I was up this morning with first light, the sky violet in the west but fading fast through shades of dusky blue overhead to silver and gold in the east, washed by the early rays of the sun. This dawn differed from most: Beyond morning prayers and making coffee, the early hours are usually devoted to writing here, but on this day, time was tightly compressed, telescoped into the precious moments before and after five o’clock. By six, we were already at the chores that usually occur hours later, the better to enable us to get an early start on getting the hay in. On a day when the mercury is forecast to pass ninety, fifteen acres’ worth of hay needs to be loaded and stacked, then offloaded into the hay barn, all before the sun meets its appointment with noon directly overhead.
Now, as we decompress for the morning’s hot and strenuous labor, the heavens are the brilliant turquoise of midday, threads of silver light woven through the air so brightly that they turn the lush green landscape to gold. The sky is clear, not a solitary cloud in sight, but the air holds the gray haze of smoke from the wildfire three hours to the south of us. On a day when the air promises to scorch the skin, the fires will fight containment with every breath of wind and every tongue of flame.
The shape and shade of this day call to mind one of Wings’s more recent works, one that spirals upward like the warm summer winds in the same elemental colors. From its description in the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Hoops of Earth and Sky Coil Bracelet
They say that all of life is a sacred hoop, but there are more elemental hoops that link earth and sky around us, holding the world in their protective embrace. The peoples to whom this land was given have always known this; it’s why they find protection in the Skystone. Here, dozens of polished glossy Skystone nuggets trace a pattern of five spiraling hoops, bright turquoise jewels in graduated sizes, all strung together along a length of memory wire and interspersed with chunks of the same pyrite that gives them their mysterious dark-webbed matrix. At the center of the coil, a tiny turquoise fetish in the form of the hump-backed bear adds the power of Medicine to the stones’ protective qualities. Joint design by Wings and Aji.
Stainless steel; turquoise; iron pyrite
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s a collection of nuggets in the rich turquoise of the near-solstice skies, joined at intervals by the fiery silver shade of the sun — a light that warms the earth so well in these days before the dawn of summer. It’s a chance to enter the spirit of Bear, wearing his Medicine like a second skin, secure in the embrace of the spiraling desert sky and the shimmering soil upon which we walk.
As we pass the threshold that divides spring from summer and get down to the business of the warmest season, it’s a reminder of the beauty that is earth and sky, of the power and protection of the hoop that is the world around us.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
