Three doves, a sleepy bee, and one ambitious spider

When was the last time you let yourself get caught up in wonder? Pure wonder.

Remember wonder? We tend to outgrow it, like believing in invisible friends or tame dragons flying about the bedroom.

For several years when I was an only child, between the loss of two sisters and the later birth of another sister and brother, I lived in a travel trailer, moving frequently.

It was my father’s idea. A way for my still-grieving mother and me to stay close to him in his dream job as a field engineer with the pre-moonwalk space program.

That meant a lot of trailer parks as well as a constant crop of new, temporary neighbors and shared nosiness about each other.

Despite my mother’s inner gloom, she was quite a talker, even something of a comedian at times.

Once as we were doing laundry at a trailer park in South Carolina, each of us reading a book, an older woman, with bluish curly hair sprayed stiff and red cat-eye glasses, sat down next to us. When my mother looked up to acknowledge her, the woman asked what state we were from.

My mother, without skipping a beat, quipped, “A constant state of wonder.”

The woman looked dumbfounded. I’ve no idea why my mother said that, but before long, the room was filled with women’s voices and the sounds of shirts and shorts sloshing in washing machines.

I do believe that spending time in a state of wonder is one way my mother managed to live forward. And when you’re a child, watching your mother be curious and astonished (the hallmarks of wonder), well, you realize the power of spending as much time as you can in that state.

For a soundtrack as you read, here’s a mix of wild + music ▸ Redwood Forest Relaxation.

From my journal | May 29, 2025

Not yet 6 o’clock in the morning. Fog low on the horizon creates an apricot haze.

On my deck with teacup in hands, I’m revelling in a rising mix of spring bird songs, waiting for the sun to rise between the ruddy-barked bodies of redwoods.

Three Mourning doves land in a series of whistles, then cooing, breasts and backs all peachy-periwinkle, sparks of iridescence as they pivot and peck the air.

It’s as if light simply chose to show up as purring birds.

I know, sounds poetic to say we are all made of light, and yet, we are.

This is so enough.

Enough to be in this morning light. Enough to be the morning light, showing up as a woman in a blue robe and bear slippers, tea in her belly, doves arriving looking for seeds in the yard, the front yard over there as well as the inner yard in here, called mind.

I grab my binoculars and look closely at each dove, the one-and-only-ness of each birdy being.

You might think they all look the same, but no.

Each blue ring around the purple-black eye is slightly different. Flecks on the wing feathers vary. This one’s neck, a pink hue. That one’s, a pale coral. The third one, as if hearing my thoughts, turns to me, it’s throat flashing magenta.

This is so enough. Cool and peaceful, cinnamon tea and bantering doves, the promise of another sunrise.

And Yet.

My eyes dart about to what’s undone, broken, unkempt, more weedy than wild.

Why do we do that? There is always one thought that says, Nope, not enough.

I think of two readers and a client I heard from last week, caught in their own story called, Why am I not more than this—better, stronger, inwardly resilient, outwardly accomplished?

Coo-ah, coo-coo-coo …  Coo-ah, coo-coo-coo. Dove talk.

Do doves talk only out into the world, announcing their presence and flirting with their kind?

Is there no inner flock causing angst? No self-reproach? No burden of regrets? No longing to be anything more that exactly their feathery, earth-scratching, seed-eating, avian selves?

Coo-ah, coo-coo-coo …  Coo-ah, coo-coo-coo.

My mind shifts.

Thank you, dark voice of overwhelm and insufficiency. Hush now—there are others I need to hear.

Good to remember you can choose which voices to believe.

There is nothing undone and nothing broken.

The unkept and weedy are parts of the vibrantly wild now.

This morning is an invitation of light and ease.

I find myself wanting to take down the pathetic, brown wreath from the front gate, choosing to revive the stone sign that says, Welcome.

It’s tinged with mildew, sticky with tiny webs, crusted with coils of slug scat. “Who made you?” I ask. “And how did you not shatter when you fell to the ground in that long ago storm?”

As I swab clean each engraved, black letter, then tie a leather shoestring as a hanger to replace the one that snapped more than two years ago, I pause to admire what now feels new.

“I’ve missed you, lovely green sign.” My voice is loud enough to send the doves shuffling then lifting away.

I pull the rusted nail that once held it from the gate’s grey wood and screw in a silvery cup hook, returning the sign to it’s old home.

Welcome, it offers, along with an simple image of a mountain and spruce.

I’ve not fixed anything about this morning, only added another invitation to step further into it.

Turning to head back to my now-tepid tea, new energy in my hands makes me want to do more.

So, just beyond the gate, I kick off my slippers, walking barefoot in a patch of clover marred by a few tall weeds.

At the center of each clover leaf, a bead, fog condensed to droplets. As I crouch to pull one persistent clump of weeds, two surprises.

Stuck in a clover blossom is a sluggish bee. As I lean lower and ask, “Are you sleeping?” I hear a low growl. Or maybe hummingbird wings?

“Is that you, Bee?”

Wondering if she’s sleeping or torpid from a chilly-wet night or no longer alive, I hear the hummy, growlish sound again. Looking around, no hummingbirds, and certainly not coming from Sleepy Bee.

“Hello?” Quiet again.

Then a surge of joy rises as I look over to the edge of the corrugated, metal pipe that runs under our gravel driveway for drainage.

Last year a mother fox reared her kits in that tube. I got to watch them play in this very patch of clover. A couple of weeks ago, I’d noticed a fox ‘calling card’, that is, a single fox dropping in the driveway in the exact place I’d found one last year, weeks before the little foxes let themselves be seen.

Is there anything better than the anticipation of a gift? The possibility of baby foxes, hidden, just feet from your feet?

I reach forward to yank up two more weeds, and from the steely den, gr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r.

When I turn back to Sleepy Bee, wondering if she senses fox babies nearby, she’s gone.

There’s a popular saying, “Does it get any better than this?”

My hands dirty. My knees wet. My robe stained green in spots.

Does it? What could be better than being part of all this?

From my journal | May 30, 2025

Opening the door to step out into the night, I’m alert, pausing, flashlight poised to catch a possible glimpse of Mama Fox.

Instead, surprise, an orbweaver, a bulky but crafty spider, weaving away just two feet from my face,

She’s designing an enormous web, the center of which is eye-level, her silk stretching from pavement and fern fronds to the eaves of the house. Not the prim, radial kind of web we tend to think of, hers is abstract.

If the web were music, I’d call it atonal, lacking melody, meandering, erratic yet intentional.

If I’d simply walked out the door, I’d be wrapped in silk and wearing a big, surprised spider.

Well, aren’t you an ambitious hunter? I think to her, imagining my body, mummified, and her spidery delight at capturing her version of the motherlode.

I watch her work. Her chunky body is intricately mottled in brown tones with what looks like a faint, white cross on her back. Her legs are fast in the shimmery strings as if plucking them rather than knitting them into a pattern.

If I had ears like a dog or a bat, would I hear spider music right now? Would it be atonal or melodic?

All I hear is aaaahhhhh. Wind flowing through the crowns of redwoods. The night, sighing.

I puff my breath at the web. Immediately she shakes the whole creation into a vibrating blur, then scurries to its lop-sided center, pulls her legs under her abdomen, and goes still. She’s a little, mocha marble.

Finding the outer rigging of her artwork, I step sideways, flip off the flashlight, and walk to the clover.

No foxes. No sleeping bee. No moon. No stars. No worries.

I think of my neighbors sleeping. If you hear strange songs in your dreams, it might be spider music!

They make me feel seen, even in their sleeping. Their kindness to my husband and to me, during these several years of pandemic and my husband’s slow ebbing toward his life’s ending, is proof that people really are made of light.

I offer my lovingkindness intention, my nightly ritual, to them, then to my husband, to my family and friends farther away, to my clients who trust in me, to my cats, to the foxes and the bee, to people caught in every variation of suffering (as well as joy) in this world.

May you know peace.
May your heart remain open with curiosity and love.
May you live in the light of your true nature.
May you know well-being.
May you be a source of kindness and healing for others and for yourself.

Mist is another kind of web, wrapping itself around me. My face, dewy as the three heart-shaped leaflets atop each clover stalk brushing my ankles.

Flashlight back on. The mist is bits of light and motion, everywhere, as if tiny water birds in glistening murmurations.

Aiming the beam toward the door, mindful of the web, I see she’s back at work. My light through the strands and flowing around her, creates a colossal black spider on the door.

It would look terribly ominous, if the shadow were a real spider. The soundtrack to Jaws plays in my head. Spielberg could make a new series, Arachnid Park.

But the shadow is not the same as the spider, just as a thought is not the same as a truth.

“Good night, Ambitious Orbweaver.”

Further thoughts on the state of wonder

It may not be that we outgrow wonder as we leave our childhoods, but rather that we start believing a false narrative that goes like this: I’ve seen that before. I know that. I’ve been there. There’s no new thing under the sun.

It’s true, there is a deep sense of magic and surprise in the first time you experience anything.

I think that’s one reason we like to have children or grandchildren around.

We get to reinhabit wonder through all their ‘firsts,’ exploring the simplest, seemingly most ordinary things. Discovering their own toes, looking at a ladybug climbing a sleeve, making a snow angel, watching an uncle’s hands cast shadow-animals on the wall, listening to the hoo-ing of an owl in the night, learning the sun is a star, feeling you are in love with the boy or girl two desks in front of you.

If you haven’t experienced that kind of wonder in a long time, how might you get it back?

Travelling to a place you’ve never been offers up a ‘first’ for you.

But. That only works if you remember to open yourself to the new, to cue yourself to pay attention, to slow down as you step from the plane, train, car, or boat, and to savor with every sense those first moments, the feeling of arrival, then each person and site and event, noticing and holding onto your experience of wonder itself.

There’s also learning something new. Could be throwing bowl on a potter’s wheel or fly fishing or taking Mandarin lessons.

Certainly putting yourself in situations to meet new people, especially those less like you, can open unimagined worlds.

That said, want to know a secret?

Wonder doesn’t depend on what’s new or out-of-the-ordinary.

While technically true that there is no new thing under the sun—the entire universe is made out of various configurations of the same finite list of ‘stuff’—each ‘thing’ is it’s own universe.

In short, there’s so much more to discover in what you’ve already seen, so much more to explore in those who are already in your life, so much more unknown than known even among the most mundane.

After discovering Ms. Orbweaver, I was looking for her web the next morning as I headed out the door.

I’ve walked my face into plenty of spider webs over the years, typically followed by a reflexive shaking of the body and tousling of the hair to eject any eight-legged stow-away. So, I don’t want to wonder about that adventure.

And yet, surprise! The complex web she’d been crafting the night before was almost entirely gone, except for a few anchoring strands, earth to eave.

What happened? I looked around for her, but no mocha marble.

The next few nights and mornings, the same. Ms. Orbweaver worked fastidiously on an expansive web just outside the door in the darkness, only for the web to be mostly gone before dawn.

I finally turned to the other web to research my curious Cross orbweaver.

Apparently, this is how she lives. Web-building by night and taking it back down before dawn. Not only harvesting whatever unassuming moth, midge, or crane fly got tangled, but also dining on her own web silk to recycle the proteins.

Such a clever girl!

Despite this new knowledge and the now routine nature of my spider friend spinning at night and gone by day, I’m looking forward to looking for Ms. Orbweaver tonight.

Such a wonderful girl!

Three links to inspire wonder

🎧 Click the colored hyperlinks to watch or listen ...

A New View of the Moon

Do Bees Sleep?

Ennio Morricone | The Ecstasy of Gold—Theremin & Voice
(A theremin is an electronic instrument played without physical contact, using electromagnetic fields & hand gestures to control pitch and volume. Invented by Leon Theremin in the early 1920s.)

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