A chorus of crunching on crisp leaves, like heavy, sporadic raindrops on a summer eve, sounds from the overgrown Dutchman’s pipevine in front of the Edgar Evins State Park Office in Silver Point, Tennessee. I look up from the spiky, orange and black caterpillars—blue swallowtail larvae— to see a gigantic spiderweb attached to my sister Danielle’s head. She manages to wiggle out from it as I fold over in laughter. “I realized the danger I was in,” she admits, cracking up. “In hindsight, I remember seeing it and thinking what a big web it was…” The web is a harbinger of what’s to come—five miles of spider-infested forest on the Jack C. Clayborn Millennium Trail, a path that touches the Center Hill Lake, but comfortably, a path of gnats and dense underbrush where we hear, at times, Old Dominion and Kenny Chesney blaring from human-infested boats. We arrive at the trail an hour after we planned, which Danielle is keen to point is just part of the adventure I was craving. How novel to wait for AAA’s key lockout assistance while photographing butterflies at the park office, right? I triple check that I don’t lock my keys in the car at the trailhead and we head out on the 7.3 mile lollipop-loop rated “Hard” on my AllTrails app. The trail was one of three narrowed down from a particular set of filters that weeded out everything but lightly trafficked, moderate-to-hard paths at least five miles long that feature a lake or river.
I forgot only two things: (1) to make sure I selected the “outlook” feature and (2) to check reviews. If I had, I would have seen a long list of warning signs: “holy crap, I can still feel the spiders crawling on me”, said AllTrails user Von Miller; “I read the reviews about the spider webs and normally no creature or insect bothers me but I walked through about 20 in the first ½ mile”, says AllTrails user Leslie Harris. And Robert Decker from a review seven months ago says, “Last time, it was spider city. Coming back in winter was a good call.”
On a 90+ degree day, we notice first the cool temperature of the woods and then the webs streaming in the patched sunlight. I see a particularly large one and ask Danielle if she wants to stick her head in it.
On day hikes, I of course save lunch for the summit, to indulge while staring at a vista and contemplating the journey, or nothing at all. But my vista today is an unremarkable patch of woods. I stare at my dusty feet and the strip of orange tape I slapped on to prevent blistering from the Chaco strap, and I suddenly feel the entire trip was worth this one moment, this consumption of an earned meal.
I’ve always been a little protective of my space and time, desperate for constant meaning, restless with futile hours in between. Anxious. Heady. Analytical and contemplative. Being outdoors helps. Without walls to contain and pressurize my thoughts, their intensity dissipates, and there's a kind of peace and clarity in the wake. I feel lighter, the longer I sit on the rock, and lighter still as Danielle and I have real conversation, as we talk about how you can’t ever truly know someone, because everyone hides. It feels like an appropriate time to share, so I divulge to her then some issues I'm having as I think about the societal imagery of webs, how they represent spaces neglected and corners untouched, and how liberating it feels to brush them away, however gently. #butterfly #EdgarEvinsStatePark