Our forecast originally was for a couple of inches of snow from last night into today; by midday yesterday, that had been revised downward to a single inch. Based on weather patterns, we expected even less than that — no more than a dusting, and by the time the snow actually started around nine o’clock, that was all we got. It was fine, cold, dry snow, the kind that’s lovely for skiing but not so much for snowmen.
And then it stopped.
Frankly, we hadn’t expected much more, and so we were surprised, an hour and a half later, to see that it had apparently resumed: The neighbor’s security lights were dimmed, and the headlights were heavily veiled on the cars coming down the highway’s S-curve in the winter dark. I turned on the deck light upstairs and was surprised to find no snow falling at all. The mercury had risen just enough for the cloud cover to turn to fog, and it had socked in the peaks on all sides. Overhead, the shimmer of a late winter’s night flew high, the Bear Moon riding the night sky behind its own veil of parting clouds.
We resigned ourselves to the storm’s end, and went to sleep.
Somewhere around 1 AM, Wings awakened. He got up and made his way to the window, then turned and whispered excitedly to me, “It’s snowing again!” That woke me up thoroughly, and I was delighted to see heavy snow falling steadily, more than an inch already accumulated on the railing of the deck. We we awakened again at dawn, there was a good six inches on the ground here, with more falling still, and while the sun broke through at mid-morning and eventually halted the cascade of diamond dust, clouds and fog have returned, and the sky is as white as the ground.
This is heavy snow, solid and wet, the sort more common here to mid-April than to February. Normally, spring snows vanish just s rapidly as they appear: We’ll get a foot or more in a matter of hours, the sun will break through, and it will all be gone by noon the same day. But this snow might be here for a while, given that our projected low tonight is back in the single digits, and all the water that weighs it down will turn to solid ice.
It’s wonderful, perfect weather, so desperately needed here, and yet we recognize just how fortunate we are to be able to navigate it safely. We have a warm, solid, well-built home, and our heat is not dependent on the electrical grid. Water is always an issue, but we know what to do. And we don’t need to be on the roads now; all of our work is here, farm and business and writing alike, and that is one of the greatest gifts of our way of life now.
But not everyone shares such good fortune. Oh, plenty of the population has far more good fortune than we; most of it, probably, at least by colonial measures. But too many of our own peoples still don’t have even these modest blessings, and while the colonial world certainly owes them everything, our way dictates that we help where and when we can. Sometimes we’re fortunate enough to be able to give cash, which, in most instances, is always going to be the most useful. That’s not often, though; we struggle to make it, too, and we are further burdened by the costs that come with increasing (and increasingly serious) medical issues.
Sometimes, it’s something very local, and we can share food or firewood or whatever’s needed in the moment. We’ve done plenty of that over the years, including this winter. In the summer, at least in those years when the weather permits us our gardens now, we share fresh produce widely: corn and beans and squash, heads of lettuce and cucumbers, onions and garlic, plenty of herbs, both for cooking and for medicine. Sometimes it’s corn kernels or other seeds; hay for people’s horses.
And sometimes, we have none of those things, and they’re not what’s needed anyway.
But one thing we virtually always have is Wings’s work. And sometimes, someone just needs something pretty, something they wouldn’t be able to afford, but that gives them a bright spot in hard and hectic days.
This week’s #ThrowbackThursday work is an example from this last category, a gift to a young Native mom dealing with far too many hardships courtesy of this terrible colonial system. We gave her one of Wings’s Warrior Woman pins, as well, an item that was in our inventory at that moment. But these he made especially for her, because he felt the stones and shades and spirit of the pair would resonate with her particularly.
And in truth, they were an instant personal favorite of my own, given those same stones and shades and symbolism. These are a throwback to mid-2020, but the inspiration for them lay at least partly in the month the outside world calls February, what is known to some of my own people as the Bear Moon. If memory serves, some of the beads that formed them were also acquired around that time or perhaps a little earlier — in the winter just past, at any rate.
The earrings from The Standing Stones Collection are very simple in concept, and mostly in execution, too: gemstone beads (and occasionally beads made of coral, shell, wood, and other materials, too) strung in particular patterns on fine sterling silver round wire. Their value (and thus, the cost) is found in the beads themselves, which usually come from three basic sources: a local seller, who carries everything from the least expensive plastic wares to ultra-high-grade jewels priced in the thousands; a dealer in the U.K. who specializes in a wide selection of ultra-high-grade materials, particularly natural ones, that we often cannot find anywhere else; and Wings’s own extensive personal collection, much of which was handed down to him and thus includes very old, very valuable natural beads. These included beads from all three sources.
At top and bottom, and as spacers in the lower half of each drop, sat stunning tiny spheres of iolite in a whole range of violet-blue shades and ratios of translucency to opacity, four pairs in all. Some were nearly midnight blue; others the color of shadows on ice. All were intensely beautiful. At the bottom, they alternated with two pairs of rutilated quartz, perfectly clear with rutile formed of glossy black schorl (tourmaline), and a millimeter or two larger than the iolite. These same icy orbs rested between the larger beads as separators, too. Both the iolite and the rutilated quartz came to us from our U.K. supplier, and they were top-grade specimens of their kind.
The larger beads were a mix. The top large bead was the Bear Moon in full face: a frosty, icy white, one capable of shining out upon the snow even from behind the thin veils of clouds and fog that wrapped her in the night. These were not rainbow moonstones, but classic moonstone, ultra-high-grade material that our local seller had only that winter acquired. She had shown them to me specifically on our annual winter supply run, and although they were more costly than what we were accustomed to buying, we nonetheless took them; that quality is rare enough and very difficult to find here, and Wings wound up using all of them in a matter of months.
The middle of the larger beads also came from there, I believe, although it’s just possible that strand might have come from the U.K. We’ve purchased amethyst from both sellers over the years, but this one, I believe, we found locally: slightly larger beads than most, and not that clear, uniform purple that makes them appear artificial — no, these were rounds of raw amethyst in its natural form, cut into perfect spheres and given a high polish without eliminating the frosty, druzy- and rutile-like inclusions that gave them such character. These were the moon shifting to show us her dark side, winter radiance still visible but the colors of night taking over now.
The last of the larger beads, albeit smaller than the other two, came from Wings’s own personal collection. These were solid sterling silver beads, very old, very valuable — they came from an antique strand, if memory serves. They were cleaned, but age had given them a natural patina like gunmetal, rich, deep, the kind of heavy silver that grabs your reflection like a haunted mirror and steals your soul for the spirits. It was the perfect image of the silver light of the moon on a stormy winter’s night, the kind of look that appeals to the Goth in my own soul.
Strung together and suspended from sterling silver earring wires, they became a cascade of haunting winter light: both cloudy and clear, cold, intensely bright, the kind of illumination we all need on our path in the dark and stormy season.
Of course, such a bright light also casts bold shadows, too, and we have to remember not to jump at their appearance. But there is a particular beauty to the shimmer of a late winter’s night, to the slightly eerie radiance of the Bear Moon upon the snow.
And maybe wearing that light transforms its eerie properties into a little extra power.
~ Aji
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