Where Turquoise Is Born

[Sleeping Beauty, Royston, Kingman, Bisbee, and Manassa turquoises.]

[Glitz Rings :: Colorado turquoise & sterling silver]

One of my favorite things about wandering around in the desert, or anywhere for that matter, is finding all the wonderful things that are waiting to be found.  Bits of natural history and human history, tucked in the nooks and crannies of the wild:  quail feathers, cholla bones, rusted out truck grills, abandoned chrysocolla and turquoise mines…

Do you remember that the turquoise, and all gem stones, for that matter, in your rings, necklaces and earrings were originally born from the earth?  Dug up.  Exposed.  Extracted.  Cut, carved, polished and eventually set in the precious metal that wraps evenly around your finger or lays against the warmth of your sternum?  Now, that’s some serious magic — wearing a piece of the earth, I mean!  What a way to keep our planet near and dear.

Our Earth, all of creation, is so beautiful and so worth cherishing and loving, noticing and tending.  What better way to be cognizant of that fact, than to wear a gorgeous piece of it close to our pulses?

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My friends and I discovered abandoned turquoise mines while hiking about in the Arizona Mountains, alongside the Colorado River last weekend.  I could barely contain myself, as usual, and ran around scooping up every beautiful piece of turquoise tailing that beckoned to me from rust red earth beneath azure Arizona skies.  It was delightful, as the desert always is, in the glorious month of February.

I can’t wait to tell you all about my trip.  It was wonderful and I have the photographs to prove it.  But first, I have house guests of my own that need tending.

More soon!

[Honoring Remains Necklace :: sterling silver, 23 karat gold, Idaho mule deer antler, various chalcedony briolettes, tourmaline]

Holy smokes.  It’s a wild and brambly thing.  This one is like when the snow melts away and spring comes creeping in and the waste of autumn is revealed and laying thick on the forest floor.  It’s sunshine strong and hot on the rim rock; chukar on the wind.  It’s a boozy sunset of sangria hues and the thickening of a daytime sky.  I want to rake up those rainbow shards, musty with sleep, tattered about in the toss of the grimy cold.  I want to peel the earth up off the ground and gaze at the cracks in the bedrock.  I want to build my nest like a violin bow, strung tight with horse tail and waxed with mud.  I want the eager tune of gravity, the humility of creek flow, the meadowlark song sifting through the sagebrush, the bluebird perched easy on a thread of barbed wire.  I want to find all the antlers and carry them home.

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Happy weekend to you all!  Put on your cowgirl boots, here’s a song to carry you home:

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2013/02/15/5843/

Honoring Remains

[Honoring Remains Necklace :: sterling silver, Idaho mule deer antler tip, labradorite & prehnite]

White Buffalo

[Nomad Necklace — White Buffalo :: sterling silver, copper, enamel, prehnite, trade beads & aventurine]

There’s just something about bison that shouts *interior West* to me.   He’s like a ponderosa pine tree — a grandfather to so many things, a ghost, a spring creek, the black of a thunderstorm against the Rockies front, the bulk of the Tetons erasing the sky, the rumbling belches of Yellowstone…a pair of train tracks headed for the horizon, grey wolves, cowboy boots, patchwork quilts, rough and ready folks…you know, the things that stitch the massive and wild territory of the interior West together.

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I think once we make it here, we’re all stuck like glue to the continental divide, the rise and the fall of it, like so many bison in days gone by. We’re rivers running, wind sweep, bee sting and the stink of blooming sagebrush on the wide frontier.

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This is the white buffalo. Something extra special: peace bringer. He holds a pale green hope in the echoing broadness of his chest.

Wing & Wood

[Wing & Wood Earrings :: sterling silver, rooster feathers, quartz, fluorite, Idaho willow branch, Idaho juniper branch]