“When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat ”¦ or when we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash ”“ at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the ”˜newness,’ the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.” — Thomas Merton

And it is exactly like that to gaze off into the woods or into a pool of gold among the pines, staring off into the lushness that surrounds me here. Birds flit among the trees, and the sound of a lawnmower rumbles in the distance. The sun sinks below the treeline, and its effects on the foliage are nothing short of spectacular.

I look and look until I can’t anymore, and then, I look some more ”¦

And there it is, the phenomenon created by sunlight traveling through pine boughs and illuminating the individual needles in such a way as to create what I call a sun-web. It involves my standing in such a way as to visually place a tree trunk between the light and myself, and in the process, a gilded gossamer shape appears that looks very much like a spider’s web. It isn’t noticeable from any other angle, and it’s not always in the same spot. As the sun shifts slightly north at day’s end, the sun-web appears elsewhere, but it always involves light, pine needles and being in the right place at the right time. A slight breeze sometimes adds an extra layer of delight, setting the whole thing a-shimmering, and I look at it as long as I can before the light fades and it dissolves into shadow.

Time stops during such events, comes to a screeching halt and bends its knee in reverence. Anything else that matters or that might have pressed on my mind earlier in the day takes a back seat for the duration. There is nothing left to do but to behold this thing that nature has created and that will fade quickly, following the light into the oblivion of night, the vast, dark space these woods becomes when the stars take over. Whatever may have clouded my vision up until now vanishes, and I am left with a golden orb speaking to me from a place where the trees know each other well and where they engage in perpetual embrace.

As the web dims, the sun draws my eye to the very tops of the trees, where the second act takes place in the form of a fireburst among the leaves, as though each trunk were a large taper set alight by nature against the impending gloom. Spring’s unsullied new green is temporarily replaced by red, orange and yellow of a kind usually seen only in autumn but that is always present depending on the light’s capriciousness. And there I am, alone with it. Alone with the sun-web, the molten gold dripping from the uppermost leaves, and the light refracted from the tiny wavelets scurrying across the pond’s surface. Nothing else exists for those few moments as an invisible hand draws me into still another version of the mystic’s “cosmic dance,” where I dance and twirl as though my life depended on it ”“ because it does.

— Rachel Lovejoy, a freelance writer living in Lyman, who enjoys exploring the woods of southern Maine, can be reached via email at [email protected].