‘On a damp, gray morning beside a stream, I watch a spider spin a web. She is very small. She spins from a spruce twig to my jacket pocket , then back again. She spins one filament, then another. Another. And I follow a thin thread of reverie–a realization that, to this little spinner, I am just one more convenient rock. A plaid stump. Thoughts, dreams, motivations–all the things that make me, me–to spider, these are merest rumors. Immaterial. Unreal.

But when I finally stir, when I rise and break the web and turn spider’s world on end, it is because of these phantom qualities that I move. My inner world has changed her outer world, as hers has first done to mine. The greater reality is unseen, unheard, perhaps undreamed. That which moves all things is on the inside…

Walking along the stream, I notice what I somehow missed before. The spider webs are everywhere. Exquisite webs, hundreds of them–every stunted jack pine or ground juniper gilded with a necklace, each necklace hung with lucent pearls of dew. And, whispering in the first breeze, an old question of the night: What of my webs? What are my choices, my chances; how much effort should really be expended on such fragile, ephemeral enterprises, sure to be blown away by some wild wind, or torn up by some plaid-jacketed clodhopper? To what end all the spinning, the careful planning, the anchoring? The striving for beauty?

An opaline sun begins to pierce the mist, and the necklaces glisten, and from some dream-secret spinner comes reply: They are happiest who are tied at many levels and in many ways to the world around them. ‘Expand yourself, says the spinner. ‘Grow, reach, risk, invest, incorporate more of the universe into your world. Spin, spin…’

In a bit of serendipity, This morning I found a lovely article about ‘Paddle Whispers,’ by a fellow who writes a wonderful blog called ‘Footpaths.’ Click here.