Fragments From Floyd

I want to give you a vision. I hope to lead you to a place where you will see things that, most likely otherwise you would never see in this life. It seems to me that if I can give that to my friends, I will have given you something you can carry with you always--every time the season and sky, weather and wind are just thus and so. And so, listen: I will tell you exactly what to look for, where, when and how. All you have to do is open your eyes.

It has not been all that many years since I first saw this vision myself, after fifty years of living, blind to what had happened overhead in the early fall every year of my life. And, honestly, I witnessed it the first time quite by accident--a glance up the hill on my way home from the garden, and there it was.

Here is what I wrote shortly after that first encounter with aeroplankton, and especially, the gossamer spiders--one of the most indelible memories in a life not devoid of attention to the small wonders underfoot. But less so, overhead.

You will be disappointed if you expect to see what I describe, unless you are careful to attend these guides I will give you:

1) While you may see some floaters at any time of year, it is in the autumn you should expect to be dazzled by the variety and volume of the aeroplankton. At that time of year they consist of countless windborne seeds--milkweed, wild lettuce, thistle and other species that have silky parachutes attached to their small seeds. These will appear as some of the largest of the truly passive inhabitants in the sea of air. Often as you watch, these will shift along their course, first east, then west, rising, then falling at the whim of the currents in eddies and blasts of air.

2) While the prevailing wind carries passive seeds and flotsam along the westerlies (in our part of the southern Appalachians, at least), you'll see countless and varied silver-winged insects (presumably mostly beetles) moving against the current, and often at great speed. Their delicate and diaphanous wing-membranes catch the sun like burnished silver, and even the smallest, because of the intensity of their radiant wings, can be seen at great distance.

3) Even if conditions are not perfect, you will see the floaters and flyers already mentioned. But only if you look up on those few days when all factors are just right will you see the gossamer spiders. Let me offer some advice, because I really want you not to miss this, and the season is short:

The props for optimal viewing are exactly as the 12 yr old Jonathan Edwards described in the linked blog post from September 10, 2002. (see link above) Best time of day is mid-afternoon. It seems essential that the sun be rather low in the sky (from 2:30 to 4:00.) Shining down on the floating webs as it does in mid-day, the sun does little to create the fiber-optic brilliance that is so remarkable in these distant, shimmering webs. The best days are those immediately after a cold front. If there is even the least water vapor in the sky, any clouds at all--if you cannot see the distant horizon with razor clarity--then you will not experience the best viewing of the floating spiders.

I would also suggest, when you are positioned precisely so that your eyes are just barely shielded from the sun (and make sure of this first!), looking past the roof peak (or other sun-blocking object) with a pair of binoculars will reveal an order of magnitude greater number of aeroplanktonic objects than naked-eye viewing, in the same way that the lenses show us so many more stars than we could have imagined in the darkness.

I am writing you, friends, as an assignment. It is my hope and wish for you that you will accept this challenge to attend closely to the world above you in the coming weeks in a way uncommon to you as you hurry through your day. Pay close attention as the sky clears, as the earth tilts toward winter and the great ocean of air becomes heavy with the flotsam of fall. If you see this thing once, you will never again see the world of sky as an empty, inert place, and you, too, will be conversant with spiders.