“I’m a Stick” – Photo: L. Weikel

Pay Attention

“Stop!” I yelled, jarring Karl out of his reverie. We were just entering the part of our walk that approaches High Rocks, where the over-arching canopy of trees throws shade and cools us off on days of bright sunshine.

“What? What?” he asked, momentarily stopping in his tracks but looking to his left, into the woods and toward the cliffs. He started turning toward the trees, not even thinking about the fact that he was moving his feet to do so.

“Stop!” I yelped again. “Don’t move. Look down.”

“Ooooh, wow. I totally missed it,” he said, when he spied the young snake laying stock-still in the gravel.

Camouflage?

I was walking a few steps behind Karl and had noticed the characteristic swooshing ‘s’ shape of the snake as it scurried across the road. Karl narrowly missed stepping on it and probably only did so because the snake was moving so quickly. Nevertheless, it was as if the snake understood me as well as Karl did when I yelled stop, for it, too, froze in its tracks.

Curiously, it stopped its trek through the gravel and came to rest straight as a pencil. In fact, it looked like a stick or a long piece of hay (albeit slightly more brown) just laying in the road. I wonder whether this was intentional, or unique to this particular type of snake – at least, in a survival sort of way – since most snakes I’ve seen will stop mid ‘s’ curve, showing no effort to straighten itself out.

S/he did permit me to take its photo up close and personal enough to get a nice shot of its impressive tongue.

Finally, as it decided to resume its journey, I managed to catch it sssslithering its way onto the berm.

Change in Topic

I was going to write about a different animal messenger that’s been coming to me lately, but this encounter changed my mind. Something tells me I’m not alone in still needing to shed or transmute some old attitudes, beliefs, or maybe even grievances before we can step fully into manifesting our future.

Perhaps our old ways of blending in or ‘going along to get along’ just aren’t cutting it anymore. Our environments are changing. The old means of camouflage don’t work anymore. Or maybe we no longer want to fit in? That’s possible too.

Snakes teach us that sometimes we need to recognize the poisons in our environment and learn how to transmute them into something we can live with – indeed, something we can allow to pass right through us – like water or air.

An essential aspect of working with snake, though, is appreciating the need to pay attention in the first place. We don’t have to be bitten by the snake in order to learn to transmute its poisons. We can, if we watch where we’re going and pay attention to our environment, avoid the worst of the poison* by never getting bitten to begin with. That’s a different sort of transmutation. Seems to me it could be a bit gentler on our systems.

*Just to be clear: I’m not saying this particular snake was poisonous. I’m talking about poison in the context of snake venom in general and transmutation of poisons. Indeed, using my trusted identification website, this looks like a Northern Brownsnake,, which is non-venomous.

(T-520)