It is a beautiful, warm and calm Indian-summer afternoon . . . I slowly discover that this is a gossamer day.
I first see the fine lines stretching from one weed or grass stem or rush to another, sometimes seven or eight feet distant, horizontally and only four or five inches above the water. When I look further, I find that they are everywhere and on everything, sometimes forming conspicuous fine white gossamer webs on the heads of grasses, or suggesting an Indian bat. They are so abundant that they seem to have been suddenly produced in the atmosphere by some chemistry, spun out of air I know not for what purpose.
I remember that in Kirby and Spence it is not allowed that the spider can walk on the water to carry his web across from rush to rush, but here I see myriads of spiders on the water, making some kind of progress, and one at least with a line attached to him. True they do not appear to walk well, but they stand up high and dry on the tips of their toes, and are blown along quite fast. They are of various sizes and colors, though mostly a greenish-brown or else black; some very small.
These gossamer lines are not visible unless between you and the sun. We pass some black willows, now of course quite leafless, and when they are between us and the sun they are so completely covered with these fine cobwebs or lines, mainly parallel to one another, that they make one solid woof, a misty woof, against the sun. They are not drawn taut, but curved downward in the middle, like the rigging of vessels, - the ropes which stretch from mast to mast, - as if the fleets of a thousand Lilliputian nations were collected one behind another under bare poles. But when we have floated a few feet further, and thrown the willow out of the sun's range, not a thread can be seen on it.
I landed and walked up and down the causeway and found it the same there, the gossamer reaching across the causeway, though not necessarily supported on the other side. They streamed southward with the slight zephyr. As if the year were weaving her shroud out of light.
It seemed only necessary that the insect have a point d'appui; and then, wherever you stood and brought the leeward side of its resting-place between you and the sun, this magic appeared.
They were streaming in like manner southward from the railing of the bridge, parallel waving threads of light, producing a sort of flashing in the air. You saw five or six feet in length from one position, but when I moved one side I saw as much more, and found that a great many, at least, reached quite across the bridge from side to side, though it was mere accident whether they caught there. –though they were continually broken by unconscious travellers.
Most, indeed, were slanted slightly upward, rising about one foot in going four and, in like manner, they were streaming from the south rail over the water, I know not how far. And there were the spiders on the rail that produced them, similar to those on the water.
Fifteen rods off, up the road, beyond the bridge, they looked like a shimmering in the air in the bare tree-tops, the finest, thinnest gossamer veil to the sun, a dim wall. I am at a loss to say what purpose they serve, and am inclined to think that they are to some extent attached to objects as they float through the atmosphere; for I noticed, before I had gone far, that my grape-vines in a basket in the boat had got similar lines stretching from one twig to another, a foot or two, having undoubtedly caught them as we paddled along. It might well be an electric phenomenon.
The air appeared crowded with them. It was a wonder they did not get into the mouth and nostrils, or that we did not feel them on our faces , or continually going and coming amid them did not whiten our clothes more. And yet one with his back to the sun, walking the other way, would observe nothing of all this. Only stand so as to bring the south side of any tree, bush, fence, or other object between you and the sun.
Methinks it is only on these very finest days late in autumn that this phenomenon is seen, as if that fine vapor of the morning were spun into these webs. According to Kirby and Spence, "in Germany these flights of gossamer appear so constantly in autumn that they are there metaphorically called 'Der fliegender Sommer' (the flying or departing summer)"."
What can possess these spiders thus to run all at once to every the least elevation, and let off this wonderful stream?
Harris tells me he does not know what it means. Sophia thought that thus at last they emptied themselves and wound up, or, I suggested, unwound, themselves, - cast off their mortal coil. It looks like a mere frolic spending and wasting of themselves, of their vigor, now that there is no further use for it, their prey, perchance, being killed or banished by the frost.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1853
See also October 31, 1853
A Gossamer day. See November 2, 1853 ({The last two, this and yesterday, fine days, but not gossamer ones."); October 26, 1854 ("I see considerable gossamer on the causeway and elsewhere."); October 31, 1858 ("It is a fine day, Indian-summer-like, and there is considerable gossamer on the causeway and blowing from all trees") November 1, 1860 ("Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air."); November 15, 1858 (" Gossamer, methinks, belongs to the latter part of October and first part of November") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days
What can possess these spiders thus to run all at once to every the least elevation, and let off this wonderful stream? See Ballooning Spiders
A gossamer day –
As if the year were weaving
her shroud out of light.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A gossamer day
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season, out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025
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