Letter No. 10: Attached

There are millions of grasshoppers in Stillwater County. Only one of them attached itself to my day.

I had just picked Selena up from a fiber conference at Graycliff Mill when we stopped at the grocery store in Columbus. While she went inside, I waited in the truck. A grasshopper landed on the driver’s-side window, climbed toward the upper corner, and settled in.

When Selena returned, I pointed him out. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I remember what I thought: he wouldn’t be there long. A grasshopper sitting on a truck window was not likely to make it very far.

As I pulled out of the parking lot, I expected him to jump or fly away. At the first stop sign, he was still there. A few blocks later, he was still there. I began predicting how much farther he might make it, though I was certain he would be gone before we reached the Yellowstone River.

The speed limit across the bridge is forty-five miles an hour. Shortly after crossing the river, the road opens up and the speed limit increases to sixty. If the bridge didn’t convince him to leave, I assumed sixty miles an hour would.

It didn’t.

At first, the grasshopper leaned into the wind. As our speed increased, he lowered his body closer to the glass. When I saw him adjust, I stopped waiting for him to fly away and started cheering for him to stay.

At one point, I looked over and realized he appeared to be holding on with only one leg. That single leg seemed to be the only anchor between him and the highway. I couldn’t help but laugh in disbelief. Somehow, against all my predictions, he was still there.

I began wondering what would happen if he lost his grip. Could a grasshopper find his bearings and begin flying at sixty miles an hour? Would he survive hitting the pavement if he couldn’t? I didn’t know, but by then I no longer wanted my prediction to be right.

The farther we drove, the more my compassion for him welled up. I began wondering what he was leaving behind. Did he have a familiar patch of grass? Were there other grasshoppers nearby that would notice he was gone? Did grasshoppers have friends or families—or any kind of social order that would make one grasshopper’s absence matter to another?

I knew those were very human questions to ask about a grasshopper. I don’t know whether a grasshopper thinks about home, belonging, or what it leaves behind. He may not have known how far he had traveled or that everything familiar was now more than five miles away.

But I knew. And because I could see what he could not, I began to feel responsible for what happened next.

As for the grasshopper, I decided to pull off the road and help him find his new place. I turned into a gravel driveway and stopped.

The grasshopper climbed onto my hand. For a moment, after all that wind and all those miles, he rested there. Then he flew from my hand and landed in the gravel directly in front of the truck.

As I was getting back inside, Selena looked over and said, “Now, after all that work, don’t just run him over.”

I laughed, put the truck in reverse, and backed up about ten feet. Then I shifted into drive, turned left, and merged back onto the highway.

The grasshopper stayed behind, and the road continued ahead. He was no longer attached to my window, but somehow he remained attached to the rest of my day.

Until next Sunday…

George

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