Today, In the Garden

Dinner on the patio was perfect this evening; the weather complied beautifully and I had a wonderfully mindless book to indulge in while I ate. The breeze was gentle, yet the movement of a single hair on my arm made me look down.

There, perched on legs seemingly finer than my hair, was a tiny baby spider. All gawky, spindled legs and hardly any body to speak of, he flew in on the breeze and landed on my arm. Curious, I watched as he did a cursory exploration of the moonscape of my arm. After seconds, it stood still and raised his tiny body away from his legs and into the wind. Although I couldn't see the silk, he was exuding his next parachute. Sure enough, soon he achieved lift and rose from my arm.

The gently breeze caught the silk thrown to it and lifted the little spider above the fence in seconds. I watched him until he was invisible to me.

That tiny little spider, who had a body about as long as the points of three pins lined up and a brain correspondingly small, had landed in an environment that was hostile to its growth. It sussed that out in 10 seconds flat, and literally threw his body to the wind and God, trusting that a softer, more hospitable landing lay somewhere within his reach.

How can a tiny baby spider already know what we humans spend our whole lives trying to understand?