|
Originally
appeared in Fur-Fish-Game
"Rattlesnake"
The
rattlesnake incident happened July 4th, 1986, but in the
clarity of my memory, it was yesterday. I left camp at
6:00 o’clock that morning and traveled deep into the
woods along a remote but well-known local trout stream,
Thompson Run. The day grew warm as I walked and fished.
By late morning a bright sun blazed above the cool
hemlock branches overhead. In five hours I’d caught and
released eight colorful wild brookies and three fat
brown trout, holdovers from an earlier spring stocking.
It was time now to turn back. Annie, always afraid I’d
fall and break a leg way back in the forest, planned to
meet me at the Althom bridge at noon.
I broke down my fly rod and started downstream,
savoring in my memory the morning’s pleasures: the hike
along the shaded stream, the slash and tug of brook
trout on the line, the three deer spotted crossing at a
bend in the creek, the aromatic breezes whispering
through the white pines, the music of the flowing
waters, the soft cushiony feel of pine needles
underfoot, the familiar woodland sights of leafy
hardwoods, gray squirrels, chickadees, and mountain
laurel.
Maybe I walked too fast or became distracted by my
daydreaming. Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. But I
stepped past a trio of young white pines and there he
was, all six terrible feet of him, a black phase timber
rattlesnake on the ground in front of me, so close I
could have bent over and touched him with my fingertips.
I froze in my boots and witnessed. The athletic coil of
the body and rise of the head, level with my waist now,
deathly close, ready to strike, the tiny eyes furious
and wild, and the horrible high-pitched sizzling song of
warning rattles going right to the top of my skull with
unbearable sound and terror.
I stood motionless, scared to the bone. A minute passed
and then another, each second lingering like half of
forever, while I stood there, stared at those
penetrating snake eyes, listened to the sizzling sounds,
and stopped myself from screaming out loud.
Part of me knew I had to do something, though. I could
not wait this snake out without dying of fright. But
still I hesitated, scared shitless, unable to move. And
then a knowledge came to me, as if from some ancient,
deep remembering, some ancestor’s troubled dream. I knew
this snake would not strike. It lay poised and ready,
but I understood that its posture was defensive. I knew,
as a primitive man would know, that the snake and I
would disconnect, that we would both live.
I took one excruciatingly slow step backward then, a
centimeter of motion per second, my leg muscles
straining, my heart on fire. Then another step, and then
one more, and now I saw that I was out of range. The
snake stayed poised in striking position, but the
sizzling of the rattles ceased, and my heart subsided. I
noticed I was breathing then, and I counted my breaths,
in and out, one, two, three, four.
I looked at the reptile again and tried to see it for
what it was, a beautiful rare creature of the forest,
magnificent in its stone-age simplicity of design. Pure
survival this animal was, from the tip of its warning
rattles to the ends of its weaponry fangs, nothing
wasted in the musculature in between.
But I had no intentions of staying around any longer to
admire the beauty of the rattlesnake. I’d had enough of
him and enough of the forest for one day. I yearned for
the macadam road, the bridge, the truck, the comforting
woman, the safety of camp.
The snake relaxed its coil and lowered its head, and I
moved quickly, laterally, away from stream and snake and
danger, a good safe distance, twenty yards or more. Then
I fled downstream in a rush.
A hundred yards down I stopped, stood by the stream,
and shivered from pure elemental fright. No one dies
from a rattlesnake bite these days, I told myself. You
get sick as hell but you live. You survive. You’ll laugh
about all this tomorrow. About being scared out of your
wits by a snake that didn’t even strike. But my heart
was unconvinced and did not listen. That snake had
scared me as deep as my soul. I closed my eyes and
opened them, breathed deeply, clenched and unclenched my
fingers. Finally I made up my mind to move on. But first
I reassembled my fly rod and extended all nine feet of
it in front of me.
I started moving again, the rod tip swishing ahead over
leaf litter and pine-needled ground with every step. No
matter that the ground was open and obviously safe. No
matter that the chances of a second rattlesnake
encounter in the Pennsylvania forest in one day were
slim to none. I swished and walked for forty-five
minutes and three miles, until I made the macadam road
and stepped up onto Althom bridge.
Annie saw me, started forward, then stopped and stared.
“My God,” she said. “What happened to you?”
<<
back to magazine articles |
