Lines

This evening while I was packing for a lobster sampling trip tomorrow I was distracted by a big beautiful spider outside my living room window. As I leaned in for a closer look, I saw that she was in deep concentration building tomorrow's web to catch breakfast. She tiptoed delicately across the existing 'scaffolding' of web frame and carefully spun and attached new thread creating the fine webbing in between. She pulled the invisible thread from her abdomen with her rear legs at exactly the right tension so as not to break it. Each line perfectly parallel to the last and meticulously attached in a fraction of a second. Then she reached the end of the line, turned around, and went in the opposite direction. She spun with upmost efficiency and a sense of calm urgency with the task at hand. And all this intricate work could be brushed aside tomorrow with the sweep of a twig in the wind or my broom for that matter.

I thought of my trip earlier this week. The captain was full steam ahead and the sternman was occupied stacking traps on the stern while cap waited for him to break the next pair on the rail and commence the lobster/baiting routine. I was standing right there and was done measuring, so I grabbed the bridle and pulled the trap aboard, forgetting to flick the line out of the block simultaneously. The cap got it for me and we both emptied our respective traps. I thought of how many times I watched that sequence of motions in a day, a week, and a year, and yet when I went to replicate it, my motions were clumsy and novice-feeling. It has been so long since that was my role.

The seemingly effortless motions of one who's very good at what they do can be deceiving to the less experienced. What does a young spider's first web look like?

I also thought about the fibers (rope) that lobstermen work with and how much effort it takes to rig and maintain it seasonally. Shifting offshore in the fall and lengthening lines. Dropping the top warps in the hot tank daily to cook the algae off. Shortening lines in the summer to shift inshore. Swapping out old lines. Marking new lines with red whale markers outside the exemption line. Coiling, tying, splicing over and over again. And just like the spiderweb, this existing framework of lines that is each lobsterman's gang of traps in his/her designated local fishing territory, might get turned upside down by right whale regulations in a few year's time. Complete reconfiguration. Back to the drawing board.

These fibrous networks are fragile, yet important. One's livelihood depends on them.