I’ve been breaking a lot of rules today. Firstly, I didn’t walk this week, I sat outside after having driven home from what was most certainly, a long and tedious day. So tedious, I didn’t feel like walking. Anyway, I settled for watching the woods behind my house waiting for something interesting to jump by or something. In the end, I ended up being mesmerized by the massive colony of spiders that have all decided to live on our shingles and telephone wires, and door corners, and windowpanes. I realize spiders don’t actually live in communities, they’d eat each other, but it feels like ours do because they’re all at least as big as y our eyeball and build these massive webs that are of varying sizes and locations, but ultimately look exactly the same, which is quite a feat considering they’re all unique.
Then, to my dismay, I almost quoted Thoreau to myself when he talks about solitude: “There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our horizon is never quite at our elbows. The thick wood is not just at our door, nor the pond, but somewhat is always clearing, familiar and worn by us, appropriated and fenced in some way, and reclaimed from Nature.” (123) Clearly, though entirely hostile to one another, (so says the Discovery Channel anyway and possibly Animal Planet, I love their specials..) the spiders have achieved this weird taking back of my building for nature, and have appropriated their own space side by side in an interesting and sufficient harmony of space. Nature reclaims us too, as it definitely reclaimed the butt of my skirt with grass stains and mud and rainwater. It got me thinking about the vastness of where I live, in Mt Vernon, which is a relatively small town with an even smaller ‘downtown’ but so many people live along rte 41 without realizing they are neighbors because there is just enough in their way that they feel isolated. We’ve completely fenced in the wilderness with ourselves that it is wildly at our doorsteps, while still remaining completely unowned and being reclaimed by nature by the spiders and the dirt that creeps in anyway. We creep in with fences; she creeps in with small pests. (I actually really love spiders)
“As I walked in the woods to see the birds and the squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle” (158). This passage is weird to me, because he personifies nature in a way that I’m not sure he intends to. The men and boys are not birds and squirrels, but he watches them the same way and the village is its own kind of wildness for him, although, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t consider nature to be wild. The idea of wildness intrigues me, and I’ve always wondered what he thought of it, especially in the sense that men claim pieces of Nature that she takes back, like the spiders taking over the outside of my building, and yet mimic it in the way we move around in packs or in villages. What would Thoreau think of subways? Would he actually compare them to ants in the forest, or would he scoff at man’s level of transportation and decide it is something entirely different, and not a strange sort of mimicry. He builds his house on Walden, and he talks about sweeping his floors and planting his beans and bringing in pond water to measure the temperature of. He talks about himself being caged listening to the birds, but he never mentions nature coming back to claim parts of him.
I was actually very intrigued by your post and though it was so interesting, especially because of the spiders. I personally cannot stand spiders and for that reason, would probably never sit and actually watch them interact, and on top of that, wouldn't watch them interact with what we have used to make our make our mark on nature as well as seperate us from it; our houses, our cars, the clothes that we wear to sheild us from the elements. I find it most interesting that you picked spiders because they don't really colonize and are very independent creatures, yet, in our apprehension to enjoy them with such reactions as "eww" and "yuck!" we miss almost completely what you came to find, that they somehow connect humans back to nature and nature, in the end, still has full control, even though we as humans spend almost all of our time competing to be the best. It seems as though you could say that the spiders are millions of little Thoreaus trying to discuss how to be one with mankind, in the same way that Thoreau tries to find nature in "Walden."
ReplyDeleteI like that you discuss Thoreau's ideas considering space and suggest that the spiders are, even though quite insignificant in size and power, as still entitled to their own space, in the same way that we as humans believe that we are all as well. What gets me really pumped about your blog post is the idea that we as humans have the power to isolate ourselves whenever we see fit, and in some strange way, so do animals. Thoreau claims, "Some of my most pleasentest hours were during the long rain storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting" (pg. 125). Humans almost always seek shelter when it rains for fear of getting wet and uncomfortable. Insects like spiders make their best appearances when it rains, perhaps to remind humans that they are not in control and merely just puppets in the grand scheme of the world. The more and more I think about this, the more interesting it is because the spiders know their place in nature and interestingly enough, mostly come out when humans are shielding away nature, which is when it rains, showing that there is always a balance of space and quite frankely, it's when humans expect it the least.
Once in a while you have to break the rules to discover new and interesting ways of viewing nature and/or life. Though I personally don't care for spiders, your connection between spiders, space, and nature caused me to ponder how nice a change it would be to have the "nature" fence all around and not a big equipment building in my backyard. I drive route 41 to work and I have often been struck by the quietness of the road. Though there are houses i agree with you that they all have enough distance apart to envelope themselves in a little bit of nature. I usually make the drive early in the morning and am often struck by the beauty of the natural scenery. Each season offers an abundance of colors and i often wish I had a camera to try and capture the scenes I pass by. For years as the leaves begin to change an artist sits at the edge of 41 and looks out on flying pond and paints the scence of a lite mist on the surface of the water and small peninsula across a quiet cove which is usually one of the first places where the sun shines and strikes the first appearing gold, orange, and red leaves. He sits there for about a week each year and paints this picture. I know I got a little off topic but route 41 has always been my favorite road around because of the vast and different scenery it has to offer.
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