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I got to the Kennebunk Plains and Day Brook Pond early enough this week to catch the dew on the spiderwebs, and there were some spectacular webs. 🙂 The angle of the sun was just right to light them up. After photographing this particular web for effect, I noticed that it, unlike most of the others, was still inhabited, so I took a little detour off the path for a closer look. It is clearly some kind of Orb Weaver, but I can’t pin it down more than that. This is, to me, a very satisfying image…I love the light caught in the droplets on the web, the detail and color of the spider, and the out-of-focus landscape in the background making a horizon.

Sony HX400V at about 68mm equivalent field of view. Macro. ISO 80 @ 1/1600th @ f3.5. Program with -1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.

And for the Sunday Thought: I know many people have a thing about bugs, and spiders in particular. It is perhaps (as I am pretty sure has been suggested many times by better men than I) a residual fear based on the fact that some of them can hurt us, and a very few of them can kill us. Same with snakes. It seems to be more a female thing…perhaps maternal, as in protecting the helpless infants and hapless kids from all that might harm them. If it is not instinctive in males, it can certainly be learned. To really see a spider we have to sidestep that fear if it is still in us. Then too, spiders break the leg rule. They have too many legs, too many limbs. Everything we love has 4 limbs. Spiders have two extra. What’s up with that? Creepy.

On the other hand, who does not love a spider web jeweled with dew? Logic tells us that a web needs a spider, but we are not always logical…we are rarely logical when it comes to what we like and dislike, and almost never logical in what we fear.

On the other hand, the spirit compels us to view all that lives as beautiful, because it was created by a loving God, the same God that created us. The web of life should be as appealing as a spider web jeweled with dew in the morning sun, and each creature a drop on the web, refracting the pure light of creation in its own unique way. The spider has its beauty if we are willing to look closely enough. If we are willing to know spiders.

And of course, one of the things we learn to know is that a few of them can, if we do not give them their space, hurt us. We know who they are and learn to respect them, and, unless one ends up in your sleeping bag, as a Brown Recluse did in mine on a trip to Arizona, they will not bother us. The scar on my leg is a good reminder to check my sleeping bag before getting in. We learn to give all spiders, all creatures, the space they need to live. Not simply because they might be dangerous, but because they are, each one in its own way, lovely…created with love.

Happy Sunday!