COME FOR A WALK TO THE LAKE WITH ME

Today's walk along the paths in the woods were cool still as I'd  gone well before noon... a record breaking 9:30 a.m. as of lately.  I've been getting out later and later walking the dogs... much to their frustration.  When we finally set out for our walk, Bear will bark then as if he's bawling me out for the frustration of waiting for me all morning.  He knows his rights.  And I know he has a point.  But his sharp bark hurts my ears.  Sometimes my trekking poles seem to slip out of my grip and the handles fall on his back if he doesn't jump out of the way.  Don't worry, he thinks it's a game.

I let Polly choose the way.  She's really slowing down. Well, 7 years for a dog in comparison to one for a human is 7 X 13 = 91years old.  Pretty old for a dog or a human.  She was perkier than usual and chose the middle trail once at the trailhead.  She's like a turtle... slow, but steady, and I stride along for awhile getting good exercise, but then see a hole I want to fill in with a rock, or a rock I want to remove from possibly hurting my skis in the winter.  Mostly I like to shore up the downside of the trail with a branch or log... always a work in progress.  So when I'm finally conscious of our walking again, I then begin to wonder where Polly is, and find out she's way ahead, minding her own business.

We went all the way to the lake.  I threw in a stick for Bear to fetch... way out.  And he swam out to get it the sun glistening on his wet back; then turned back ... once on land, taking it back into the woods.  He always does that.  At this rate I'll have to bring the sticks I'm going to throw along with me, as he has used every floatable stick handy, and the beaver dam sticks are waterlogged.  I learned that lesson the hard way... tossed one of those.  Bear goes to fetch it.  He sees where it had splashed, but "NO STICK?!" (I can see his confusion.) He twirls around looking, and meanwhile I'm on shore yelling for him to "Come... Never mind the stick."  Sometimes if I can see just a trace of the waterlogged stick on the surface, I'll yell "Left" or "Right" (he does seem to know what I'm saying), or sometimes I'll throw a rock near it so he'll go near the splash, but if he does see it then, he goes after it and in trying to bite on it, and sometimes it sinks.  He would at times get his whole head under looking for the damn stick, and I'd be having a fit watching him as if he'll drown.  Today there was no problem.

But where was Polly... "Good-old-steady-wins-the-race." No where to be seen.  People were up at the lake lately, and if they are up and around, I'll stay away from the lake completely.  I feel almost like a party crasher if they are near the lakefront where I throw sticks or sit in an old plastic chair someone pulled out of the water, it covered with green algae.  But the area was quiet, though their cars were there, but I guess they weren't out and around yet.  I worried that Polly was looking into their outdoor grills for some greasy leftovers, or generally bothering them, but thought, "She's an old, harmless, fat-looking beagle basset hound... who'd fault her?"  And we started back.

I went to lower path back.  It is looking to be a hot sunny clear summer day on this first of September.  But the lowest trail was still pleasantly cool.  The trees cast much of a shadow so there's little underbrush, yet, with wide spaces between trees, I noticed an almost invisible web... it was a small orb web with a little spider smack in the middle looking like the bull's eye of a target.  I wondered at this tiny spider when constructing this complicated almost invisible net to catch insects.  His fastening his first web thread, to one tree, then crawling down the tree with this web reeling out of his tiny body, then trekking across the floor of the forrest climbing another tree.  Then, I think he has to reel IN his web making a "tightrope" of sorts.  Then to climb out on this 'rope' to drop somewhere, having attached another lead "rope" (not the sticky kind) to somewhere near the forest floor... perhaps one near the bottom of one tree, and climbing back up, dropping below again to crawl to the opposite tree and anchor that thread near the bottom.  Now, I'm thinking of all the directions that those web-threads that come from the middle where he now rests, and how many of those, like spokes to a wheel, have to anchor somewhere, and how many miles he would have travelled if all was enlarged to human equivalent, and that was a full grown man in the middle of that web.  If I only could only take the time and watch this marvel of construction done, perhaps I then could learn to tat.  I think one of the most common designs in tatting doilies, as they kind of look like that spider web.  I know I said "Ugh" to spiders, but they have my upmost respect when it comes to the construction of their webs, and their way of trapping nasty bugs: gnats; mosquitoes and such.  I once saved a butterfly from the grips of its having gotten caught in a web.  Once I even saw a housefly 'outside' yet caught on one string of a broken web and flying like a toy plane on a string, but bumping into the window and making such a fuss out of getting out of this dilemma  just outside the window, I had to take mercy on him, and unhitched him from his cruel trap.  If inside I'd have swatted him and put him out of his misery, but the orb spiders usually stay outside, thank goodness, though a few have crept in and made fancy lacework between the antlers of the moose head mounted in our living room.

Today I took out my camera and had it on close-up setting with the flash on, and took a picture of the web.  It looks so large in the picture, but it was about 6 inches across... the spider only a few millimeters.