Life on the Rim
It’s surprisingly short and warm here, winter. There have only been a couple weeks where I couldn’t find anything to shoot but flies. Flies will never let you down. Just put some food out, any food, and they will come. As long as the neighbour isn’t feeding them better.
There are a few places I go to find all sorts of creatures and I am always finding new ones, places and creatures. I parked in the shade of a tree in a field by a main road, Mt Cotton Road. It’s by a big lake, dam in Aus, and the water is wonderfully clear with all sorts of flowering plants and birds living on it. The air is beautifully clear and the sunlight is strong and warm. The surrounds are free of mans encroachments, probably because this is drinking water for the town of Capalaba in the Redlands of Brisbane.
It really is a wonderful natureful place.
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Around the perimeter of the field there were iron fence posts, called star posts – because of their design, at intervals of about 10 metres. On top of each post there was a yellow plastic cap, to cover rough iron and to hold an electric wire I suspect. The thing about them is though they provide shelter for a number of small creatures. And that is their unintended value. All I had to do to find these creatures was lift the plastic cap and voila! Instant wildlife safari, well, not quite, perhaps.
They are mostly spiders, jumping ones. These ladies are very active and get their name deservedly from the way they tend to jump, what else. There are two jumpers here, one black on a pad of webbing and one tan, and two other kinds of spider. The wolf, I think, and another I have never seen before.
The wolf came out from under the yellow plastic as soon as I lifted it and took an aggressive stance atop it as I put it down. It was not affected by my presence and I believe these spiders are all female, protecting the nest, no compromise in their maternal instinct.
The other, black, cream and orange one was another story. She was lightning fast and had the presence of an entity to be avoided at all costs. She put fright into my self the way she moved out of sight and back again, made me cautious.
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The other creature here is some kind of cricket or what? I don’t know. It looks like it lives in the dark, or it’s a young something not yet ready for life in the daytime. I don’t know, I’ve never seen such as this before.
Man encroaches on nature in consideration of what’s important to him, at the end of the day some sort of permanence or ongoing. In this case to fence something in to protect his interest. And when man no longer maintains his intent nature encroaches back again.
It’s the order of things that what man makes dies, nature goes on. That is what matters.
It is what matters most, the will in action. Nature. Will manifest.
My nature. Yours too.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Spider Craft
Since winter has arrived – it’s all relative, there is less to shoot the camera at. Much of it is in or close to indoors, depending on the heat of the day. I must stress, it’s all relative, perceptually so as well as actually.
Downstairs where I live there is an open bathroom that isn’t used except on occasion and I leave it open to see what nature will bring. A few spiders have lived here as evidenced from the scattering of dead insect bodies discarded on the windowsill, all sorts of flies that have entered but not exited. It’s a veritable killing field. Other creatures come and go, the gecko, moths, wasps and of course mozzies.
Right now there is a small and very successful spider that locates under the window and above the bath and has as its shelter and hideaway a roof made of insect parts held together by a weave of spider silk at the centre of an elaborate web. Whenever I enter to inspect the place this one makes a b line for the shelter and I leave it to itself, probably informed by one of the many almost invisible strands radiating from the web. But if I wait a little while I often find another kind of spider patrolling the window pane.
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This one is a character, fiercely unselfconscious in his proud dance across the glass, jumping this way and that, seeing what he sees to make him so. A roaming hunter this one. When I put my finger in his way he jumped on it and then off again as fast, testing what am I. A good question the spider never asks.
Up close it is apparent this one is in his prime, a sprightly gait, colourful fur, clear eyed and a somewhat playful manner the way he punches out with his paps – or front ‘arms’, as if engaging an unseen foe. A pugilist among his kind perhaps, or do I know him from somewhere else? As someone else?
I am always delighted when a god made creature engages with me in whatever degree, as long as it’s not a bite. It is touching, of a point inside where nature is one in all things. It’s a psychic thing, or psycho – spiritual, in that there is a recognition at some level of perception there is no separation as it appears ‘out’ here. And in that oneness there is a sense of wonder, of beauty. A sense. It’s got to make sense.
I don’t mind spider at all. God spider, spider god? What blasphemy to the rigidly religious mind, love it.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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