Weaving Webs

              The separation between us and nature sometimes seems daunting. But other times, being close with nature can be as easy as sticking your head out the front door. At my parents’ house up north, it was often that easy to connect with the spiders that set up shop every year in the spring. Chubby and unassuming, they weave webs with shining strands of sticky spider lace in the kitchen window and under the eaves on the porch. The webs make a pretty addition, like monochrome stained glass designs just outside our windows. I’ve always loved them, watching them as they work on their webs, taking in a strand here or there, wrapping up a morsel for later, or sitting in the middle of their simple castle. They fascinate me to this day, and they return year after year, always in the same spots and always around the same time.

              Living in a rural area, I was able to explore nature to a greater extent than someone who grew up somewhere suburban. However, the spiders in the windows always seemed so observable to me. There was a connection between nature and my home that was so close it was nearly integrated into our lifestyle. We allowed the spiders to stay, and so the spiders kept flies, moths, and other bugs drawn to the lights within from entering our house. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. You keep disgusting and filthy bugs out of my home, I ignore the fact you have eight legs and consume liquefied innards for lunch. But more than being an example of a symbiotic relationship between a human and a tiny little creature, it seemed to me an example of how humans aren’t separate from the natural world. We often consider it a case of “us” versus “nature” when in reality we are an innate part of nature, just like the trees and the animals and even the bugs. Having that relationship with such small creatures led me to conclude that humans are just another part of nature, rather than something apart from it. To the spiders, we are not so different from them.