Stretched horizontally over the pond, it pulses up and down on a breeze too slight to chase even the mosquitos away.
It stretches towards the Joe Pye weed, is pulled back by the tug of pussy willow when a bird hops from branch to branch.
I pull my hood around my face, place my hat on top of it.
Long sleeves, socks, leggings and my skirt tucked under my knees. The only skin available to the many mosquitos is on my face.
They land on my stomach, my legs, my chest, I watch them probe, trying to find blood, but the layers are too thick.
I heard that mosquitos will go away when you swat them. So I swat and watch the mosquito fly off, only to have another land on my nose.
The bird in the pussy willow flys low over the pond, not two feet above the web. Like the light of a dying star or the wake of a boat, it takes some time for the movement of the bird to reach the web.
When it does, the web sinks low enough to skim the water, then arches back up, slowing to stillness.
I become the spider, disappointed when the mosquito bounces off the web. My face becomes bait, as I squish the tiny angels between my fingers and cheek.
I breathe with the spider web. It flows up, then down, then up again.
It’s only after sitting for almost an hour that I see the spider.
I look away for a moment at the mosquito on my leg. When I look back an insect big enough to call the spider out of her lair is stuck in the web.
The spider is long.
Long thin legs reaching out in front and behind of her long thin body.
She spends some time with the insect, doing something too far away for me to see. Then the spider, walking upside down on the bottom of the web, hops across it, breaking it as she goes, and disappears under the bowed Iris leaf where she’s been waiting all along.
But the mosquitos were fierce. So I came back to the farm and saw this web stretching across the width of a milkweed leaf, with the tiny spider who made it.
Then I sat on the stone wall in the barnyard, to finish my morning meditation, watching the fog thin.
A few days ago Jon did a video where it was just him talking about some of his new ideas around contemplation. For me the words are interchangeable, but that’s one of those things that Jon and I will probably be discussing for a long time.
Today I did a video in much the same way. Jon was on the other side of the camera, keeping it more of a conversation, as I had done for him.
It seems to work and we’ve decided it’s something we’ll be doing as a part of our blogs.
Today, keeping with the meditation/contemplation theme, I talked about how I stack our firewood mindfully. A wood stacking meditation.
The last two cords of firewood that I’m stacking for the winter.
As much as I am drawn to the little things I see in the woods, the microcosms, they don’t narrow my thinking but broaden it. They help connect me to the whole.
Unlike, in other parts of my life, where the little things can become a cause for anxiety. Focusing on the details that ultimately have little meaning, feeds a feeling of self-importance that makes my life smaller.
In the woods I see myself reflected in the continuity of things, instead of an individual trying to anchor myself to something solid and unchanging, as if that is the source of security.
More and more I am finding peace in the sense of belonging I feel in the woods. In the beauty of it, but also my growing awareness of the flow between life and death.
Not as a beginning and end, but as something continuous, always the same and always changing.
I laid my sheep skin on one end of the Gulley bridge, took off my boots and sat, legs crossed facing the path that leads into the woods.
I was quiet compared to the birds, who seemed to accept me right away, and the steady gurgling of water over rock.
The sun was still covered in morning clouds, I squashed one mosquito as I felt it’s sting, then swatted another away. The gnats were tireless but only for a while, then they vanished with the mosquitos, leaving me with the music of brook and birds.
I thought of the big raccoon I saw the last time I meditated on the bridge. I kept wanting to turn my head, hoping it would appear again. Then I wondered to myself what I would do if I saw a bear on the path. I know there’s at least one in these woods, I’d seen him a couple of weeks ago.
But the longer I sat the longer it was just me, the water and the bird song.
Finally my brain settled and I found my eyes focused on the bubbles that flowed from somewhere behind the bushes that over hang the stream. They turn at the fallen tree on the bank, then burst as the flow over the live branch bobbing on the water.
I had accepted that even the sun would not be joining me this morning.
Sometime after that the birds showed up. Bigger than a sparrow and smaller than a robin, two gray birds, hopping through the tangle of branches that arch over the stream. They looked to me like the were enjoying themselves, never putting too much space between them.
They stayed for a while, only a few feet from me, either not knowing I was there or not caring.
When they flew off, I went back to watching the bubbles.
But soon the sun came out making the invisible visible.
Right where I had been staring for most of my meditation, and couldn’t in the dim light, was a serving-plate-sized spiders web, with a thin, long legged spider in the center of it. Golden in the sunlight, at first I thought the spider was part of the web itself.
I smiled at the thought of not seeing what is right in front or me. First the birds and now this, it’s more than I could have asked for.
I didn’t think of it at the time but afterwards, I was surprised at how quiet the bear was.
I didn’t know he was there, just on the other end of the bridge (just ten feet away) from where I sat, until I saw his big black head. The dense back fur absorbing light, creating a dark hole in the glistening green.
Without thinking, heart pounding, I stood up, making myself bigger than the bear.
Apparently he didn’t know I was there either. He turned his head towards me and I saw his soft brown nose.
Then, with a rustling of green, he was gone, disappearing up the path into the woods.
I stood on the little bridge grinning, heart still pounding now with excitement as much as the healthy fear that got me on my feet.
I thought of leaving as the bear had, but knew he was long gone, so I sat back down continuing my meditation.
As I sat I wondered if I’d ever have the nerve to just sit and watch the bear instead of chasing him away, I wondered if the bear every walked over the bridge, or even waded through the stream getting even closer to the farm. What about those time when our donkey Lulu stands erect, ears straight up listening to what can’t be seen.
I didn’t have time to settle my brain again, soon the timer on my phone let me know my hour was up.
I rolled up my sheep skin, stepped into my boots and made my way back to the house. I couldn’t wait to tell Jon about the birds, the spiders web and the bear.
(This happened yesterday, I just didn’t have time to write about it.)
