Wednesday, September 17, 2008

While You're Sleeping...

One morning last fall, while driving across New York State, I noticed hundreds, no thousands, of glistening little white circles in the weeds along the side of the road. On closer examination, I discovered that the sun was at just the right angle to illuminate thousands of dew covered spider webs. Naturally I didn't consider stopping to take a picture until I was well down the road and the angle of the sun had changed. Another missed photo-op. Yesterday morning I was sitting at the kitchen counter doing my morning crossword puzzle when the phone rang. It was JoAnne who was on her way to work. "Remember those spider webs in New York?" she asked, "Well they're everywhere along the road right now". I grabbed my trusty camera and ran to the car. Had to hurry before the light changed. (Up here, the light changing doesn't mean from red to yellow to green but rather refers to the position of the sun) Jo was right, the roadside was covered with them. I got some shots although they don't seem to truly depict how amazing and vast the scene actually was. I guess what's really interesting to me is that each of these webs contained its creator in its center, and, that when the sun isn't just right or there isn't any dew, these things are still there all around us. Just think, next time you go walking through some tall grass, that you are probably wipping out the night's work of hundreds of little eight-leggers. Here's a couple of shots showing one little area that was only a part the scene that went on for miles.