The bowl and doily spider, which I have always called the doily bowl spider, has caught me again, early this morning when the combination of warm temperatures and a much needed overnight rain conjured fog as the sun snuck over the ridge and threaded through bare trees into the meadow.
I am enchanted by how they hang as if weightless, as if barely tethered, from whatever it is the spiders choose to adorn, made visible by chance, because their lacey threads hold waterdrops and light in perfect stillness. The spider’s common name brings to mind handmade needlework, and whoever coined it must have had that in mind. It would have been in a time when lacy doilys were a common sight in small, crowded parlors full of furniture; designs unique to the women who crocheted them, delicate enough to drape over just about anything, for a decorative flair, or to protect a surface, hide a rough spot, or enhance an otherwise dull view.
Though a crocheted doily could never serve adequately as a bowl, these spider webs can hold what they are designed to hold. But this morning, unfortunately for the spider, the dew has made their handiwork all too visible to potential prey and wet: not the best features for a spider’s web. I imagined a larger vision at work here, as I wandered, musing, between pasture and road and woods, seeing hundreds of these webs. Regardless of the quality of the photos, I’m posting them. I had to celebrate the majesty of these elusive creatures, how when they become visible all at once, not according to their plan, beauty is dished out to the world in holy bowls of light, water, stillness, and holding.
I love the ones that seem to sew together stalks and seed heads of last year’s meadow flowers, suspended nearly eye level for me. They are actual and metaphoric as they demonstrate how everything is connected by fragile yet strong, often unseen threads. Here is our entanglement made visible through the design of spiders and a trick of water and light. Here is that web we rarely notice we are in, which rises to our awareness for moments, only, and unexpectedly. Or so it seems to me on this magical misty morning among the spiders in spring.
