Officially, today is the last full day of spring, but in truth, summer has been with us for a good while now. It’s been ten days since we’ve built a fire (a necessity here even through most of the summer), and the mercury has risen well past ninety for the entirety of that period and more.
But there has been plenty of cold, too, even if only briefly.
In recent years, fall has arrived in the first days of official summer, well before June’s end — a direct product of this deadly drought that has deepened year by year. Trees have greened up fully for a matter of days, then begun to turn gold and red by the waning days of what my own people know as the Blooming Moon (what the colonial world calls “June”), their leaves and branches, trunks and roots, misled by the utter lack of water.
This year is a bit different, albeit no less a mix of seasonal markers.
This year, our patterns are nowhere near what they should be, but still a vast improvement over the three years immediately past: We have had some small amounts rain, occasionally even regularly, and a slight return to the monsoonal patterns that are the summer medicine of this place. It’s a gift that can be accompanied by temperature swings of twenty or thirty degrees in a matter of minutes, only to reverse within the hour, a time when frost and flames collide, pulling pellets of ice from the sky to cool an earth whose air temperature moments prior was at the century mark.
And at the end of a week when our whole world has seemed on fire in so very many ways, it seems fitting, despite this work’s name, to feature one that brings together so much of the raw elemental beauty and power of the summer season officially yet to come. It’s a masterwork, one of only two remaining in Wings’s limited signature series of necklaces, The Four Seasons. It’s also one whose shapes and shades, substance and spirit, all manifest in the greens of summer and earth and the flames of its sunsets, combined with the golds and earthy tones of cooler months and the rimes of frost that can occur in any month here. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Fall: Early Frost and Sunset Fire Necklace
The light of a high-desert autumn sets the land aflame amid the chill dance of Fall: early frost and sunset fire. Wings calls to the circle leaf and flame, frost and light, with this extraordinary necklace, a medicine shield manifest in the shades of season and time, wrought as a tribute to the winds and the Sacred Directions. The pendant, large and protective as any true warrior’s shield, is hand-wrought of heavy eighteen-gauge sterling silver, all solidity and substance, yet scalloped freehand with an edge of fantastic delicacy. It’s set with nine spectacular stones: At the cardinal directions sit four large teardrops of stunningly webbed Red Creek jasper in all the shades of autumn leaves, crimson and gold, bronze and hints of remnant green; at the ordinal points, four smaller Red Creek jasper teardrops in beautifully marbled hues; at the center, a single incredible square of agatized ocean jasper, lacy bands of frost tracing a path across the last of the earth’s green. Between the cabochons, solitary fall wildflowers bloom, traces of frost falling around them. The pendant hangs from a simple flared bail stamped freehand in an Eye of Spirit motif formed of single stamps, conjoined, in a radiant design of sunrise over clouds. Strung through the bail is dazzling strand of beads in natural materials, each one selected and matched for color: large rounds of ocean jasper in greens and rusts and pearly whites extending into similarly-sized Red Creek jasper spheres, each segment separated by single beads of faceted high-grade gray moonstone; lengths of medium-sized golden fossilized coral, Red Creek jasper, ocean jasper, and scarlet red-willow wood spheres, with more icy gray moonstone rondels as separators; then segments of frosty matte sardonyx and tiny round ocean jasper anchors, separated by sterling silver doughnut rondels. Beads are strung over extra-sturdy tri-ply foxtail made of heavy nylon, specially treated and encased in metal, then silver-plated for color matching; findings are sturdy sterling silver assemblies. Pendant including bail hangs 6.75″, 6.25″ excluding bail, and is 6.5″ across at the widest point; the bail is .5″ long by 9/16″ across at the widest point; center cabochon is 7/8″ square; cardinal cabochons are 2″ long by 3/4″ across at the widest point; ordinal cabochons are 1.5″ long by 5/8″ across; bead strand is 22″ long, excluding findings. [All dimensions approximate.] Designed jointly by Wings and Aji; fourth in The Four Seasons Series. Close-up view of pendant shown below.
Sterling silver (setting and findings);
Red Creek jasper; agatized ocean jasper (pendant cabochons); tri-ply silver-plated foxtail (to hold beads);
Red Creek jasper; ocean jasper; red willow wood; gray moonstone; fossilized coral;
sardonyx; sterling silver (beads)
$2,000 plus shipping, handling, and insurance
Of all of the entries in this limited collection, this is the one that most calls to mind the imagery and power of a shield: a medicine shield, one inspirited with all the force of earth, sky, fire, ice, and the spirits of the sacred directions. It’s heavy enough to convey feelings of substance and solidity, but also all the delicacy of frost and flame.
It’s a union of opposites, such as we routinely get here in the months mostly known to the world as “summer,” opposites that in fact collaborate and conspire to create a whole in health and harmony. It’s one of the great beauties of this land of extremes, one of the great gifts, too: the medicine created when frost and flames collide.
The clouds are building to the west once more; we may yet be given the gift of this medicine again today.
~ 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.
