Nature & Halloween: Along Came a Spider……..

Things were easing along through the Halloween evening…knocks at the front door, the dog barking and young voices yelling ‘Trick or Treat’. Suddenly, the noise level elevated. My wife shrieked for my presence. I suspected my wife was being robbed of her stash of Air Heads by a gang of too old to trick or treat juveniles. No, young girls were pointing out a dangling decoration above the front door.

I came to the door to see a large, grape sized body with long legs spinning a web from the Halloween lights I had strung above the door. I carefully scooped the creepy spider into a container and took it into the kitchen thinking I am going to photograph this critter.

I got the camera and plopped the spider out onto a paper towel thinking the spider might cooperate. It took some doing because this spider had ideas about spinning a web around the kitchen! I got a few shots and then released the spider away from the front door decorations.

Photography: A Last Soft Look at Summer……..

Photography: These Old Stairs…..

More often than not we are looking ahead in time, barely living in the moment and briefly looking back in regret. Often when we look back it is only with our mind’s eye. But, perhaps if one is still, takes the time and looks at say these stairs…one could recall so much of what transpired up, on and down these stairs at the front of a childhood home.

Running and leaping up and down the stairs when you trusted the power in your young legs…playing with toy cars on the incline and imagining a bigger world in your fertile mind…sitting alone and waiting for neighborhood kids to come home in order to have a playmate…watching people parking a car at the curb and climbing the stairs to visit Mom…sweeping up leaves from the corners or watching the drifting snow climb the edges…guiding my elderly Mom up or down the stairs…elated moments in life…somber moments in life…selling the family home and walking down those stairs one last time.