It’s already late afternoon here along the Gunpowder River, the sun slants down into the woods and pools in the middle of one of many paths to favorite fishing holes along the river. I’ve picked one such path, narrow and green, guarded by tall tulip trees and only occasionally crowded by spicebush and other undergrowth.

Even though the day is already winding to a close, it’s immediately clear I’m still the first person to walk here today. Cobwebs hang every few yards across the trail, left over from last night’s spider workings. In some, the weaver still hangs down over the path. Sometimes she’s hidden away in a folded leaf above my head and only the web remains, a filmy curtain at eye level. I brush spiders and webs out of my eyes and hair, happy to know I am alone here, the spiders and their webs and me. A few birds sing half-heartedly in the high canopy above. A lizard skitters through the dry leaves. Once I disturb a barred owl napping on a high dead branch; it floats away as silent as its own shadow. Mostly, though, it’s just the spiders.

There’s no question the webs are annoying. For all their apparent fragility, they’re really pretty sturdy — pound for pound, spider silk is stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar police vests. I’ve picked up a long stick to brandish in front of me to prevent blundering headlong into the webs, a twang of guilt every time I erase a full night shift’s work by the spiders who spin the webs.

Spiders are not seeking solitude when they cast their nets across the trail. They know that their prey — midges, flies, moths and other flying creatures — are lazy and use these paths through the forest the same way I do, a clear route through tree trunks and bramble patches. Spiders are also keen observers of the forest’s breath, barely perceptible air currents eddying through the trees, and place their webs strategically to intercept these drafts — and the insects that use them to boost their transit through the woods.

For flying insects, the many webs across the trail present an almost insurmountable obstacle course. Unlike my sojourn with a stick through the spider’s universe, failure to successfully navigate this gantlet is likely to prove fatal.

Solitude is hard to come by in any metropolitan area, and I’ve learned that spider webs are the best way to tell if I’m going to be alone with my thoughts in the woods when I go walking here, or if I’m going to be sharing the trail with loud cell phone conversations, amplified evangelists exhorting gospels or just the exuberant chatter of people who have not learned that walking in the woods requires calls for the same indoor voices you’d use in a Gothic cathedral. I remind myself there’s nothing wrong with the way these other folks use the woods. It’s their forest, too. Sometimes I even enjoy seeing and hearing them, appreciating how other people enjoy wilderness. Sometimes I even hear them muttering loudly when they crash face-first into a spider web.

But when I want to be alone, want to step quietly in slanting sunlight through a green world with only birds and lizards for company, I look for a trail with spider webs across it, glinting in the sunbeams. It’s worth unwrapping myself from the few webs I miss with my stick, or even plucking the occasional spider out of my collar or off my hat and setting her on a shrub along the path to spin anew tonight.

Tomorrow she can signal to some other solitary wanderer that this is the trail to take to be alone with your thoughts.

Rick Borchelt is a science and natural history writer who lives in College Park.