It’s a beautiful morning here, warm and cloudy, no storm in the offing but the upper sky heavily pregnant with water and clad in blues and grays and violets. We could use the rain, truth be told, but even more right now we can use the softness of the light, the comfort of this day.
It’s been a difficult winter, one too warm with too little snow, and yet still harsh and hard to navigate. The dominant culture’s annual attempt to wrest control of time begins tomorrow morning, and the calendar tells us that spring begins in the predawn hours nine days from now. In the lands my own people call home, the world would soon be entering the rainy season, days filled with gentle mists and lashing storms.
I miss them terribly.
And so it is that I have become grateful, in one respect, for the situation in which we now find ourselves here, where climate change has begun to create seasons more reflective than usual of those in the lands where I was born. It is not identical, no — my new home retains the identity unique to its elevation and geography, but it is altered somewhat, in ways that are both familiar and comforting.
Our peoples have always known that water is life, although that knowledge has manifest in widely disparate ways. Where I come from, it has always been a recognition of the importance of maintaining the abundant watersheds, ensuring their purity and protecting them as full ecosystems. Here, it’s a more fundamental concern, a place where aridity is the default, and every drop of water is a gift and a blessing, to be neither wasted nor taken for granted.
Either way, we all honor the rain.
And it is the rain that suffuses today’s featured work with its spirit: the rain, and the road it travels through air and sky. From its description in its section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
The Rain Road Cuff Bracelet
In the arid land of the high desert, the Rain Road is a place of fertility and abundance. Wings charts the path to this place of prosperity with this cuff wrought in the colors of rain and sky. It begins with four substantial strands of sterling silver triangle wire, soldered together into one smooth length like rainfall banded together in a single powerful torrent. At the top, offset from the center, a lightly beveled turquoise cabochon in the shade of the sky stretches to the four corners of the world. The stone is trimmed in twisted silver, and at one side, a tiny ingot silver raindrop opens onto the band, the birth of the storm as it cascades downward along its own flowing road. The band is 5/8″ across; the stone is 1/4″ across (dimensions approximate). Another view shown above.
Sterling silver; Sleeping Beauty turquoise
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
We sit at the threshold of the warmer seasons, but the earth remains dry; the spring runoff will be as minimal this year as the snowpack that failed to accumulate during the winter months. Planting will require strategic effort; cultivation, extra work. But it can be done; our peoples have dealt with drought in the past, and will do so again in the seasons to come.
In the meantime, we await the rains, looking for sight of the road that appears across the sky. When it arrives, if we put in the work, it will lead us to a place of abundance.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
