Jan van Oordt,
Mathis Pfäffli;
Gabelung; 2026
Drahtseil

I am sitting on the train from Biel to La Chaux-de-Fonds, my eyes following the lines of the side tracks, roads, and power lines. Then, for a brief moment, the overhead lines of the train line overlap with a telephone line. The undulating movements of the two lines begin to merge. Like spider threads in the forest when the spider makes the whole web vibrate as soon as you get too close.

I read somewhere that canopy spiders were first discovered by sailors several hundred years ago.

I imagine the sailors sitting on deck early one morning, far out, somewhere in the middle of the ocean. I imagine them standing at the railing, picking leftover sauerkraut from their teeth and preparing for the hard work ahead, while their thoughts wander to places weeks and thousands of nautical miles away. Perhaps they wonder if their friends on the other side of the globe can really see the same sky, the same stars.
Then, in the flat light of the rising sun, they noticed something shiny: fine threads glistening between the thick ropes of the rigging. I imagine their curiosity, the moment when one of them climbed the main mast of the frigate to take a closer look.
Hanging between the ropes, he examined the fine, sparkling threads and discovered the tiny spiders that must have spun them.

A few years later, curious researchers observed how the little spiders settle on a hill or a wide-spreading branch, turn toward the wind, and begin to spin long threads. Slowly, a kind of canopy forms—a kind of paraglider. If I remember correctly, they need twelve threads to do this. Once this parachute is large enough, it lifts the spider into the air.
With a little luck, it is lifted into the sky and, under favorable conditions, carried several thousand kilometers by the wind. In this way, the spiders can cross entire oceans, reach other continents, land on tiny islands – or even on a lonely ship in the middle of the sea. Sometimes, when many of them decide to travel at the same time, entire landscapes are covered with a shimmering web, as happened in California a few years ago.

And if we were attentive enough and had good enough eyesight, we could see their threads glistening against the blue sky. Thousands of fine lines might stretch across it, forming a web reminiscent of airplane contrails. Each of these lines carries a tiny creature to a new place, where it may be the first of its kind.

And when the thread finally dissolves, no one will ever know about its long journey.

spider threads in Czechia some years ago. ➚