Yesterday delivered a high of fifty-one, far above the projected number today promises to exceed even that. And the night after tomorrow, we are supposed to plunge to three below zero.
Such is the nature of a high-desert winter, but this is extreme even for us.
January saw the houseflies revived; last Monday, a single mosquito buzzed around the light in the lamp by my seat on the couch. Mosquitoes are no longer merely an inconvenient irritant for us: As we have cause to know too well, they are potentially deadly. The catkins have already opened on the small aspens behind the house. Green shoots strive beneath the melting snow, and now are visibly breaking through. And the weather report on New Year’s Day carried a pollen alert, one borne out in the weeks since by our own congestion and sneezing and irritated eyes.
As yet we have sighted no new birds of spring, only heard their songs. When even the changing weather is a risk, best to stay well hidden from prying eyes. Spring here is the least pleasant of seasons, one that swings wildly between high heat and bitter cold, punctuated by the daily battering of steady gale-force winds, while the earth underfoot turns to mud several inches deep. In this place, spring is merely the path to summer, and while other areas focus on first buds and petals, we await the more fragile spirits of warmer winds to tell us that we have made it through another winter.
One of those spirits visited us here yesterday — Dragonfly. His is the summer season, its heat essential to survival. It’s true, too, of his cousins, Butterfly and Bee. And while winter here is a season of small birds, of juncos and finches and sparrows and chickadees, the smallest of their kind is likewise a spirit of the warmest winds: Hummingbird.
A pair of them appear here today, not a matched set but siblings, perhaps, each bearing a different shade and symbol on its wings. We begin with the one shown above, the one who carries the light of the sunrise on hers, held fast in fiery amber. From its description in the Pins Gallery here on the site:
On Sunny Wings Hummingbird Pin
Summer departs and autumn arrives on sunny wings. The small fierce spirits of this threshold season infuse this work by Wings, a tiny silver hummingbird who carries the sun itself. The wingéd one is cut freehand out of sterling silver, with wings outstretched in full hover and dagger-like beak at the ready. A triangular point defines the beak; a single lengthy score line separates the wings. Sunrise symbols in two sizes delineate body and edge of wing feathers; the tailfeathers are formed by a flowing-water motif and edged with arrowhead points. Where wings join body, a single small round cabochon rests in a saw-toothed bezel: fiery orange amber, the color of the autumn sun in a place and space of magic, mystery, and medicine. Pin stands 1.5″ high by 2-1/8″ across at the widest point; amber cabochon is 3/16″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; amber
$625 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This piece was created in that threshold season opposite this one: in the waning days of summer, counting down toward autumn and the coming of the cold. It works just as well now, less nostalgic than anticipatory, and always an appreciation of the gifts of the light.
Her brother is wrought in similar fashion, but he holds the sky in the renewed blues of midday. From his description in the same gallery:
Pollinating Sky Hummingbird Pin
Hummingbirds are tiny messengers of the spirits, tasked with spreading nectar upon the winds, pollinating sky in the summer light. Wings summons one of these small emissaries into being with his newest pin, one that assumes Hummingbird’s form and shape. Cut freehand from sterling silver, caught in hovering flight, her wings are scalloped with sunrise symbols, her tailfeathers articulated by way of arrowhead points. Seen in profile, her eye is a tiny hoop, wings separated and body and yoke defined by hand-chiseled lines. Additional hand-stamped symbols of ethereal radiance accent throat, wings, and body. Where neck meets wings, she carries a single piece of sky, an impossibly clear, electric blue turquoise cabochon set into a saw-toothed bezel. Pin is 1.5″ high by 2.25″ across at the widest point; cabochon is 3/16″ across.
Sterling silver; blue Kingman turquoise
$625 + shipping, handling, and insurance
On this day, he carries the very color of our wintry sky, a clear and perfect turquoise blue just a shade or two off indigo — a sky that looks and feels cold, but reminds us that it is warming by the day now.
This is a day of contradictions for us, and no small amount of melancholy. It’s the second day of the second month of the colonial calendar year: one in which a colonial tradition prescribes that, in the absence on a celebrity groundhog’s shadow, there will be an early spring, even as we prepare to face down subzero temperatures; one in which the biggest major league sports event of the year is headlined by two overtly colonial teams named deliberately for genocide, one of whose fans reenact it at every game; one in which we live out the cognitive dissonance of guilty enjoyment of the dangerous warmth bestowed by climate change born explicitly of colonialism, even as we make ready for an older, deeper cold to come only two days hence. And yet, it has its consolations, too.
By virtue of hard work and the gifts of the spirits, we have been able to turn our small bit of earth into a sanctuary of sorts — for ourselves, and for the creatures, wild and domestic, that find their way here by various means and paths. We are further blessed by the fact that those small spirits include those whose task it is to bring the light: of summer and winter, sun and storm, and every moment between.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
