What You See On the Side of the Road

So, last week, I was in the foothills of the North Carolina side of the Smoky Mountains. We were driving, following my brother in law on a road that basically takes you along the edge of the mountains, and we were a little confused about where we were, so we stopped for a minute on the side of the road to get our bearings. Maps were consulted, GPSes were explored, but they seemed more confused than we were.

(Side note: we found this funny thing with our new GPS on this trip. When it gets confused it starts mispronouncing road names, sort of blurring them, as if to avoid making any commitments that might get it into trouble. It sounds like Bill Murray in Caddyshack.)

So, anyway, we were sitting there and, just outside my window on the driver's side, I noticed that a spider had somehow gotten up onto the mirror. Not sure how it got there, but it was furiously making a web. And I do mean furiously. I’ve never seen a spider move so fast. It spun a web out from the rear view mirror to the corner of the window, then in another direction, then it cut back across, really fast. As I watched, I was wondering what I was going to do about this spider, if anything. But it didn’t care about me. It made a kind of triangle and filled it in very fast. It was amazing.

And then, I am not kidding you, or joshing you, or making any of this up: it carefully cut the web loose from the car and rode it like a kite on the wind away from the car toward some trees on the other side of the road. It was so small and almost transparent that I lost sight of it after a few yards, but it was headed in the right direction.

It was a flying spider.

Now. I don’t know about you but, to me, that is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. It was no accident. It happened fast and it happened on purpose. This spider knew EXACTLY what it was doing. I found a description online from an entomologist. They call this behavior “ballooning.” But they don’t seem amazed by it at all. As if spiders creating flying vehicles is just, you know, something akin to taking a pee or something.

To me, flying spiders are amazing. Pure and simple.

I think this is God’s way of laughing at our unbelief.



Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

On The Road Without Jack Kerouac

 We made our way across the American landscape, headed toward Appalachia. I was prepared with the proper music, etc., for the journey. We've got "family" music: The Monkees, a little Motown, some Chris Tomlin, and so on...

While the kids were occupied, I listened to some Jakob Dylan. It's the new one, I can't remember the name. He's riding on a horse "with a good woman by his side." It's pretty good, I like it, but it's a little, I don't know, thick somehow. Too many syllables and, overall, mixed very full in the mid-range. So I pop in Dan Zanes' Parades and Panoramas, which is a set of songs taken from the Carl Sandburg American Songbag. This recording is one of my all time favorites. It has a lot more overall character than most things you listen to, and it's totally fitting for the journey.


So we moved along, and we don't drag on behind.

I read Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions on the way. Honestly not sure what to make of it. It seems to me to be primarily about the madness of dehumanization, which is an essential issue of our times.


I saw a truck up ahead, it looks like this:

I like coffee, but that's a little overboard, don't you think?

Anyway, we rolled the chariot along, moved on to sit at the foot of the great Smoky Mountains in a little cabin. When you open the door of that cabin and look out, here's what you see...

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Etc. And so on...

Peace to you.




© LW Publishing 2010