One brisk October morning, Ed Brown discovers that he is quite literally a part of a world wide web, in his short essay "Stranded," from the 2023 edition of Deep Wild: Writing from the Backcountry.
"The sun, not long up over the ridge, slips between skinny aspen boles
and filters through furry tips of spruce trees to glisten in a profusion
of filaments strung randomly before me. Unidentifiable stalks, leaves
already given up to cold or late season foraging by cattle and elk, are
festooned with impossible, shimmering rigging running in all directions.
Hands wrapped gratefully around a cup of hot coffee, I watch glimmers
flow along other garlands in the low, spreading canopy over me. With
growing astonishment, I am soon noticing the phenomenon everywhere
in the bowed, brown grass carpeting the slope up toward the young
light of a new day. What legion of beings could be responsible for this
extensive, delicate filigree? And to what end: aerial pathways? To capture
prey on these single but multitudinous strands?
"A scant breeze plays each filament, and reflected sunlight moves
along them like electrical pulses, like coded messages. "Winter is almost
upon us." "Snow lies on the ground only 500 feet higher." "It's been a
year like no other." "We had a good run." As underground networks of
fungal mycelium are believed by some to facilitate so-far-unfathomable
communication, could this nearly invisible tangle serve a similar role
above ground? What is known or felt or remembered here on this
side of the mountain, this blessedly intact drainage, barely protected
by a natural firebreak above treeline and only a couple of miles from
the charred patchwork of the state's largest-ever wildfire? Is healing
involved?
"Sunlight reaches my tent and I see it too has been hooked up
overnight, fine guy lines supplementing nylon cords. I marvel at the
Lilliputian engineers behind these extensive works, then realize the gnat
hovering in front of my face is not hovering and is not a gnat. It is one of
them, dangling from the brim of my hat, offering, as long I continue to sit
on this stump in the early morning light, to draw me in, make me part of
this iridescent landscape. In fact, I see now that my knee is bridged to the
tree on my left. Without knowing it, perhaps to a degree greater than I'm
aware, I'm being woven into a tapestry of unknown extent. I find myself
recalling glimpses of these ephemeral, backlit traces in almost every
environment I can think of, indoors and out. The words 'world wide web'
come to mind with new possibility.
"There is an impending dilemma. To get up, to move at all across
this terrain, is to wreak mostly oblivious destruction on this fragile art.
I notice another tiny rappeller tethered in space a few feet away and try
to imagine such an existence, having no plan beyond surrender to where
the wind takes you. Their numbers and determination reassure me.
Rips left behind as I make my way through the sparse fabric will be soon
erased, rewoven. But a sense of mystery persists. What subtle design
and intelligence might possibly be represented in all this behavior? So
many questions without answers, and only so much capacity to wonder.
I rise to follow my own thread of intention for the day, newly aware of
the space I inhabit and move through, of being one among a throng of
critters, and like them, of being alive in the moment."
From the 2023 issue of Deep Wild: Writing from the Backcountry. For more words from the wild, visit deepwildjournal.com. We are currently open for submissions for Deep Wild 2024, to be published next June. No reading fees!
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