My wife Pat and I are hikers. Not the serious kind that carry 50-pound packs and sleep on the trail for days at a time. We are recreational hikers who like to spend the day meandering along lonely trails in the western North Carolina mountains.
One trail we especially enjoy is the Bartrum Trail named for William Bartrum, an early naturalist who explored much of the southeast including Alabama between 1773 and 1777. We even have a picture of a section of the trail hanging in our living room. The Bartrum Trail is not as popular as the famous Appalachian Trail but it is just as beautiful and more enjoyable because you are alone most of the time.
The trail is not an easy hike. More than one experienced hiker has called parts of the trail brutal. It can be steep and rocky. Parts of it we have climbed on all fours. Other parts we have been assisted by ropes to pull ourselves up the rocky ledges.
God’s creation
There are some beautiful parts like along Jones Knob where you walk through laurel and rhododendron tunnels. When they are in bloom it is simply gorgeous. In the fall when the leaves are turning the mountainsides seem alive with splashes of red and gold and yellow and orange. It is hard to imagine a prettier site.
We’ve found a few places we especially like. One is a rock cliff overlook a few hundred yards off the Bartrum Trail. From there the mountain peaks parade off as far as the eye can see. The hardwoods are interspersed with pine making it especially beautiful. Most of the time you can watch osprey and other birds of prey diving off the mountainside at incredible speeds.
We first saw the area from a lookout along the trail so we searched until we found it. Our special spot is a couple of hours from the trailhead on this section of the trail so we sometimes pack a lunch, occasionally a good book and spend most of the day in the woods.
One summer day we were making our way along the trail when we spotted a spiderweb. Spiderwebs are not unusual along a sparsely used trail. It is easy to get a strand of spider silk across your face or tangled in your hair. But this spiderweb was not on the trail. It was wound across an opening behind where someone had made a campfire sometime in the past. The web glistened in the speckled sun making it easy to see the anchor strands woven around branches of two different bushes.
It was a big web, not perfectly round but angled from each line extending from the center of the web to its supporting branches. By some marvel of engineering, when each strand got back to its starting place it looked like unbroken thread. Each section of the web seemed symmetrical with each of the others.
In the middle of the web sat a healthy looking spider. Judging by the size of the web his future would be as prosperous as his past.
Special experience
We stopped for a minute to catch our breath and admire the artistry of the spiderweb before resuming our trek to our secret place. We ate our lunch, lay in the sun, enjoyed watching the birds, sat in awe of the views and enjoyed sharing a special experience.
If you know much about summer in the North Carolina mountains, then you know the weather can change quickly and it did. We saw the gathering clouds in the far distance and I immediately regretted taking our ponchos out of the backpack. We gathered up our leftovers and headed back to the car hoping to make it before the rain caught us.
The rain won. Summer rain storms can be intense and this one was — huge drops coming down like waves of water blown by the wind.
Pat and I tried to find shelter. We stopped behind some rocks but that did not work. We each got behind a huge tree trunk but that was of little use. Finally we each hunkered under thick laurel hoping that would lessen the rain hitting us. By the time the rain storm passed we were both drenched as if we had been swimming. Water dripped from our heads and puddled in our shoes.
Our spirits were as wet as our bodies. We thought more about our present condition — more than an hour from the car and soaking wet — than we did about the good time we had shared earlier that day. Our pace was slow and we weren’t saying much to one another except questioning why I had left the ponchos in the car.
Preparing for a future
That is when we came back to the place we had seen the spider web. The spider had fared no better than Pat and I. The top anchor lines had broken. The web lay suspended by the lower lines still attached to the bushes with about half the web lying on the ground.
But the spider seemed more hopeful than Pat and I were at that moment. From one of the taller branches he was descending with what appeared to be the second anchor line of a new web. For a few moments we stood there spellbound by the spider who would not be defeated by the rain and wind that destroyed his masterfully spun web.
The spider was back at work rebuilding, preparing for a future that could not be taken from him by nature’s elements. With what was inside him, the spider would re-weave his web. It would be as beautiful as the first, perhaps more so. Because of what was inside him he would ensure a future.
First John 4:4 says, “the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” No matter what elements the world throws at us, the One who is in us is greater than the one who is in the world.
Jesus promised that He is with us always (Matt. 28:20). Because Christ lives in our hearts and because “He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world” in all things we are more than conquerors (Rom. 8:37), even when the elements of life have done their worst.
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