The clouds gathered overnight, but delivered nothing until the early hours of the morning: a little rain, perhaps a little sleet . . . and eventually, a heavy blanket of fog.
By dawn, the land was socked in by fog on all sides, precious little visible beyond the yard and the edges of the fields. It ebbed and flowed, much like a tide on a very short rotational schedule until early afternoon, at which point the blue began to predominate overhead. Even now, nearing the afternoon’s midpoint, the clouds still hang low over the peaks, gathering close around craggy outcroppings and slipping in and out of the crevices between the slopes.
The day began cold, but is now twenty degrees too warm, and between the snow and lack of wind, it feels warmer still. It’s a development that erodes some of the hope we have held for this weekend’s forecast storm, and yet, the flooding rains at the coast today have plenty of time to freeze between sea level there and our seventy-five-hundred-foot elevation here.
So hope persists.
It persists, too, in the knowledge that the Earth begins her new year this evening: a new year, and a new world born into it. No, it doesn’t track the Gregorian calendar, nor outsiders’ understandings of what it means to be born without having first died; but the moment of Winter Solstice this evening will be at once birth and rebirth. And while we will not be able to see the return of the light, we nevertheless know that it is there, and that its hours between dawn and dusk will be that tiniest bit longer tomorrow.
In the meantime, we shall have the glow of our home fires tonight, and very likely a sunset sky in flames around what remains of this day’s cloud cover. In this, a season of holiday fire and returning winter light, our homes, lands, and lives will be both warm and well illuminated.
This week’s #ThrowbackThursday featured work is manifest in these blessings, these gifts, these medicines of winter — both in tangible terms, as the image renders it here, and in deeply meaningful symbolic terms, in a form and shape that has remained constant for a thousand years and more. It’s one in Wings’s longest running of signature series, the Pueblo pin, scores, perhaps hundreds of them created over recent decades and each one unique.
All are wrought in an echo of the iconic shape of North House, into which he was born. It’s an outstanding example of not merely the first instance of multistory architecture on this land mass, but also of part of the oldest continuously-inhabited community on the continent, as well. The homes in it are the same homes that were first built more than a millennium ago: remudded and resurfaced every year or two, rehabilitated as needed in a place of extreme weather and climatic conditions, but more than one thousand years old and still standing, all the same. Occasionally, some aspects are upgraded, adding a small propane heater or a woodstove instead of [or in addition to] the traditional kiva-style fireplace. But to this day, there is no electricity, no running water, nothing that would require underground digging or installations that would jeopardize the foundations of these ancient homes.
And they are still in use.
Wings’s Pueblo pin series honors their multistory architecture, their stepped rooflines and parapets, their small windows and the ancient vigas that support each roof at every level, and the old traditional ladders that allow roof access — and once, not so very long ago, access to the home’s interior, as well. The roof was formerly the means of ingress and egress, a security measure that allowed those indoors to pull the ladder down inside in even of a threat of attack. Doors as the rest of the world understands the term are a more modern development, although in a building more than a thousand years old, “modern” is relative, too.
Our own home, on tribal land well outside the village, is nonetheless built in the classic adobe style of these ancient structures. It, too, has a [seemingly] flat roof with parapets at the corners; “seemingly,” because in truth, the roof is slanted to prevent rain and snow accumulation and subsequent leaks, a longstanding local concession to the elements. Instead of the old kiva-style fireplace, it’s heated by a pair of woodstoves, one on each side of the house in opposing corners. And it of course has modern amenities such as electricity, gas, and running water. But we do have traditional vigas, and although there is no need for a ladder for roof entry, Wings has kept two or three of the old traditional ladders from his younger years, and they do get pressed into use occasionally [especially during wildfire season now].
But it is the fires that are the metaphorical center, especially at this cold season. At this moment, only one is ablaze, sufficient to heat the whole house in these more moderate temperatures and lacking the bitter north wind common to winter storms here. The giant aspen log inside it is burning from within and without, shades of silvery-gray ash surrounding the crimson flames at its center.
Much, in fact, like the silver and coral of this week’s #TBT work, above. This one strikes me as particularly apt for this night of the Winter Solstice: it whispers of warmth in the cold, sings of home and light, of illumination and shelter and medicine all at once. The pin, as is always the case, is saw-cut freehand, always in one sitting, Wings always moving the filament-thin blade of the jeweler’s saw forward, never back. That includes the sharp corners of the rooflines and parapets, and the tiny notches that form the doors at its arched base. All of the edges are scored freehand, including those of the walls separating the individual homes in the larger structure, using a texture chisel-end stamp; small rectangles form the old-style windows, and tiny hoops, the vigas. And, also as always, there are representations of the old traditional ladders: here, two of them, propped against different homes at the front of the building.
Wings has, in the last year or so, made one significant change to this series: The ladders are no longer stamped, but formed separately of sterling silver half-round wire, posts and rungs cut to length and soldered together, then overlaid atop the surface of the pin. It’s a change that adds texture and depth, and it’s been extremely popular. But in this particular instance, I’ve been taken with the spare and elegant beauty of the stampwork that created these two ladders, particularly as they were photographed here, beneath a small round crimson cabochon of Mediterranean coral — Solstice sun or blood moon, and the fire in the home, in the spirit and the heart.
This particular pin dates back probably somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen years ago. It could have been created slightly more recently, but it’s not likely to have been any longer ago than that. I suspect that Wings shot the photo in our old gallery, and the angle of the light spilling in from out of doors would have been the only light inside it; there is no electricity in the old homes, remember.
And for a Winter Solstice, it’s the perfect shot: light spilling across its lightly domed surface, catching windows and doors, portions of each ladder, and the flame-red coral cabochon in its radiant glow. It feels like a visual representation of standing before the fire on a cold winter’s night and letting the heat wash over one’s body, banishing the chill and opening the heart to its light.
And that, in turn, is a bit like the gift that season and time will present to our world this night: marking the Earth’s new year, and the new world born and reborn within it, a time of solemnity and ceremony, but also of celebration and joy. This night marks the beginning of holiday fire and returning winter light, and all the medicine of renewal and rebirth.
~ Aji
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