as illumination, shelter, medicine — and that is a gift beyond price or description.
~ 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.
