Søren is in Savannah in a dorm at SCAD. Walter and I are heading North. I long for the Five Acre Wood. For Silas, Pearl, Church, and all the things we know will be as they were. But we will be changed, and so all that we know will be different.
I do not like hotel life where windows do not open and air conditioning and fans are loud. I want open windows at night with the sounds of insects and frogs and water and wind through trees, and the scurrying in freshly fallen leaves.
Yesterday, at the Santee National Wildlife Refuge, Walter painted, and I found a path surrounded by water and mosquitoes and Greenbrier and a more arrowy briar and poison ivy. Fallen trees crisscrossed the path, so I wandered and got lost and poked and bitten, and, as I was paying more attention to the poison ivy below, I broke countless webs that hung like ragged veils across my face and in my hair. The spiders that made the webs were orb weavers, long and thin with skulls on their bellies. Face to belly, nose to belly, with these long-legged aliens, over and over had me jump-scaring through the woods. There were smaller spiders, too, with fluorescent orange dot eyes when the sun struck just right.
Sticky with sweat and humidity, we went for a swim before leaving. We chattered in the hot and cold water until silenced by a swim of cormorants, their heads and necks bobbing in the water like funereal umbrellas turn upside-down, until first one, then the others, lifted their wings, ran on the water, and flew off.
Have you ever felt the flapping of wings?
The skull belly spider. That's going to haunt me.
Change is inevitable i suppose... but hard none the less. Even change for the good.
Spiderwebs to the face is bound to take your mind off it for a hot minute.
:)