Another hot and hazy day with no possibility of rain in the forecast.
By yesterday, we had already surrendered our hopes for what remains of this week, pinning them instead to the long-range predictions beginning Saturday: supposedly ten days straight of our customary monsoonal patterns, if voiced with somewhat less assurance than in years not so very far past. But now there is said to be the possibility of rain tomorrow, too.
It fits, of course; tomorrow, we shall have to be outside in the afternoon with the vet and the farrier, holding a horse. If the storm elects to visit, it will no doubt do so then.
There is no chance of us not welcoming it anyway, no matter the potential inconvenience. That lesson was reinforced yesterday, when we were forced to make a sudden trip two hours south of here and back again. All the way down, in what is typically mix of lushly fertile green valleys and stark high-desert peaks and cliffs, too many trees wearing at least as much gold as green or void of leaves entirely, too much of the earth bare scrub now, scorched, soil dry as ash and the dust of ancient bones.
The truly frightening aspect, though, was the sight of the Great River that wends its way down the Gorge along the highway. It is many feet lower than it was less than a month ago, and its water level wasn’t exactly high then. The marsh grasses along the opposite shore are bleached and dry; along the fast-running curves, the riverbed is clearly visible from the seat of a truck racing along the road many feet up, soil and individual rocks showing themselves in the unseasonal shallows from a great distance.
And yet, on our return trip, we witnessed terrible violation of these fragile waters. I counted at least some twenty separate white-water rafts full of tourist and colonizer locals clogging its flow, the never-ending pursuit of colonialism and capitalism present in full force in the middle of a still-raging pandemic, heedless of the great harm to this watershed upon which all regional survival depends. There were, of course, no white waters for them to race anyway, only small bubbling ripples over rocks buried in the riverbed, but the point was never about the rapids; it was about proving to themselves and to the rest of us that they could colonize them again, a show of authority and profiteering control.
They have no understanding of the sacred, no matter how much they attempt to meddle in Indigenous affairs and the well-being of this place they have so badly damaged and call it “guarding the water.”
The people of this place have never needed to be told that water is life, never needed posters, T-shirts, bumper stickers with stolen Indigenous artwork to affirm for them a truth they have always known at a level deeper than cell or spirit, deeper than DNA or even ancestral memory. It’s a knowledge that comes with belonging to a place, rather than stealing it, invading and occupying and colonizing it, attempting to own it as a commodity or profiteering off it. It’s too facile to say that either that our lands belong to our peoples or that our peoples belong to our lands; it’s a relationship that goes much deeper than that, one of body and mind and heart and spirit, one in which we are each other’s relatives. It’s why Wings knows the land as intimately as he knows his own soul, and why its spirits recognize him in turn.
And it’s why water, in this high-desert land, is more than sacred: It is the First Medicine, the one that birthed the mountains and the clay and all that reside in and between; the one that birthed the people in terms just as literal, too. It’s a truth, not mere knowledge but wisdom, embodied in today’s featured masterwork, one made with the gifts of the Earth herself. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
From Sacred Waters Cuff Bracelet
From sacred waters medicine flows and grows. In this place, both the lake and the rain and snow that feed it are sacred: the first medicine, the one that allows all others to flourish. Wings honors them all with this cuff bracelet wrought in the shapes and shades of water and light and all that flowers beside them. At the center sits an extraordinary free-form cabochon of ultra-high-grade water-web Kingman turquoise, a perfect blend of robin’s-egg and sky blues with a tight, inky spiderweb matrix. It’s set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed with twisted silver, then set upon a wide yet lightweight sterling silver band cut freehand into four sparkling strands, each stamped in a two separate, facing rows of flowering medicine. The four strands remain united at the ends of the band, each end stamped deeply and cleanly with flowing water and wildflowers dancing between compass motifs, their spokes and corners pointing to the Sacred Directions. Across the inner band are scattered a few stamped hearts, symbols of the love the spirits show in providing us with the water, with the plants, with life itself. The band is 6″ long by 1-1/2″ across, with each of the four individual strands measuring 3/16″ across; the turquoise cabochon is 1-3/4″ long by 1-3/16″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; ultra-high-grade water-web Kingman turquoise
$1,750 + shipping, handling, and insurance
And when I say this piece embodies the truth of sacred waters, I’m not speaking only symbolically. The giant Skystone jewel at its center, it’s fantastically complex webbed beauty, was formed with water. It was water including into the stone that created that subtly smudged and wispy effect visible on its surface, and it’s what gives this type of turquoise its name: water-web turquoise.
Placed at the center of shimmering silver, four connected bands in one, all cut and stamped freehand in matched patterns of medicine growing strong and free? It shows the power of the water, reaching in all directions, capable of birthing new life and sustaining that which is already here.
No amount of invasive profiteering can do that.
The colonial world will someday be forced learn what Wings, and what all of our peoples, have known since the time before time: We hold the water sacred, and they in turn hold us — to live, to thrive, to be.
Let’s hope they learn it in time.
~ 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.
