We had planned for “Season of the Fertile Earth” to appear in the Loom’s Summer Solstice edition, but in the way of art that has its own organic process, it chose to ripen over a full six months, not three.

In brief, it is a rainbow Earth-sphere whose heart is fire, comprised entirely of tiny petals and a few leaves, each photographed with late afternoon sunlight filtering through them -- natural prototypes of our human-made stained glass.  The rainbow sphere is balanced within the encircling arms of the Fibonacci spirals of piñon pinecone bracts.  The two spheres turn together in a deep blue sky, held by a bowl woven of Chaco stones and living rock.

Just as the piñon pine, with its nuts, sap, and wood, is essential -- and sacred -- to the lives of many high-desert peoples, for me it holds the heart of our Sangre de Cristo foothill ecosystem.  The scent of piñon resin overwhelms all others in its season.  Its dense foliage shields the wanderer from the high slopes’ too-bright sun and constant wind.  Piñon cones litter the ground with their elegant simplicity, often evoking in me a strange sense of some elemental structural reality beckoning from just beyond perception.

I conceived the idea of the piñon cone with its spiraling pattern as an image of the living Earth long before the collage began to take firm shape in my mind.  The cone’s symbolic depths opened to infinity after learning from Dawn that this pattern had a name and widespread incidence in nature — from tiny puffballs to spiral nebulae.

I leave off my comments at infinity’s doorstep.  I hope you will find the passage open!

Postscript:  For those intrigued by such things, the plants included in the rainbow sphere include varieties of, but are not limited to:  cactus (cholla, prickly pear, and hedgehog), Indian paintbrush, yucca, thistle, gypsyflower, flax, skyrocket, penstemon, milkvetch, parsley, mullein, sage, salsify, pasque flower, wild rose, fleabane, yarrow, clover, blazing star, wallflower, globemallow, phlox, and aster.