Entry # 7: Glimpse of a Miracle

April 1, 2017
Carolina Beach, NC

It is late in the day on a Saturday afternoon. I have dropped to my knees beneath the grand magnolia to view an architectural marvel. Close to the ground and strung between low-growing branches, a spider web gleams in the long rays of the sun. I didn't see it at first as I walked beneath the tree. But then a stream of sunlight found an opening between the leaves. Like a spotlight shining on a work of art, the beam illuminated the threads of silk.

The web is mostly round with radiating spokes and a winding spiral, the typical web design of spiders known as orbweavers, a family of more than 3,000 species. Some of the strands look ragged and worn. Near the bottom of the web, I observe an oblong hole where the silk has been torn. I do not see the web's builder, which I would expect to find hanging upside down in the central hub. No, the web appears to be abandoned. Raising my index finger, I gently touch a narrow part of the spiral band. The sticky silk attaches to my finger, then breaks apart like a cotton candy fiber.

To build an orb web such as this, the female spider must first climb up to a desired height. Once she has completed her ascent, the spider releases a non-sticky strand of silk from her spinnerets to float upon the air. If the spider is lucky, this first strand, known as the "bridge thread," will land on a distant object. After fastening the bridge thread with a button of silk, the spider creates a non-sticky frame, somewhat triangular in shape. Next come the radiating spokes to which the spider attaches a spiraling band. She slides along, lifting and attaching the silk with the smooth tarsal claws in the middle of her feet. Now that the basic web structure is in place, the spider begins to glue down the final sticky spiral. On average it takes an orbweaver about an hour to create the wheel-shaped web, which is nothing short of astounding. Only an hour to craft a masterpiece that also functions as a hanging net to capture insect prey.

The fossil record reveals that the orbweaver family, Araneidae, evolved about 140 million years ago, which means that spiders had already been weaving webs for 40 million years when the first magnolias bloomed on earth. This relationship between tree and arachnid is long indeed.

The sunlight lingers on the web for only a few minutes, allowing me a narrow time frame to admire its intricate beauty. Here is an optical coincidence in which rays of light-- do they travel in waves or particles?-- reflect from the web and pass through my corneas, which bend the rays through the pupils, and next through the convex lenses that focus the rays on my retinas where millions of light sensitive cells convert the rays into electrical impulses that travel my optic nerves to the occipital lobes at the back of my brain. A spider web! My brain thinks in 13 milliseconds. If I had been standing one inch further to the right or left, my eyes would not have caught the glimmer; the web would have remained invisible, unknown.

Such a knife's edge we walk between glimpsing a miracle and stumbling blind through the darkness.