And what made the outdoor security light stay on for a moment longer than it normally does? What made me look down when I normally don’t? I’ve never been able to grasp such moments of fortune.

But there it was, its strong erratic web strewn across the narrow path, just above ankle height. And she in the middle, upside down, about twice the size of a silver dollar. I swear I have never even heard of a black widow reaching such size.

The security light went out, and the large creature returned to darkness. I stepped backward to trigger the motion sensor, slowly, and after a few steps it came back into view again, unmoved.

Suddenly I felt a fear of unpredictable things. I felt a spider’s web when I opened the gate to the backyard I walk through to reach my cottage. And now I wondered what sort of creature might have spun it. How many of these large black widows might be lurking about the pathway? I’ve walked down this path in the dark without a light so many times with never a thought of such hazard.

That will never be the case again.

The odd thing is, I can’t easily bring myself to kill a black widow.

Once when I spent the night at a little known hieroglyph site in a California desert, a large black widow appeared above me in the night. I was sleeping on the floor of a body length recess in a rock outcropping. This rock and those around it possessed many hieroglyphic symbols inscribed long before the white man came.

Something bade me stay put and face my fear of the darkness–the darkness of night, the mystery of the hieroglyphs, of the spider that appeared above me in the night, the future. And so I did. I turned off my flashlight and stared at its silhouette in the darkness, the slightest hint of starlight reflected off its enameled abdomen.

I drifted in and out of sleep dreaming of long black legs, a twitching abdomen–dark gray chevron wide across its front, fangs and mouth parts. Each time I awoke I shone my light up and there it was, still unmoved.

In the pre-dawn light I saw it still. And after a few more times in and out of sleep, before the sun broke free of the valley’s west edge, I opened my eyes and it was gone. It returned to its place of mystery, to the dreaming. Even its web seemed gone.

And now I wonder where the connection lies between the circumstances surrounding my visit to that hieroglyphs site and the black widow last night. So many coincidences have been taking place lately, some of them of a dark, mysterious nature.

But the darkness doesn’t frighten me as once it did. It is the place from which we came, to which we return. It manifests all forms and is the well spring of infinite creativity.

I’ve been told that such coincidences may indicate that one is walking his songline. They are not ends in and of themselves, but indicators of what is–what already is. And what is can’t be expressed or grasped, but merely hinted at by these curious projections, these salient expressions of the dreaming.

Well I got some pictures of last night’s black widow. I’ll plan on moving it now that I know where it lives (under a domed piece of tiling that borders the pathway). But for the time being I’ll leave it alone and plan on having my light with me whenever I leave or enter my cottage. I might get a chance to take more pictures of it.