The Season of Spiders Draws Nigh

It is now officially the middle of summer—not the weatherman official but the Goose Creek local-native official middle of the summer. And so it will be six more weeks until fall begins. This practical fact few people know, because they don’t know how to read the spiders.

Every morning we walk the AT—the Annie Trail—that she keeps mowed around the edge of the pasture. We walk along the edge of the field, then cross the creek to follow the old logging path we call the “middle road” through the rhododendrons and mountain laurels and mixed hardwoods. Yesterday the small spiders of mid-summer were actively “bridging”: extruding their invisible one-strand silks on the air currents across gaps between tree branches, blackberry canes, and especially across open spaces, like footpaths. This spider event is one of the hopeful signs of fall and cooler weather to come, and I am glad to see them, if annoyed by their attempts to snare me as food.

It is just at this time of year that a “spider stick” is essential on the trails. Without it, you’d better be prepared about every twenty feet to stop, mutter to yourself, and swipe your hand ineffectually across your brow to remove the invisible stand of microscopic spider filament from your forehead and eyelashes. Occasionally you’ll find yourself staring cross-eyed at a small nondescript arachnid dangling from the bill of your cap—no real threat here, just the less-than-wonderful sensation that living legged ornaments are hanging from you like tinsel from a Christmas tree.

The person who walks first-in-line on the narrow trail carries the stick (or more commonly, a brittle, broken bough of a spicebush) out front like a scepter, to intercept the spider silk before it becomes festooned across the nose and cheeks. Ann and I take turns with this duty. But it is almost always the dog who goes first on these walks. We invent clever imaginary ways to attach something to Buster (a rooftop TV antenna, for instance) to outfit him to clear away the webs before we get to where he has already been.

In four weeks, the spiny spiders (genus Micrathena) will show up. These are very visible, ornate, chunky spiders that live in a rolled leaf at the highest point of their web. They spin more elaborate webs across the path, and without the stick, these bizarre but harmless little monsters often end up perched on the rim of your glasses. You really need that spider stick.

In a few weeks, the inch-thick, round-bodied orb-weavers too will be stringing their snares across the path, set out to capture a hiker. It is rumored that just one average sized pedestrian can feed an orb-weaver family for an entire year!

Summer will have ended in my almanac when the balloon spiders appear floating tethered to bright threads in the September sky. Airborne spiders are a true marvel that too few have witnessed, and I anticipate the first sighting on a perfectly clear, cloudless afternoon in late September. The long gossamer thread of silk streaming out ahead of the tiny mote of spider will glow like fiber-optic cable to lift each traveler into the current, to sail away with the flow of fall.

Adapted from Fred’s Slow Road Home ~ a Blue Ridge Book of Days