In over 40 years of hiking the Sierras I've never encountered any snakies up front, close and personal on a trail - until now. I've spotted my share of Rattlers and water snakies..alwas from a distance...until now.
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I was enjoying a little backpack trip by Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite. After a 4 mile ascent and another 2 mile flat run, i decided to have lunch. There was a nice high ridge with plenty of wind to keep the mosquitoes away and a nice view... what could be better?
I was enjoying a little backpack trip by Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite. After a 4 mile ascent and another 2 mile flat run, i decided to have lunch. There was a nice high ridge with plenty of wind to keep the mosquitoes away and a nice view... what could be better?
After snacking on cheese, trail mix, sardines, banana and orange... ok i know!!... i took a snoozy siesta. very peaceful, relaxing... i dozed off only to be startled 10 minutes later by something moving on me... i thought it was just a big fly or something but this one felt different... i opened my eyes, and out of the corner of my eyes i spotted it - a beautiful little red, black, white striped snakey slithering away - like a teenager that had just been caught raiding Dad's liquor cabinet
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of all the animals I
want to encounter on a trail – snakes ain’t one of them.
i’d rather
encounter a grizzly – not a momma grizzly mind you! But snakes? Snakes are right up there with … slimy, yukky…no can do!
in 4 decades of
hiking in the high sierra i’d never once encountered a snake on a
trail… i’d seen some of them slithering around far away from me…
usually by a stream or lake… but never on the trail itself.
I remember the scene
in Vikings where Dragbour (??) Where his death was in a snake pit because he
was a fearless warrior but really really didn’t like snakes.
The movie 'snakes on
a plane' promo poster said: ‘sit back, relax, enjoy...’ yeah
right!
Thankfully real life
doesn’t follow a movie script – so we can enjoy snakes in their
natural habitat…
Snakes are as much
afraid of humans as we are of them. Guess which one should be more afraid ?
So I just got up, checked around, saw another King snake even more beautifully colored... And another teenager slithered away. I double checked my backpack, put it on and hopped away from that spot. The danger for totally self imagined... Engrained ego 'flight or die' reaction?
The only conclusion is that I was in new territory...cool! Even old farts can have fresh, strange new experiences on a well hewn trail repertoire.
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