Chet Raymo, “The Uses of Enchantment”

Remember those spider webs I wrote about the other day, made visible by dew? Once the sun burned away the mist and the dew evaporated, the webs became invisible. But of course they are still there, a thousand silken snares, each with its resident spider. As I walked down the drive today I sensed their presence—the field alive with invisible spirits, a thousand arachnoid dryads crouching in their bowers.

The key to enchantment is to be aware of what can’t be seen. The spiders in their webs. The spinnerets extruding gossamer. The DNA zipping and unzipping in each cell of the spiders’ bodies, the amino acids, A and T, G and C, grasping hands in their dervish dance. The atoms in their resonant vibrations.

“What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well,” wrote Antoine De Saint-Exupery. The key to enchantment is to never stop thinking about the well.”