A Barn Spider in the Swamp

 

While traveling in Virginia this week I encountered this spider in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. It's almost an inch across. Big spider! It's a spotted orb weaver also called a barn spider. This is the top. Click to enlarge

This is the underside. The web was about two feet across. I cannot tell you how glad I was that I saw the spider before I accidentally walked into the web.

Here are a few cypress trees at the edge of Lake Drummond. Does not look all that dismal on a sunny day. 

 

And here is a spider poem by E. B. White called Natural History: 

"The spider, dropping down from twig,


Unfolds a plan of her devising,


A thin premeditated rig


To use in rising.

And all that journey down through space,


In cool descent and loyal hearted,


She spins a ladder to the place


From where she started.

Thus I, gone forth as spiders do


In spider’s web a truth discerning,


Attach one silken thread to you


For my returning."