How to Fear a Thing and Do It Anyway
On snakes, resistance, and finding joy on the other side
Last fall, I was the writer-in-residence at the Dobie Paisano ranch in Texas Hill Country. And one major features of the Dobie Paisano ranch is its snake-filled-ness. Chock full o snakes. In one of the old accounts of the ranchland contributed by one of its former residents, who grew up there, there were so many rattlesnakes around the place that when you opened the screen door, they lit out into the field “like lighting.”
Holy SHIT, like lightning? I thought.
And it happens that for anyone who has been there or heard stories, the first question they ask me upon finding out that I’m the current ranch resident is: “How are you doing with the snakes?”
To be honest, for the first month or so, the answer to that was not great. I wasn’t doing much hiking, because I couldn’t stop recalling some of the most terrifying snake episodes from my rural childhood, including the time a black snake came right for the sandbox I was playing in and began to circle me. Of snakes, people always say, “Oh, they’re more afraid of you than you are of them!” But if…
