Unforecast winds blew in intermittent cloud cover last night, and blew it out again this morning. It’s a beautiful day now, warm and bright with a brisk breeze setting the leaves adance. There is plenty of blue sky visible today adorned on all sides by puffy white clouds, flowering alpine dandelions and lilacs and the largest of the honeysuckle, but the color of this day is unquestionably green.
It’s a relief to have some warmth, finally; a relief, too, to have most of the trees in full abundant leaf now. There are still a few that lag behind, of course, trunks and branches damaged by drought. The bigger surprise is how much we have lost in our stands of red willow, once lush and abundant here. They are still growing, but the group outside the kitchen door is rife with dead branches now, and the much larger stand by the pond holds barely any green at all.
It is perhaps the starkest evidence of the ravages of colonialism here, that the hardy, strong deciduous shrub that has so long lent people and place their names is now at risk.
And it’s a reminder that our Mother Earth needs us all to be her protectors now, her warriors and healers both.
This week’s featured #ThrowbackThursday work, one that dates back to 2013, embodies all three in one distinctly feminine piece. It’s one in Wings’s signature series, the Warrior Woman, a collection of unique pins and occasional pendants that now numbers in the hundreds. Each possesses her own distinctive identity, powers, and spirit, and each is designed and created to honor the powers of women (and of the female-identified and -associated spirit beings of our cosmologies).
As is usually the case, Wings created this particular iteration along with two or three others simultaneously. He begins with a basic outline and designs the stampwork for each, then cuts all of the free of the surrounding silver, wielding a jeweler’s saw with a blade thin as a filament, all freehand. That’s harder than it sounds, given how tightly he spaces them, faced in alternating directions, and given that for each it involves moving the blade in the tight curves and corners around head and crescent moon and cuff bracelets and the tiny fingers of the other hand, as well as separating the feet. Once each is cut free, he adds his hallmark and the pin assembly to the reverse, and the bezel and silver-wire serpent (and in this instance, the overlay heart) to the front.
But all the comes after choosing the essential design, which is what determines each Warrior Woman’s specific powers and gifts and medicine.
In this instance, her powers were associated with nothing less than the wisdom and illuminating guidance of Spirit itself, and with the medicine of elemental forces. Down the front of her traditional dress are five Eyes of Spirit, symbols of that wisdom and illumination, and of powers of the visionary world beyond this one; one is mostly hidden behind the repoussé heart overlay beneath her throat, but it is there all the same. At the hem is a thunderhead symbol, a single powerful traditional symbol of the First Medicine, the water. Four more rainclouds in a different pattern adorn the crescent moon in her left hand, giant cumulus towers already delivering the rain. The serpent, formed of sterling silver pattern wire and symbolizing prosperity, coils over her right shoulder; the cabochon in her right hand is a tiny round malachite specimen, banded in the emerald green of medicine as deep as the summer grass.
It’s a perfect collection of motifs for this season, when the seasonal rains are just beginning to fall and the earth ripens for planting — and for these days of altered patterns and deadly drought, when guidance is most needed if we are to protect the earth and heal her.
This weekend we will begin our planting, at least until the rains predicted for Sunday arrive, if they do. Next week is supposed to bring us intermittent thunderstorms through Saturday, a classic summer monsoonal pattern, and while planting is possible during this time, it requires forethought and strategy so that what is placed into the ground does not get summarily washed away. That means taking extra care with the process of seeding the earth, and in some instances, perhaps shielding it from the weather entirely for a time. And, of course, there will be all the tilling and cultivating to come, extra care at such processes doubly necessary since the long-range forecast also suggests that the following week is likely to be bone-dry.
But the welcome changes already this season, such a stark contrast to last year’s deadly aridity, have already begun greening the earth. Indeed, the grass has already grown so tall that Wings spent most of Tuesday mowing it; even shortened, it’s still lush and rich. And soon, there will be other growth, if we put in the work: fruits and vegetables, wildflowers, herbs, medicine as deep as the summer grass, and as powerful, too.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
