Webs

A drop in temperature, into the zone well below freezing, brought frost, highlighting bits of the natural world that would otherwise remain obscure.

Spider webs.

I started this recent morning walk with my dogs thinking my phone camera would remain in my pocket, that there wouldn’t be anything new or interesting to photograph.

I was wrong.

As the boys followed their noses through the ditch grasses, they came back to me with strands of frosty white spider webs stuck to their foreheads and noses. Paying closer attention, I was delighted to see an entire world of spider highways woven among the grass fronds alongside the road. Some created tight city-like routes in a close space while others resembled crowd control rope, thick single strands spanning large distances.

Where were these webs going? How did they string such vast distances (in spider context)? And why?

So many questions I wished to have answers for that morning!

Looking up as I walked, I noticed an entire world of webs high on the branches of shrubs growing alongside the road. Were they there all summer, hidden among the leaves? Or did the spiders weaving them move in after the leaves fell?

In either event, the spiders have been busy.

Looking more closely at the fences, I noticed strands of web hanging off the barbed wires.

An entire world hidden from me except for the brief window of morning frost bringing it into view.

I reflected on spiders and the work they put into their webs, always hoping to catch a meal but without any guarantee, never giving up, eating, spinning, failing to eat, spinning again.

Optimism.

A wonderful reminder that no matter what weighs on our minds, despite all that seems horrific and insurmountable in our personal lives and in the news of the world today, nature keeps doing what it has always done: persist.

And so should we.