Field Program

Small ecosystems live and die on top of my bug net; insects, trapped between my rainfly and the mesh fabric. I lie awake in my tent at night and watch them, little dioramas of life, miniature parallels to the larger world. There are very small gnats that tend to circle without much thought or purpose, inchworms that regularly summit distances akin to Everest, and spiders that appear to be doing nothing, but are actually tense and alert. The spiders interest me the most. You'd think that a spider only hunts by web, but I've learned that is simply not true. They are active hunters; they lie in wait, and when a small, purposeless gnat gets a little too close, they move, faster than the human eye, to catch it, to give it purpose as its meal. It's fascinating. Bees do the same thing, except they don't suck the innards out of the gnats like the spiders do. Instead, they turn the fly over in their little hands (feet? appendages?), eating it like one would nibble on a corncob on the Fourth of July. Insects and humans really aren't so different, if you ignore some large and glaring discrepancies. Except aren't you glad the insects aren't our size?