Dance of Summer

It was a perfect New Hampshire almost-officially summer day with a very blue sky, fluffy cumulus clouds, a slight breeze wafting the scent of peonies and wild roses and the temperature perfect. Funny how I think of NH summer as this way and not as the solid week we’ve had of humidity so thick that doors are sticking and every, absolutely every thing is clammy, even the cat. The lovely strawberries are molding in the fields, but the lawns and hayfields are happy.

I was cleaning house, contentedly scrubbing and vacuuming and removing the layers of yellow pine pollen which is the dark side of late spring in this beautiful state. My sheets were waving on the clothesline so that I would be surrounded by the delicious clean smell of sun dried cotton as I crawled between them that evening tired from my labors. Oh happy day. . . when suddenly, as if by magic. . . it was dark . . . the wind came up . . . it began to sprinkle. I ran out to the clothesline barefoot to the rescue. As I ran I felt something soft moving under my right foot and looked down to realize that I’d stepped on a snake. Barefoot. Aahhhhhh! and Aahhhhh! and Aahhhhh! I screamed reflexively and compulsively as I danced and jumped like a dervish till the fit was over. Meanwhile the little snake was having its own little fit. It was quite a tiny little thing, the size of a large earthworm, but it slithered a few inches away and was reared back with its little mouth open, showing red and imitating a cobra. I doubt that it has vocal chords but if it did, it would have been screaming, too.

I was telling my tale at a cocktail party that evening and was admonished by the after-the-fact advice one generally gets after an accident. Don’t go out without shoes. You should look where you’re going since you live in paradise and everyone knows that Eden has snakes. Why don’t you use a dryer anyway?

But think of the advice the snake got at his cocktail party that night. Don’t you know to stay out of the path of giants? In the event of a giant sighting, either slither quietly away or stay still. Don’t incite them or they will bash you with sticks. Haven’t you ever heard the expression “snake in the grass?”

Let us remember that after-the-incident advice is useless and often misses the point. We both had an adventure and lived to tell the tale. And that is what life is all about.