Awe and Terror

At nearly 36 I keep thinking that I'm coming to the end of surprise. Not that people or events will cease to surprise me, having four kids will cure you of that notion, but that the the world's wonders have pretty much revealed themselves to me. At least in the vicinity right around me. My house, my yard, my community. I've been here for over 10 years now. I've walked out my front door thousands of times, what is there new that I could see? So when it happens, it reminds me that the world is most likely cooler than I will ever know.

Every white patch, a kingdom. 

This morning I was opening the gate (that keeps the dog and guineas in) to drive the kids to school and I was annoyed to discover that someone had discarded trash in my yard. Too many people throw things out of their car windows and too much of it ends up blown in my yard. It's really annoying. But wait, that's what I thought it was because my brain didn't really figure it out, it just sorted though things I knew and applied one of them to the situation. I think we do this a lot and miss some pretty cool things. The things we don't know are often more interesting than what we do know.

Trampoline of Death

As I kept looking (this happened in just a few seconds) it was pretty clear that I wasn't seeing garbage. What was it then. Oh my god, those are spider webs. Lots and lots of spider webs. 30, 40, 50 of them? Holy cow. Spread out on the ground like little trampolines waiting to catch bugs that fall or wander onto them. They were mostly flat with a tunnel that I presume held the maker waiting to pounce. I didn't check. The reason I could see them all was because of a very heavy dew today. The invisible world suddenly became visible. How often is my lawn covered in webs? How many spiders live here anyway? After 10 years there is a lot that I don't know about my own lawn. I really don't know what's going on within my one fenced acre. Understanding the world seems a bit overwhelming today.

I asked my kids to look out of the truck windows and try to figure out what they were. They did it in not much more time than it took me. It's not that they didn't know, but that they didn't notice. They were all a bit creeped out by the notion of that many spiders living on the lawn. The ability to experience awe, and a little bit of terror, just by looking at my lawn makes me awfully happy to wake up and share the day with my kids.