The Wilderness, Part II

Robin stirs a can of oil. She’s here at the writer’s cabin to teach me how to treat my outdoor deck.

“Dip a quarter inch of the paintbrush into the oil,” she says.

I’m half paying attention as I fiddle with a wooden shutter.

“AIEEEE, a spider!” I scream.

Robin doesn’t take her eyes off the deck. “You'll see those from time to time out here,” she says. “Pull the oil with the grain,” she says as she strokes the brush lengthwise.

“I know there are spiders out here but, ah, I think this, um, might be the poisonous kind,” I say. I watch the round black blob crawl around the shutter.

She doesn’t look up. “About 15 minutes after applying the oil, blot any extra shiny spots with a rag,” she says.

“Seriously,” I say. “Can you look at this?” I point to the spider. “I think it’s a black widow.”

“Wow,” she jumps back, startled. Then she takes the paint brush and knocks the spider so it spirals around and we see its abdomen. “Yep, it’s a black widow,” she says.

She knocks the spider to the ground and stomps on it.

“Was a black widow,” I say.

Ron and I are used to black widows. We once lived in a newly developed complex in the Santa Monica mountains and found them in our garage all the time. He used to trap them, walk them out into the hills, and let them go. But I’m more of a spider killer. And this one was huge. The biggest black widow I’ve ever seen. I figure it must’ve been pregnant. As I spend the next few hours oiling my deck, I’m relieved that the black widow and her babies are gone – the last thing I need is to rush off to the emergency room for a deadly spider bite. It’s not until hours later, after I’m in bed and sore from treating the deck (the good kind of sore where you know you’ve worked hard), when I remember the book Charlotte’s Web.

Spiders don’t give birth to babies by pushing them down a little spider uterus and out a vajayjay. They lay eggs. And they wrap those eggs in a sac in their web.

I hop out of bed, grab my flashlight, and begin to search. There it is – inside the house by the same window where I’d found the black widow. I can’t tell if the gray balls stuck among the web are dead bugs wrapped up and ready to be eaten or baby spiders about to burst forth all over my floor. I vacuum the web up with my Dirt Devil. Then I walk out on the deck. The moon is almost full, but even with its bright light I can see hundreds and hundreds of stars. The longer I stand and watch the night sky, the more stars appear. I stand forever. Breathing in the smell of pine and watching the constellations move. I might be a little rusty about how to navigate the wild after living in the city for so long. But I know the mountains is where I belong, spiders and all.