Entry 6 - The Crawling Spring of Times
Spring can be interpreted in two modes of depth. It is the aftermath of death killing winters and yet the opening of birth filled summers.
Spring can be blind following what has taken place, and yet full of insight of what is to become. Spring is alone in this academy of seasons.
My winter was brought alive when walking in a fogged field. There was no low cloud, and the sun was bright and the filed glistened and sparkled with the fog. This fog was not in the air, but strewn across the blades of grass that swayed and bobbed up and down in the gentle breeze.
It was 6.42am as I strolled the field, with Labbie far away running the distant morn’ run. I looked down, as my foot was caught amidst a mass of silk. My boots were wrapped, tarnished with whitening gloss, and I realized I had disturbed nature.
The fog was webbing. It was the early morn’ catch that I had unwearyingly strolled into, and I had unwantonly trodden upon the paths and homes of ‘the spider’. I looked up. I gazed. I saw wonder in this so beautiful fog that lay across the fields untouched; there by dawn, not there by morning or day, and the night I knew of nothing.
I leant down, to enquire and try to understand more. The bundles of silk, stretched, layered as they wrapped about the blades as the gentle breeze caused their motions like fishing boats in a gentle harbor – swaying, upping, downing and glistening upon the silken waters.
Thence she came. I had touched her home, and she came to see who was knocking at her door. First a leg, then another, and then four and an eye of four. She was calm and unhesitant. More legs and more eyes, until I could see her in her stardom, at full stretch slowly traversing across the rounded ball of her creation from hours of old.
She had survived the winter of cold, and now was her time to prepare for the summer ahead, as she bore to fight for her land on this mild spring morning. I watched her in her full adornment, and closed in to inspect her being. Her legs were like pillars, spread far apart as they tread her unknown trap, and yet they supported this majestic temple of being. I had disturbed her, and yet I was calmed also. For if I hadn’t stopped to observe this wondrous fog, I may have missed her.
She was unafraid of me, and yet I knew she was watching. She sensed I would not destroy her castle, and yet unknowingly I had already disturbed many before stopping to watch the sheet of fog swaying in the early morning breeze.
I went again, next day, to her place of warmth that suffered springs cold night. Labbie went off running yet again, but she sensed what was around her and always kept to the side of the field. She was knowing more than me of what the morning fog, playing the field, meant.
I approached the spot carefully, this new day, to close in on the silken home of my new found interest. I touched her spin, and sure enough there was a leg, then another and she came to inspect her home. I was heartened that there she was, after another cold spring’s night. I could almost feel her looking at me, trusting me, knowing that her home and her feeding ground was safe. I spoke to her, alone in that field, and shared moments of my own thoughts. Dawn is a good time to prepare a day. I left her gently, made my way, and Labbie came chasing, as we returned home.
Sunday came, and as usual I took Labbie for her dawn walk. I re-approached the spot of my new friend. There was little fog across the field that morning, and I assumed it had rained. I looked, lowered myself, and to my disappointment there was no leg that came. I got lower, and still no leg, but then I saw. My friend was there.
However, she was laid on her back, and not moving. Meandering across her were hundreds of tiny copies. She had given her life to feed them. They were strong, and she had gone. I won’t forget that first or last walk of dawn, in spring, to her spot. Fog never looks the same!