Semi-Sunshine, Snakes, and Settlement Canyon

I spent a thoroughly enjoyable morning hiking in the woods with my daughter Jessica. It’s fun to have someone to go do those kinds of things with, and it’s been nice for me on occasions when she happens to be home to get to know my daughter as the woman she has become. 

We’d only gone about 400 feet….well maybe 6 or 8 (math and distance here you know….but that’s my 

guess) when we heard what I thought was an insect off to the right. Jessica yelps, jumps back and asks me if I see the rattlesnake about 8 inches off to the right in a bush.  DANG!! Apparently I hadn’t because I was giving it a very close up, delectable look at my leg. It’s funny...I have been in areas numerous times in my life where there are rattlesnakes but I’ve never run across one.  I was fascinated in a horrific kind of way.  One of us came very close to being bit this morning.  A little bit later we ran across a baby rattlesnake that someone had stepped on……Jessica was leaning down to look at it when her sunglasses fell off and hit the ground.  It startled her, and because she was looking at a snake that she wasn’t sure was dead, she screamed…. I screamed (not sure why except she startled me) and we had a good laugh. 

It was hard to take time out of my homework today and yet it was exactly what I needed.  I’m trying to take time to smell the roses, enjoy life and the people around me, while trying to avoid getting bitten by snakes along the way.

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.”

~Thoreau