I really don't like snakes! One of my earliest memories is driving through the desert with my family, perhaps we were going up to the cabin, I can't quite remember. Whatever we were doing, I remember dad stopping the truck, getting out, grabbing a big rock and smashing a rattlesnake over the head. Maybe we had stopped for a break, or a picnic, I don't know. But I remember the awful, queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Yuck!
I was just plain scared of snakes, all kinds. Once I had a dream that our house was on fire. I ran out the back door onto the porch, only to find that the yard was full of rattlesnakes and I couldn't step off the porch because of them. What a nightmare. The house was burning behind and the snakes were rattling in front of me. Awful!
My worst experience with snakes, though, was when I came face to face with an old king snake, not even poisonous, but it didn't matter to me. I must have been about 10 years old.
We were spending the Labor Day weekend up at the cabin. Grandma and Grandpa Russell were there, and one of my older cousins, Brandt, had driven up for the day with a friend of his. I remember the excitement when they showed up, driving a bright red sports car. It was so cool!
Dad had spent the morning working with grandpa and the boys, gathering fire wood to stack up for the winter. By the middle of the morning they had a big pile under the shed behind grandpa's cabin, and they were busily sawing it into fireplace size pieces. Somehow a chip of wood was thrown from the saw into dad's face, cutting a deep gash across his forehead and next to his eye. It was a bad wound and he needed to get to the doctor's immediately.
Brandt volunteered to drive our car so mom could sit by dad and hold pressure on the cut. My little sisters rode home with them. My two brothers got the privilege of riding in the sports car with Brandt's friend, but that left me to finish packing and ride home with grandma and grandpa. That wasn't so bad, we were all worried about dad and I didn't really take time to think about it not being fair that I was left behind.
Our cabin was on a hill, grandma and grandpa's cabin was below it. There was a steep dirt trail we walked down along the side of the hill, only about 2 feet wide. It was always covered with pine needles when we got to the cabin, so one of the first jobs we had was to push the needles over the edge of the trail so it wouldn't be too slippery. One side of the trail was the hill, the other side dropped away to nothing, although their was one big ponderosa pine growing on that side about half way down, and another big pine at the foot of the trail. Dad had nailed a heavy piece of wire to the pine at the bottom, then stretched it along the trail, nailing it to the tree halfway up, and then wrapping it around a tree at the top. It formed a railing of sorts to keep kids from falling off the hill, and to give grandma something to hold onto as she climbed up.
I piled clothes and bedding into cardboard boxes, carried them down the hill, and put them in the back of grandpa's pickup. Then went back up to the cabin to get more boxes to bring down. I was carrying a big box down the hill, trying to watch were I was stepping because I didn't want to slip while holding the box, when I saw something orange and white sliding across the path. It was a huge old king snake, slithering into the pine needles piled at the base of the ponderosa half way up the trail! I turned and ran back up the hill as fast as I could go, jumping onto the back porch and slamming the screen door to keep me safe, my heart pounding so fast I could hardly breath. Man, I was scared! There was no way I was going to go back down that hill again, no matter what anyone said.
Grandma called me, but I wouldn't even leave the back porch. I shouted down the hill that there was a snake. She tried to calm me down, but it didn't help. Grandpa came up and assured me the snake was gone, but I still wouldn't get off the porch. Eventually he and grandma finished loading their stuff, drove up the road to our cabin, and finished packing our things out front. I could not face going back down the hill at all, sure that the snake was still hiding in the pine needles on the side of the hill.
Dad was OK. If the chip had hit him any lower he would have lost his eye, but he was blessed. We came back up to the cabin a few weeks later to finish closing things down for the winter, and my brothers had a great time looking all over for the snake. They never found him. It took me a long time to get enough courage to walk down the trail again. I stood at the top of the hill and studied every inch of the trail, making sure the snake wasn't hiding anywhere, before I would go down, and then I would race as fast as I could past the ponderosa. Even when we came up the next summer I watched carefully as I walked down the trail, although by that time I may have been hoping I would see the snake again just so I could show him off to my brothers. But I never did. Perhaps I scared him away, just as badly as he scared me.
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