All is still.  Then you hear the breeze.  You hear it before you see it, and it’s felt before it’s seen.  Somewhere in the distance, in the treetops back behind you. Moments later, off to the side and up the trail, you notice the smallest of branches and leaves in the thinnest of saplings begin to tremble, flutter, and sway.  Then you feel it, the coolness and crispness of this new Autumn across the back of your neck, across your cheek, your fingers and pencil, small pad balanced on your knee.

Your focus shifts, and suspended inches above the ground, once invisible filaments now appear, shimmering in the sunlight, caught up and revealing for a split second  impossibly thin and iridescent threads stretched between leaf and twig, rotting log and stone.

Have they been left there by some wandering arachnid, you wonder, or have they been lifted, carried by this wind, and draped across the landscape?

Everything is connected; this is what was known, has been so often forgotten, and what we are learning over once again.    Nothing exists in isolation, or rises into being apart from creation.  From whence we’ve come and where we go, wandering aimelssly, or with purpose, it is both and the same.   The connections persist, there is no doubt, but they are often only revealed for a moment: that split second when the wind, the light, and the angle of your gaze perfectly coincide to reveal a phenomena previously unseen.  Even then, there is only a glimpse, for you cannot discern where the threads begin and end, only that they’re there.

There may be explanations for all things, fascinating in their own right, and meanings may be lifted from any variety of text.  On this day, however, my scripture is laid out before me in the mystery of fugitive webs, shimmering silk, and the currents of air, rolling down from more Northerly places to shift the seasons, swirl through the treetops, and careen softly over my shoulder and along the meandering trail before me.