Prairie view

Hiked prairie view today. Nothing too interesting. Perhaps the most interesting thing was thinking about spider webs... sometimes you find one floating in the middle of the trail, with about a four foot strand to a tree on one side and a 3 foot strand out to a tree on the other side. How did it start it?! Sure, once there's the 7 foot strand across the path, you can walk out midway and make a web. But how does that initial one start? It would be like me building a 200 metre rope bridge across a gorge by myself. I doubt that it sits in one tree branch and then fires out a 7 foot strand all the way across to the other tree. Yet the more likely answer is still pretty implausible, that it makes a long thread just hanging down and waits for it to get blown in such a way as to connect to the other tree on the other side of the path, without first getting tangled in other branches of the starting tree. And I don't picture it making the strand, attaching it to one tree, then walking over on the ground and climbing the other tree to attach it over there. Still, whatever the method, it happens, and quite a lot actually. I try to avoid destroying them if I can help it.

Anyways, threw some snow balls at the drive-in movie screen (from the few remaining snow piles that almost seemed there just for that purpose), hung out at the fire lookout a while, then continued back via jewel pass. Was longer than I remembered, but a nice walk in the woods. I felt stupid talking out loud to myself just for the sake of making noise.