A week or so ago, the kids and I lit out for upper elevations, thinking we might pop out above the clouds. Instead, the whole region sunned up, but still, we breathed air rarified and clarified, closer to the stratosphere. This is a good thing about living an hour or two from high mountains; just the promise of being able to escape the humid press of sea level for montaine lightness and light, just that promise is release enough from the wet winter.
Until it isn't, and you head for the actual sunny above, or at least the snowy hills.
So we did.
And up around a few thousand feet above sea level, where foreshortening makes you believe you are near the summit even when you ain't, life lightens. And we walked on diamond-sparkling snow. Further from roads, flitting across snow where snags and boulders and rushing water make the Summer going tough. Onto snow banks piled by Pacific moisture kissing Cascadian peaks.
And there we saw spiders. My older daughter spotted them first, at first with something like the disgust she has when she sees them on my humble abode's ceiling. But then, with wonder, maybe even respect, recognizing that spiders were living, ambling about, on snowfields thousands of feet above sea level.
At first, I was amazed at spiders who make a living on alpine snowbanks. Then we noticed that they were legion, and there was no food in sight. Maybe these were just unfortunate arachnids, hatched who knows where, drifted on silken strands for miles, maybe across the Pacific, only to land on a cold food desert. Birthed in a barn, berthed on a wind, and barfed onto an unfortunate end unless they could fend for themselves on less fortinate drift denizens or make it to the nearest tree just a few thousand steps away.
Steps on chronosomal legs (seriously, look at that picture, is it anything less or more than overlapping XX pairs linked by a thorax?), trying to implant their genes on this mountainside. Maybe from eggs in a South Puget lowland barn, maybe from the coast, maybe from some cat from Japan,...maybe the Spiders from Mars (there does appear to be a leftward tilt). Don't laugh, recent studies have shown that the upper atmosphere is replete with ballooning spiders. Maybe not interplanetary, but if I were a sneaky extraterrestrial, I might very well seed the upper atmosphere with large numbers of tiny beings. It beats having to face off with Will Smith, or have to deal with Jeff Goldblum at all. If, a few hundred or thousand spider generations from now, we find ourselves subject to a highly evolved cadre of arachnidean overlords, my progeny may wish I had been in a more stompy mood that February afternoon when the alpine sun shown so beautifully on the snow-spiders...
