Road Block

Sunday morning I went for a quick nature hike around that bluest of hills in Canton. The first thing I noticed was that I was clearly not the first person to have this idea, because every one of the parking lots were jammed with cars. But the second thing I discovered was that I am a much better Fall hiker than an early Summer hiker. Not only is it less crowded in the Fall (there is nothing worse than being on a crowded trail with people blowing passed you up the mountain - it's not a race people!), it is also cooler (because we all know how well I do not do in the heat). However, the main reason I found I like hiking in the Fall better is that there isn't as much nature then. A Fall hike features fewer plants which irritate allergies or bugs looking to take a bite out of you. Sure, when you are on a nature hike you should expect a fair amount of... you know, nature... but you don't want too much. If you are wondering how much is too much nature, I can sum it up in one word: snakes.

Less than a half-mile into the hike I heard a rustling in the brush just off the trail. I turned my head just in time to see half of a black snake go slithering over a fallen tree. Judging from the part of it I saw the snake was about four feet long. (This is the part of the story in which certain women in my life would make a comment about how well I do around snakes, as if they are totally cool with them. Since this is my blog, I will preemptively retort that if they had been there, they would have left a dust trail like something you would see in a cartoon down the hill.) Anyway, I certainly wasn't pleased with this development, but figured that as long as I didn't go over there and left it alone we'd be fine with one another. I've seen my fair share of the Discovery Channel and remember hearing that snakes can usually strike in a radius similar to their length. According to my math that meant this four-foot snake had a four foot striking radius. As long as I was at least five feet away from it in all directions I would be fine. So I gave it 25 feet, just to be on the safe side, and continued on my way. And if that had been my only encounter with the shoulder-less creatures that day I would have been fine. It wasn't.

Often when I go hiking on Blue Hills I never manage to stay on the same trail the entire time. The trails on Blue Hills are marked by different colors on the trees and these trails intersect in a couple places so usually what happens is before too long I turn and find that I'm no longer following the same color trail. This happened on Sunday as about halfway through I noticed we had taken a turn off the moderate path and onto the tougher trail. That meant steeper inclines and parts which were rockier than expected. As we started back down we came to one of these sections which was nothing but rock. I'm not saying I needed ropes or to call in a helicopter mountain rescue, but my point is that at some points along the way there is no other way around. As we came to one of these sections my eyes remained peeled. I had been on high alert since my encounter with the first snake and was locked in for any movement of the slithering variety. Which meant I noticed the second snake right away.

It was much smaller, just a foot long, but it was harder to avoid than the first one because this one was right where I needed to walk. It had come out of a nearby rock and at first I thought it was just crossing over, but apparently it was enjoying the sun and paused right in the middle of the path. It had picked a perfect spot for maximum stopping power, because the path had bottlenecked to a series of rocks which covered about a 15 foot drop in about 10 feet. So as the snake continued to not move I slowly accepted that I had nowhere to go. One of my options was to jump over it, which wasn't going to happen considering the rocks I would have been jumping onto and the fact that I would be jumping both forward and down. So, I took the second option, which was to to create a new path just to the right of the established path and nearly kill myself. (With a couple days to think it over I now realize how dumb this was because this is where the snake had come from and if there was another snake nearby it was more likely be in the same area. And given that it was probably the small snake's mother it would have been much bigger.) Eventually I made my way to bottom of the rocks and quickly finished the rest of the trail without seeing any more snakes.

Nature and I have a long-standing arraignment: I stay out of its way and it stays out of mine. This is why I try not to kill insects unless they work their way into my bedroom. As such I'm well aware that by going on a nature hike I am officially walking onto the snakes' turf. (I've seen "Boyz in the Hood", I know how this works.) But even with that, I feel like parking yourself in the middle of the only path down some rocks on the side of a hill is a breach of etiquette. If a human did that you would call them a dick and I think the moniker could apply here as well. Honestly, it was like the snake was taunting me - all that was missing was for it to look in my direction and wink at me. Now, this incident does not mean I'm going to give up hikes for the entire summer because I have found I enjoy them. I just think in the future I'm going to stick to the easier, wider paths that have more room to pick a side should I want to give something a wide berth. After all, I may not be able to completely avoid nature when I go on a nature hike, but that doesn't mean we have to share the same space.