I took these photographs on Piney Woods Church Road four mornings ago, after a dense fog had blanketed all the spiderwebs with dew. The cattle pastures were covered with webs, and many more were strung along the barbed-wire fences along the roadside.
We have now gone a couple of weeks without measurable rainfall, and folks are beginning to get uneasy. Are we headed into another drought? Meanwhile, dust covers everything along Piney Woods Church Road — dust that settles in clouds in the wake of each passing car or truck. There is a sugary coating on the leaves of the roadside shrubs and saplings. There is no water left anywhere — ditches, ruts, and potholes have long been dry. For a photographer in a hurry, the road offers few opportunities. Given only fifteen minutes — my situation today — I had only two viable choices: daisies or spiders. The daisy fleabane continues to bloom, propelled to continue by a sort of biological inertia, when most all other roadside weeds and trees are spent — at least, until the next rains come. Pollinating bees and flies flock to the daisies, and some likely fall victim to the orchard orbweaver spiders that have set up shop at numerous locations along the roadway. Their webs are elegant, among the finest instances of nature’s geometry. For today, I settled for another spider image, this time a photograph depicting the spider as a sort of Master Controller at the center of its web, working the machinery of its own predatory impulses. Tomorrow? Maybe daisies again. Or perhaps a sunset, red sky intensified by dust in the atmosphere. If only it would rain….
