Silver in the Sky...

"The aim of life is to live,

and to live means to be aware,

joyously,

drunkenly,

serenely,

divinely

aware."

~ Henry Miller

     Lying on my back on a granite slab high in the Sierra, a narrow rocky peninsula reaching into the inky blue waters of Loch Leven, I gaze lazily upward to the clear blue late-August sky, clearing my mind and taking in the glory of the brisk and breezy day. The air is pristine, infused with the crisp scent of pine. Breathing, I feel the clear, cool oxygen molecules enter my lungs, my bronchial tubes, hitch a ride on red blood cells, and deliver a burst of energy to each and every cell in my body, down to the tips of my toes. I am intensely aware... aware of the hard sharpness of the earth beneath me... aware of the vast blue space extending above me... aware of the soft cool breeze sweeping away the warmth of the sun's rays... aware of...

     Suddenly, the sky around the sun is filled with iridescent and sparkling fairy dust -- no, not dust -- floating strands of fine thread. Millions and millions, perhaps billions and billions, of silvery silk strands twinkle in the afternoon sun. I hold my hand aloft, blocking out the blinding light like a palm-shaped eclipse, to better see the morphing, shimmering shapes. An illusion of the eye, I'm sure, they appear to fly only in concentric circles around the sun, creating a huge, shining, spiraling vortex of silky wisps. I am mesmerized by this totally unexpected and miraculous phenomenon.

     Watching the floating vortex dancing weightless above me, images of the planet Pern, from fantasy novels by Anne McCaffrey, come to mind. Pern is a distant human-colonized planet that is home to real, live dragons. Every several decades, in a pattern as regular as clockwork, Pern passes near her sister planet, which is populated exclusively by fungi. When the planets pass close to one another, long shimmering strands of fungi spores float and drift across the short distance of space and passively land on Pern's surface. Shifting to aggression, the fungi voraciously devour all they contact. Dragonriders, astride their flying dragon steads, are the planet's only defense. Though her description is eerily similar, certainly, the fantastic phenomenon I am witnessing is not the advance guard of a fungi space invasion of Earth.

     A much more benign image, also from fantasy literature, arises next in my mind. The closing scene in E. B. White's classic story, Charlotte's Web, has Charlotte's progeny taking to the air. Millions of baby spiders, riding on air currents, each with its own delicate spiderweb parachute, are whisked airborne safely to new homes.

     It is much more likely that the singularly mysterious phenomenon I am observing is a mass migration of miniscule spiders on iridescent web filaments, rather than an army of invading fungi space aliens, but in either case, it is magically beautiful. I wonder, were similar real-life observations by storytellers McCaffrey and White the inspiration for their delicious novels? If so, one author described the actual natural process that he witnessed, while the other, like me, chose to remain under the magic spell created by her own sense of wonder.