Artwork by Kaya Joan
Everywhere I go, spiders seem to find me. If not spiders then their webs, clingy strings meant to capture prey or capture your attention. Something about spiders’ craftiness, their art of living, the in-between worlds of shadow and sunlight they occupy, compels me to slow down and wonder what other magnificence our human eyes have lost their ability to see. On the lamp post between Haddon and Portland in my Oakland neighborhood, a tightly spun web. Just before the sun made its final bow, light caught spider silk and glinted, winking at me. I turned my head slightly and observed a maroon-colored spider sitting patiently on the far edge of its web. A few millimeters away, a small fly is caught in the center. With expert precision, the spider untangled the fly and snacked on it, a hard-earned meal.
I had never seen this particular type of arachnid before. Was it a brown recluse? No. Not common around these parts. A sowbug killer? No, those spiders don’t use webs to catch their prey. Humbled by my own lack of knowledge, I thought about how, even though there are more than 50,000 known species of spiders, and likely even more that haven’t been identified yet, they remain some of the most under-studied invertebrates. But spiders live in almost every climate on earth, ranging from alpine environments to salt-marsh landscapes. They adapt to forests, underwater environments, deserts, and cities such as Oakland. We just kind of expect them to always be there. But no one really misses them when they’re gone.
A week later, I returned to the same spot but didn’t find either the web or its weaver. No surprise since spiders sometimes move their webs to find more abundant prey. And many spider species only live a year or two, if they aren’t eaten or killed first. I still wondered what happened to this particular spider, and the others, the ones who disappear from view after a quick glimpse, the ones we never even know are nearby. In the urban center, where there are cameras everywhere, I find myself daydreaming about retreating into the forest’s decadent density, weaving webs of my own artful design.
Spiders were some of the earliest creatures on land, evolving in terrestrial environments some 400 million years ago, long before humans were even a glimmer in the universe’s eye. As such primeval beings, they often appear in foundational myths as figures like the spider-spirit Anansi in Ghanaian folklore, a trickster who uses his cunning to navigate through life. Mythological tricksters like Anansi are common across the globe and their tales teach us lessons about the importance of selflessness, humility, and triumphing over evil. They are often portrayed as animals, and as travelers or nomads, operating as conduits between worlds. Trickster figures operate in the morally gray meat: They remind us that life is chaotic, messy and unjust, and in order to cope with such a life, sometimes we, too, are chaotic, messy and unjust.
Ashanti storytellers in what is now Ghana relayed Anansi tales to educate on the complex nature of existence and the need for order in a chaotic world. Anansi, a being who does not abide by the rules of humans or other gods, exists somewhere between worldly and spiritual, an individual whose choices nonetheless shape society and the greater world around him.
Most Anansi tales are fables, stories which relay moral truths about society or explain forces of nature and humanity’s relationships to those phenomena. As some of the oldest creatures on land, it makes sense that spiders are often part of our origin stories.
In the days when the earth was new, Anansi the Spider, trickster prince, approached Nyame, the Sky God, and asked for all the wisdom in the world. After bringing Nyame three offerings—the Jaguar Who Has Dagger-like Teeth, the Hornets Who Sting like Wild Fire, and the Invisible Fairy of the Forest—Anansi was bestowed with all the wisdom in the world. In another version of the story, Anansi stole the world’s wisdom from Nyame, and smuggled it away in a calabash. But wisdom kept spilling out of the gourd, and Anansi realized he couldn’t hold all the world’s knowledge, so he distributed the calabash’s contents far and wide.
As Anansi cast information across the earth, he made life possible for humans and other animals, showing earth’s creatures how to live from the land and in their specific niches. Anansi, who spun a magnificent cosmic web to reveal the sun, the moon and the stars, who brought art and writing to humans, who showed us how to hunt and how to sow fields, had descendants scattered across every nook and cranny of this earth. His gift deepened our understanding about the world around us.
Liminal tricksters, animals with human traits, humans with animal traits, distort the boundary between human and nonhuman. For as much as we would like to forget, we are of the earth, and whatever harms are done upon the land inevitably harm people, too.
When I was in first grade, I held Rosie, a Chilean rose hair tarantula, in my hands at Butterfly Pavilion near Denver; I was overwhelmed by her impressive size. In an effort to foster an appreciation for arachnids and highlight the importance of invertebrates, Butterfly Pavilion encouraged visitors to hold the mild-mannered tarantula. Rosie, who barely fit in the palm of my adolescent hand, is related to another spider I might easily mistake for a speck of dirt.
The endangered spruce-fir moss spider (Microhexura montivaga), lives among mosses on the forest floor of the southern Appalachian Mountains. Perhaps the spiders co-evolved with ancient mosses, liverworts and hornworts, which have endured a range of climate changes over some hundreds of millions of years.
The spruce-fir moss spider is the world’s smallest tarantula, measuring just the size of a pencil eraser. Unlike more commonly known spiders, such as brown recluse, orb weaver, black widow, and the dozens of unidentified house spiders seduced by the warmth of our abodes, spruce-fir moss spiders are hyper-localized and known to only a few specialists. Outside of a few isolated studies, the spruce-fir moss spider is critically under-researched. Due to their hyperlocality to such a specific, cold and moist environment, spruce-fir moss spiders may function as ecological indicators in a region threatened by climate change.
The entire population of the spruce-fir moss spider is distributed across a whopping twenty-five mountaintops in six Southern Appalachian high elevation areas: the Virginia Balsam Mountains in Virginia, Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina, Roan Mountain in North Carolina and Tennessee, Black Mountains in North Carolina, Plott Balsam Mountains in North Carolina and Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee. These disjunct, isolated biomes—sky islands, each more unique than the last—are cold, moist climates surrounded by warmer land at lower elevations.
Dominated by Fraser fir and red spruce, the Appalachian high elevation conifer forests provide an important canopy shelter by capturing necessary moisture and coolness needed for the forest floor mosses that spruce-fir moss spider calls home.
The 198-million-acre region of Appalachia is one of the most climate-resilient landscapes in the world due to its biodiversity, even in the face of habitat loss, invasive species predation, and resource extraction.
At the turn of the 20th century, industrial logging and wildfires stunted conifer regeneration throughout Appalachia, but the reverberations within its sky islands were catastrophic. Removing mature, fire-resilient trees while accumulating debris and increased leaf litter exacerbates future fires. The discovery of an introduced insect, the balsam woolly adelgid, further decimated the Fraser fir population. As of 2014, nearly 95% of Southern Appalachia’s Fraser firs have succumbed, impacting the range of the spruce-fir moss spider. Heterogeneity, whether caused by species, population density or age, is a critical element of a community structure. Logging prioritizes the removal of the oldest, sturdiest trees, resulting in a less-diverse, less-resilient population. This, of course, does not only impact the remaining trees, but the flora and fauna who rely on those trees for everything from the shade from their canopy to their mycorrhizae that live in the soil among the tree roots. When elders are killed, or aren’t able to even reach elder status, their wisdom dies with them, and the remaining young are left vulnerable. Age diversity in trees promotes resilience for the wider ecosystem, and a young leaning forest population is more at risk from predation and disease. Everything is connected: these spiders live in the mosses that are only able to survive under a cool canopy of conifers. As the conifers’ resilience and wisdom dwindles, so does the spruce-fir moss spider’s chance of survival.
During my sophomore year of high school, I read “Allowables” by Nikki Giovanni, and the poem changed my whole perspective on arachnids and the other invertebrates we colloquially call “bugs.” Giovanni writes, “I don’t think / I’m allowed / To kill something / Because I am / Frightened.” Her intentional line breaks give pause and space around the concluding word, “frightened,” and link that to an implied relationship to power structures’ ability to enact violence on communities perceived to be threats. For me, the poem connects environmental harm to other types of violence against Black people. For example, Black neighborhoods often lack greenery, have polluted air, and become dumping sites for trash and toxins that are often purposefully outsourced from white neighborhoods. Our kinship with the Earth has been damaged.
Around this time, I became fascinated with pollinators, pest control, histories of extermination, and stories about these fabulous little creatures who indirectly help with nature’s clean up. Many spiders are generalist consumers, and feast on insects that humans would consider pests and disease vectors: mosquitoes, flies, occasionally ticks. Reduced spider numbers may result in an increased number of pests. In an era of mass extinction, any invertebrate, terrestrial or marine, spider or insect, should be regarded as a blessing. I found myself gazing at grasshoppers, roly-polies, spiders and ladybugs, enamored with their movements. I wondered if I could mimic their cleverness.
Out of the thousands of recorded species of spiders in the United States alone, only twelve are listed as endangered. This is arguably a gross understatement, and the lack of conservation focus on spiders may indicate further gaps. As a nature writer rooted in the Black literary tradition, I find myself returning to our myths, to relearn about the environments from which we’ve become alienated. I try to carve out worldbuilding advice from the earth in a society so insistent upon human isolation. I reach toward the past to adapt, invent, and even deceive when necessary, relearning tricks from Anansi the spider about the necessity of cunning in an ecologically disturbed world.
Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock was one of my favorite stories as a kid. The story goes: Anansi the Spider is walking through the forest when he stumbles upon a mossy rock. Upon uttering the words, “Isn’t this a strange moss-covered rock?” Anansi is struck senseless and blacks out. He discovers this phrase causes the speaker to faint, so he sets out to cause mischief with this newfound power. Leading Lion, then Elephant, then Rhino, then Hippo, to the moss-covered rock, Anansi waits for each animal to say, “Isn’t this a strange moss-covered rock.” When they pass out, Anansi goes to their homes and steals their food. Anansi tries this trick one last time with Little Bush Deer, who has been watching him, hidden behind the forest’s leaves. She tricks Anansi into saying the magic words himself, and runs to retrieve all the items Anansi stole. Even though Anansi is defeated this time, the narrator affirms that Anansi has not learned his lesson. He is still playing tricks to this day.
I suppose this is Anansi’s function – sometimes spider, sometimes human, always trickster, Anansi lives in the brush, at the crossroads, where spirits and the living co-mingle. Some call Anansi a rebel, others a deceiver and a true arbiter of chaos. At times we root for him, and at others we hope he’s punished. Because of the temporal, generational nature of oral traditions, each Anansi tale is recited differently, shaped by the storyteller and the context in which it is told.
Once Anansi tales reached the New World, they often transformed into narratives of resistance. The spider became a vessel for enslaved desires for freedom: Anansi became an avenger, fighting not against deities but human overseers. Now marooned in the Western Hemisphere, Anansi was stripped of his superhuman status, and instead used his earth-born wits to survive these new grounds.
Most Anansi tales are oral; the move toward the page often removed the anti-imperialist and emancipatory roots of Anansi tales in the New World. In the hindsight of adulthood, I think Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock collapsed Anansi’s cultural specificity into its most elemental forms. Like the fictional magical Negro archetype of Uncle Remus, whose tales I also grew up reading, Anansi becomes something to laugh at rather than an extension of an ever-evolving tradition of oral storytelling meant to educate, conspire and preserve, and whose allegories included encrypted messages of survival. Another trickster of the Bantu peoples, Br’er Rabbit—who some argue is a similar character to Anansi—often escapes the clutches of his nemesis, Br’er Fox, through his wit, much like runaway enslaved Africans evading white overseers. For the trickster, life isn’t about taking things through brute force, but a willingness and capacity to bend the rules and play on other beings’ false perceptions.
And yet, despite Anansi’s journey from West Africa to the Americas, his roots remain visible, stretching across an entire ocean floor. I believe my own fascination with spiders comes from an ancestral tether, a desire to map a more accurate evolution of Black ecological thought throughout the Americas. When I watch a spider weave a web, or see one sip dew from a plant, I’m reminded of both the longevity of my culture and how small I personally feel when I look at the expanse of time.
The spruce-fir moss spider steals away into the high elevations of Appalachia. To reach spruce-fir moss spider populations, one has to hike nine miles up into the Great Smoky Mountains. Living between the rock surface and the bryophyte’s underside, the spider’s webbing is only visible to researchers once they pull the surrounding moss away from the rock; they worry that even this brief disruption—necessary to collect data—might be contributing additional stressors to the spiders’ already fragile living situation. While this spider does not use traditional gifts of trickery to deceive, it remains, clinging to a landscape marred by the removal of old growth trees, the expulsion of Indigenous peoples, and the removal of Black people, too. In a way, I think the spirit of Anansi lives on here, too.
On Catoctin Mountain, the easternmost ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, self-emancipated people and the enslaved lived together as they fled persecution. They preferred to adapt to this environment rather than endure the cruelty of the plantations, which often relied on physical violence to control workers.
Some of these enslaved people who took to the hills, to the swamps, or to the harshest terrains to escape recapture were maroons. The word “maroon” comes from the Spanish word “cimarrón,” meaning, “wild horse” but was adapted to mean “wild runaway slave,” or “the beast who cannot be tamed,” or “living on mountaintops.” Dense landscapes made marronage possible. Plantation owners feared dense forests and swamps that were perceived as uninhabitable both physically and spiritually. As the geographer Willie Jamaal Wright has so succinctly articulated, “the collective practice of marronage is incumbent on the existence of unruly environments.” Thus, the continued clearing of these “unruly environments” was not only about ongoing state expansion but was undertaken out of an entrenched fear of Black revolt that brewed in unbroken stretches of foliage and vine. Maroons became a pest species, an accidental byproduct of chattel slavery, creatures allowed to be killed because of what they symbolized. In 1847, the North Carolina General Assembly introduced the phrase, “weed out the maroons,” via legislature in a policy to increase patrols of swamps and other known maroon hideouts. “Weed out the maroons” was as much a material battle as it was a psycho-spiritual one.
The people who came here may have chosen such zones, instead of escaping to the North, because they wanted to remain in land that felt familiar or they wanted to be close to family members still in bondage. Many of them even risked recapture and returned to their former plantations to pilfer the fruits of their and their family members’ labor. Because of their commitment to this kind of fugitive homemaking, these Southern communities were considered by plantation owners to be more dangerous to the institution of slavery than those created by Black people who fled North.
The anthropologist and historical archeologist Daniel O. Sayers, who has done research on the maroon hideaway in the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina and Virginia, observes that renewed intrigue about maroon societies occurs after periods of revolution. In his article “Un-Silencing Historical Maroon Societies in the United States,” Sayers writes, “Nurtured by the highly visible methods of activism of the 1960s, such as rioting, protests, institutional takeovers and other in-your-face spectacles that were paired with declarations of revolutionary fervor, scholars sought examples of similar successful revolutionary action in the past, perhaps.” The mid-twentieth century—which saw the rise of the Black Power Movement, the Communist movement in Cuba, and independence struggles in Africa—pushed revolutionaries to align themselves with the world-building nature of marronage. They were embodying a practice of liberation, that, in the words of Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “freedom is a place.”
But Sayers notes that positioning maroons solely as “insurgent-rebels,” ignores the deep intimacies created among fugitive groups not just with each other, but with the surrounding landscapes. Some maroons did not subscribe to the idea of dominating the land, nor did they attempt to recreate the societies that held them in bondage. Like Anansi, they used their brains, they used their cunning. Sometimes they failed or fell short of their goals, but they always respected the wisdom of the land. Inspired by Anansi, maroons wove webs of support for each other.
After the Civil War, newly freed people from Mississippi channeled that supportive maroon spirit and established the Kingdom of Happy Land in the Western mountains of North Carolina, where they made their living through subsistence farming and producing herbal liniments. It was a planned utopia, where residents worked toward land ownership and autonomy. Under a cathedral of mountains older than the spiders that now call them home, Black freedpeople activated their collective visions for a better world among flowering dogwood and shortleaf pine trees. Though there are few written historical records about this community, and most of the original buildings have either rotted to dust or been destroyed, the Kingdom of Happy Land survived for nearly five decades. But the indirect cascades of capitalism and white supremacy threatened their quality of life, as they eventually would do to the spruce-fir moss spider, as well.
Not all tricksters are evildoers. Sometimes the harm imposed is out of necessity, other times out of self-preservation. Spiders, with their elegant beauty, weave gossamer webs, thin as air; they trap their dinner and keep our Earth in check. Aesthetic perceptions unfortunately still influence which species are considered worthy of study and protection. Anansi, trickster that he is, sees aesthetics as a tool, something that can be used to manipulate and potentially prevail.
Black life in the Western Hemisphere is a story of invention, of cunning, of fugitivity, of survival. Maroons, runaways, fugitives, bandits survived because they worked with the land instead of against it. The 19th and 20th century efforts in America to flatten forests for timber, drain the swamps for agriculture and condemn any landscape that did not bend to the will of conquest laid the foundation for our contemporary impoverished ecosystems and, perhaps, our cultural atrophy. But there are other worlds to which we may steal away; other ways of relating.
We are currently living through the sixth mass extinction. As the planet warms, plant populations are migrating; some of their pollinators will travel with them and some won’t. Insects are dying in droves, and the spiders who feed on them are looking for other food sources—sometimes among each other. Climate change contributes to both ecological and cultural homogenization. But when a species withers into oblivion, when an old growth forest burns down, when a community is poisoned, when a name is lost, each tragedy builds upon the other, scaffolding a world that is forever changed.
For spiders, whose long lives can stunt their ability to evolve fast enough, questions of climate change’s impact remain murky. Tarantulas, for example, often live well into their double digits, and the environmental changes we are experiencing now are happening too quickly for them to adapt. What hope do we have if we cannot do right by the spiders? And if we lose them, what knowledge will have been rendered obsolete? What knowledge will we have to reinvent?
The trickster exposes society’s ills, exploits them, and compels us to bear witness. Anansi gave the world wisdom by smuggling it in a pumpkin gourd. The earth we’ve inherited requires that we embody the courage of a trickster, to remember our resourcefulness, to realign ourselves as co-conspirators with emerging ecologies, to, as maroons did, weave networks of support whenever we can, no matter how ephemeral they may be.