I awakened this morning to cloudy skies, a shock that, for a moment, rocked me back on my heels. The forecast for the next several days was supposed to be unrelievedly hot and and dry, and while the former will make today difficult, the latter is essential: We have fifteen acres’ worth of hay bales to load and stack and get into the cover of the hay barn today.
The shock lasted only a moment; then I realized that what I was seeing was not, in fact, cloud cover at all, but the smoky haze of the Dog Head Fire some three hours south of here. It first drifted our way yesterday afternoon, as that fire doubled in size, racing over and consuming the much smaller Lucky Fire that lay in its path.
At Isleta Pueblo this morning, they are no doubt praying for rain.
Isleta is a sister Pueblo of sorts to Taos Pueblo; its people speak a variant of the same language, and they share commonalities of ancestry and cultural and spiritual traditions, as well. Despite its distance some three hours south of here, at Albuquerque’s southern edge, there are relationships of long standing between its people and those of this place.
The fire there has grown so strong so fast that what were yesterday only “strongly recommended” evacuations of Chilili, an old area adjacent to Isleta, are this morning mandatory orders. In this land, the winds can rise in less than the beat of a bird’s wing, carrying all the destructive force of the Thunderbird’s furious dance, but without the cooling counterweight of the rain.
This season is a reminder of the elemental nature of this place, one in which the things of the earth combine with the winds and the waters and yes, even the fire to create a world of fierce beauty and power, one that is not always welcoming of human habitation. Considering the frequency with which our wildfires are shown to be caused by human acts, that unwelcoming nature suddenly becomes understandable. It is, however, a mix of forces that brought to mind today’s featured work, a throwback to some ten years or so ago.
This piece was one of Wings’s simplest rings, and yet, it was also one of his boldest: a single exceptionally large oval cabochon set in a plain saw-toothed bezel, then placed atop a wide band whose surface bore the ring’s only added adornment.
The stone itself was a fabulous example of Royston turquoise, from Nevada: The stone’s color was a classic blue-green, the basic hue of a robin’s egg, but a deeper, more intense shade. Its surface bore bold patches of copper, the matrix turned golden bronze by its proximity to the minerals in the turquoise. It looked to me like a topographical map, an image of some part of Turtle Island arising out of the waters that embrace our land mass.
The stone was so beautiful, and so striking, that it needed nothing more than the simplest of settings, a saw-toothed bezel edged in a delicate strand of twisted silver. It was not a perfect oval, but ever so slightly free-form, and so the setting itself was not a perfect oval, either, but one that traced the stone’s outlines in a secure embrace. Given its size and substance, it needed an equally substantial band, and Wings created one that was sufficiently wide to hold the setting safely and give the ring the proper balance.
Perhaps Wings saw in the stone the same thing I did, a small piece of our indigenous world. After all, turquoise is called the Skystone for a reason, especially in this place: drops of rain fallen to earth and hardened in the heat of the desert air. It’s a thoroughly elemental jewel, one of earth and sky, wind and water, all tempered and transformed by the heat of fire and the passage of time. At any rate, he chose a single stamp for the band, chased across its length in a repeating pattern: an image of the Four Sacred Directions, one whose gently flowing spokes implied a sense of spiraling motion, like the winds that follow the earth’s rotation. With that one simple motif, he captured the works elemental identity, infusing stone and setting alike with the most fundamental forces of nature.
It was an exceptionally beautiful piece, spare and simple and remarkably powerful. Even those who had no understanding of or appreciation for Native art and the work that goes into it could recognize it, if not, perhaps, for the actual reasons that underlay the piece. I recall an incident involving a pair of white tourists, the man an older “cowboy” type. They walked into the gallery one summer day, the man glanced around exactly once, then let his gaze fall upon the ring display on the counter in front of me. In that span of two seconds, his eyes focused on this particular ring, and he pointed to it, saying to his female companion, and to me, “That right there is the only thing of any value in this entire place. That’s Royston, innit?”
I bit my tongue, gritted my teeth, and said, “Very good. It is.”
He then repeated himself, asserting that it was the only thing with any actual value in the entire gallery, and that was only because of the copper in it.”
I refrained, with great difficulty, I admit, from saying what I really wanted to say (much less how I wanted to say it). I did, however, point out that there were present in our gallery many more inherently valuable works simply in terms of the market value of the various types of turquoise, even leaving aside the value of Wings’s skill and talent and the labor that went into each piece. His companion had the grace to look a little embarrassed, but facts were lost on our cowboy, who continued to repeat his “point.”
It goes without saying that they left without making a purchase.
The ring, of course, eventually found its proper home, with someone who appreciated the value both of the stone and of the workmanship that went into the piece’s creation. To me, it was always the embodiment of the world of the summer season, earth and air, fire and water, the power of the elements given the force of the storm and the winds and the Four Sacred Directions.
Today, it’s a reminder of the challenges facing Taos Pueblo’s “sister nation” to the south, a hope for their safety and a prayer for the rain.
~ Aji
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