Kevin and Juggernaut

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.  – Proverbs 3:5

From Wikipedia

The English loanword juggernaut in the sense of “a huge wagon bearing an image of a Hindu god” is from the seventeenth century, inspired by the Jagannatha Temple in Puri, Odisha (Orissa), which has the Ratha Yatra (“chariot procession”), an annual procession of chariots carrying the murtis(statues) of Jagannātha, Subhadrā, and Balabhadra. 

The first European description of this festival is found in a thirteenth-century account by the Franciscan monk and missionary Odoric of Pordenone, who describes Hindus, as a religious sacrifice, casting themselves under the wheels of these huge chariots and being crushed to death. Odoric’s description was later taken up and elaborated upon in the popular fourteenth-century Travels of John Mandeville.^[5] Others have suggested more prosaically that the deaths, if any, were accidental and caused by the press of the crowd and the general commotion.^[6]

Today the word Juggernaut is commonly used to describe an overwhelming force.   Juggernaut in this post is the name of a medium small but stout part terrier dog that rides in a basket on the front of Kevin’s bicycle. It turns out that Juggernaut was appropriately named. However I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. This story begins, as many of mine do, with mushroom hunting.

Willow Island is on the Mississippi in front of Clinton IA. It’s actually connected to the mainland now by the flood control dike. It’s named for its towering river willow trees that grow and die quickly. Some of them feature half rotten trunks with live foliage on the other half. Their logs and dead trunks are host to some of my favorite fungi, oyster mushrooms, hericium and wild enoke – especially oyster mushrooms that could be incredibly abundant.  In past years Willow Island flooded regularly which kept the undergrowth washed out making walking around pretty easy. On warm summer days we’d also walk to a nice beach there and swim.

This year Willow Island didn’t flood at all.  When Sally and I walked down there to go swimming we were greeted by increased undergrowth that hid many logs for us to stumble over. Fortunately the main plant so far is soothing jewelweed, which was good because the nettles and saw grass are also increasing. 

When we finally made it to the beach we were also greeted by Kevin and Juggernaut who live in a large makeshift shelter near the beach. It turns out that, even as the wild plants and weeds return to the non-flooded island, so do people whom some folks consider weeds. However, I know God doesn’t consider any part of His creation as weeds, especially wayfaring strangers. That didn’t keep me from feeling a little wary when this tall heavyset man wearing only shorts that were adorned with some kind of large utility knife approached with his barking dog. It didn’t take long to notice that Kevin had a huge poorly healed scar that appeared to divide his torso down the middle. He’d obviously survived much.

It didn’t help that his first words were, “Don’t worry he won’t hurt you – unless I want him too.” I don’t know why I replied quietly, “He won’t then either.” Fortunately Kevin didn’t hear it or chose to ignore it. Either way his next words were, “Yeah, I’m just spending the summer with my boy friend. This here’s Juggernaut.” On cue Juggernaut came over to Sally and me and let us pet him.  Maybe Kevin saw me eyeing his campsite when he said,  “I could afford to live in town, I have money in the bank, but I have to come here to keep my mind right. The trees and the woods give me peace.  Last year I was out of my mind when I ended up down here. The trees and the river brought me calm.”

At that point I started feeling differently about Kevin. I began to identify with him. Countless times I felt a special calm on Willow island while watching a pileated woodpecker tearing apart logs for grubs or seeing a yellow warbler flitting all around me or gazing at oyster mushrooms growing all up and down a towering willow trunk.   This was a magical green place that I’d taken ownership of for decades, but it was no more mine than his. How dare I now be annoyed at the weeds that had grown up and the squatters living there?

Maybe Kevin noticed my glance at a pile of rubbish a ways away from his own campsite and nearer to the beach. I knew it wasn’t his because it included women’s clothes. “I told that woman she needed to take care of her stuff not just leave it laying everywhere, Look I even found her a nice shelter.”  He said pointing to a nicely laid out blue tarp.  I said, “Yeah you’re right if some boaters come around and see that mess, they might call a game warden and everyone will get kicked out.” I know some part of me kind of wished that would happen so I’d get my private woods back. But Kevin continued, “She’s a real mess. I found her lying on a park bench. She had nothing to eat or drink.  I think she would have died if I hadn’t talked her into coming here and helping her out.” “Is she an older woman?” I asked. 

“Yeah”

“I might have seen her before.” I said thinking, but I sure didn’t go out of my way to help her.  Then I added, “There but for God’s grace we all go.”

            “Oh I know that brother. It wasn’t just the trees and river that saved my mind but also the “Extreme” folks who led me to Jesus. I wrote them a letter thanking them for what they did and asking why they don’t come to Clinton anymore. There are a lot of folks here who need them. They replied that they were thinking of coming back just because of my letter.

“That’s really cool,” I replied. He continued,

Yeah the Island and the Extreme folks saved my mind, but that dog there literally saved my life. You see I was coming down here before the derecho, but, when the wind came up, Juggernaut jumped down when we were under the bridge and refused to go any further. If I tried to go out from under the bridge he’d bark and growl and make me go back. Moments later trees came crashing down right where I would have gone.

I chuckled in amazement thinking Juggernaut – an irresistible force. Then I remembered that Sally and I were on Willow island swimming when the storm siren went off.  A fellow walking his dog pulled up the radar on his phone and said the storm was in Cedar Rapids right now. I said, “Oh that’ll take at least an hour to get here. So I swam a few more minutes content with my own wisdom. After all the sky was still blue, but, from the water I saw the storm front moving far faster than any I’d ever seen before and an inner voice said “Go now!”  I got out of the water and told Sally we had to head home right away.  “I thought you said we had an hour.” She replied. “Yeah well I was wrong.”  We stepped into our house in a pounding gale moments before part of our huge maple out front crashed down on my tenant’s car.

There was no storm brewing this day with Kevin though, but that didn’t stop Juggernaut from being true to his name. For when I dived into the water no amount of calling from Kevin would stop Juggernaut from running back and forth on the beach barking wildly warning everyone that a perfectly normal human had somehow transformed into a dangerous sea monster. Nothing would stop him from protecting others from me with his furious barking  – at least until I climbed out of the water, regained my human form and patted him on the head.

A few days later Kevin rode his bike by my house with Juggernaut in the front basket. I called out to him and a smile of recognition lit his face. I don’t know for sure when I’ll see them again, but I do know I found new friends in the weeds on Willow Island.