Along the Way

Along Came a Spider

Sometimes you don't have to go any farther than the back porch to find an amazing example of the kind of bravura individuals are capable of when motivated.

I live in a third-story flat whose back door opens onto a wraparound wooden porch. The porch leads down to a small yard dominated by a prodigious pine tree that rises imposingly past the top of the porch and the roof of the building.

The other day, while standing on the porch and watching the wind toss the branches of the tree, a glint of gossamer caught my eye: a strand of spider silk that had been strung from the trunk of the tree to one of the porch railings.

In the center of the 12-foot length of spider silk was the intricate diamond of a spider web, and basking in it was its architect and tenant. The web was being flailed relentlessly by the wind but resolutely held its tether, and the spider apparently felt secure and unconcerned, although the experience looked to be analogous to living on a roller coaster.

This was clearly a spider of extreme ambition and chutzpah, one that combined the qualities of Frank Lloyd Wright and Evel Knievel. Spiders, to my knowledge, tend to spin their webs in secluded corners and dark niches. This one chose to set up house in midair across a 12-foot gulf and some 16 or 18 feet above the ground. I naturally wondered as I watched the wind flay the resilient web if this spider really knew what it had gotten itself into or was what it had done a prime case of overachieving or maybe downright grandstanding? Its home made me think of earlyphotographs of the Golden Gate Bridge under construction and brought to mind an image of a tiny rope bridge strung from one side of the Grand Canyon to the other. I saw that some flying bug had already snared itself in the web and wondered if the spider was privy to certain choice air currents and had pitched its tent, so to speak, where it was in order to take advantage of them just as an experienced trout fisherman knows which channels and pools in a stream provide sanctum for the biggest fish.

I know very little about how spiders behave, and I don't want to anthropomorphize them, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. For all I know, a spider is no less capable of long-range planning and foresight than it is of being a heroic architect or even of expressing a dégagé and blasé attitude. I watched this spider with admiration and wonder. The web tossed endlessly in the wind, like Thor Heyerdahl's log raft in a Pacific storm. I'm not crazy about spiders. I suppose Hollywood is largely responsible for that, by way of such movies as Tarantula, Arachnophobia, and The Incredible Shrinking Man, in which the protagonist's worst ordeal is facing up to a monstrous (from his diminutive perspective) black widow spider. But I have a laissez-faire attitude. My grandmother taught me at an early age never to kill a spider, and I've basically respected her position ever since. As I watched this feisty spider in its wind-battered web, I remembered reading about the remarkable durability and tensile strength of spider silk. Still, the wind was belaboring the web mercilessly.I wish I could say that the story had a happy ending, that the spider rode out the strongest gales while basking in its web as complacently as Walter Huston reclining in his hammock in the last part of TheTreasure of the Sierra Madre, reaching for another tortilla and drink of tequila.

But now, two days later, the web is gone. Yet its presence for a while reminded me, and I hope will remind you, that we are all, however great or small and whatever order of creatures we belong to, capable of terrific things when sufficiently motivated. It's a thought worth keeping in mind.

As for my spider, I like to think that wherever the wind that broke the web carried it, it's already back in the game, working indefatigably and with fresh resolve on what might become the World Trade Center of spider webs, and it has my best wishes.

Author's Note: Three days have passed since I finished this piece, and I just noticed that the web is back an even larger and more intricate one. My sense of wonder is duly exacerbated. Let us offer a toast to the noble spider, whose persistence rivals that of Sisyphus.