A Precise Memory from a Recent Hike

So there we were, miles into the Meramec wilderness and still an hour out from camp. I was bringing up the rear of our tiny expedition while my old friend Todd had the lead, our two ten-year old daughters sandwiched between. We had just explored the entrance to a nearby cave and were trying to make it back to our tents before a drizzle became rain. Suddenly, the boisterous singing that had punctuated the journey so far changed to a shriek.

“Spider! It’s a giant spider!”

Sure enough, in the middle of the trail scrambled the largest, hairiest spider any of us had ever seen outside of a zoo.

“It’s a tarantula!”

“No way!”

“Tarantulas don’t live in Missouri, do they?”

We discussed the size of the creature and took some pictures as it escaped. Soon it disappeared into the brush and we returned to the trail, paying a little more attention to where we stepped. The only other wildlife we saw—perhaps unsurprisingly, considering our singing—was a startled armadillo and a few insects back at camp.

A light sleeper even in the best conditions, I was never able to completely fall asleep on the forest ground, and I admit to checking the tent for relatives of the huge arachnid more than once. At dawn we crawled out of our tents and started packing things up, the girls eager for hot chocolate and some last minute exploration. Soon we were trekking out of the woods; a half hour later we were back on the highway heading home, the giant spider now a curious segment of a larger, more relaxed memory.

A few miles out of St. Louis Todd texted me a picture of a Texas Brown Tarantula, also known as an Oklahoma tarantula, or, in our case the Missouri Tarantula. Sure enough, this spider, by far the largest in the state, is indigenous to the region and loves to hang out exactly where we found it, along rocky forest glades. (Apparently Missouri was once much warmer and drier than it is now, which is likely when this guy’s ancestors crawled into the place. This species still finds the southern portion of the state hospitable enough to thrive, but the Missouri River has kept the tarantula from migrating into the northern counties. In case you’re wondering.)

So that was that. The spider wasn’t at all aggressive, nor interested in hanging out with us at all, but it did provide us with a shaky video and a very precise memory.