One thing to be reminded of when in the Boundary Waters is that you are amongst nature. When you go to bed at night you will hear all the nocturnal creatures outside of your tent sniffing and scurrying about. If you leave out something that seems interesting to them they will knock it over, eat it, or perhaps even disappear with it. Emy and I went into the BWs to be one with nature. But hey like we’ve said, ordinary girls.
I have a terrible phobia of snakes. My response when I see a snake is to RUN! I can’t talk, I can’t warn anyone else. I can get away, quickly. I have run out in traffic to avoid a snake. I have hurtled a very large dog house to flee from Southern Black Racer. I have left my children in the dust on a bike ride where we were threatened by a rat snake pretending to be a garden hose. Okay he didn’t threaten us but I felt threatened.
It is a completely illogical response. I am not even afraid that they will bite me or kill me. I am afraid they will touch me, slither across my foot or worse yet up my leg. When in nature I am constantly scanning for snakes. Survival of the fittest baby. Because what you think about you bring about, I always see more snakes than anyone else. I embrace my inner Buddhist in most situations and believe that all creatures have a right to life. I will happily escort bugs out of my house. The one exception to this is when spiders are in my bath tub. I am not afraid of spiders but there is something about their legs slipping and sliding on the porcelain tub that makes it impossible for me to calmly relocate them. Instead I release their spirit. This is kind of how I felt about snakes back when I wrote this installment. Their spirit needed to be released if they were near my space. But of course I could never do the releasing because I am too scared to get that close to them.
BWCA #2 was the year of the snakes. The first year was cool and rainy. That is great weather for NOT seeing snakes. The second year was warm and sunny, perfect snake sunbathing weather. Blah!
Let me back up a little. When we were at the outfitter the man was going over the map with us. He was showing us all the best places to fish and telling us about the different camp sites. He pointed this one out and said it was a 5 star campsite. OK, a camp site consists of a little clearing in the forest along the bank with a cooking grate and a pit toilet. How does that get a 5 star rating? Pit toilets don’t even have walls. So I asked, “What makes it 5 star?” He told us it was spacious. We were not really all that interest because we planned to voyage 2 lakes past that particular lake.
This was the year of the Billy Goat Portage. Once we got to this particular lake we were pretty low on energy. We had some lovely gluten free chocolate muffins Emy’s mom had made out of black beans and not much else with us. I think we each had a bottle of water and cup of tea too. It had been quite a trek in. We started looking for what would have been portage number 6 of 7. Try as we might we could not find it.
We would study the map and look where we thought it should be. We paddled to different coves and looked around; we climbed up on shore and wondered through the woods trying to get high enough to see it or hoping to stumble across it. I am guess we looked for an hour or more; as I have said, not women to shrink from a challenge. Finally as the day was getting away from us, we were depleted of energy. We decided to find a campsite on the lake we were on. Next thing you know we were pulling our canoe up on the bank of the 5 star campsite.
It was a large campsite with a front beach and another beach through the woods on the other side. Someone or many someone’s over time had built up a little stone wall around the cooking grate. Mostly likely this was done to block the wind. This campsite was up on stones and a bit above the water so the wind came off the lake. All was well at this campsite until the second day when I was going from our bedroom to the main part of camp and Sam the snake slithered across my path. As I startled and held my breath, Emy inquired what was wrong. Prior to this she did not know about my extraordinary fear of snakes.
We decided to give him the name Sam to make him less scary. We often name our forest friends who visit us. It helps us remember we are in their home. We thank them for welcoming us in. I was feeling quite conflicted about sharing the home of a snake. Little was I to know the situation was about to get worse. When we started a fire another snake slithered out of the stone wall that was around the cooking area. Oh good lord! How was I going to survive for 4 more days in a campsite with not one but two snakes!
Emy was so good and supportive. She would tell me to stay where I was if Sophia was “going for a walk”. We have learned to pick up sticks and twigs when we see them. You burn through wood quickly and it is nice to have a pile handy and close to your fire pit. Sophia the snake thought this was nice too. When her stone home was hot from the fire she could comfortable hang out in the twig pile and wait for it to cool. I would take the long way to our bedroom as not to go past Sam’s home. I knew they were there with us but I was doing all I could to avoid us “running into each other”. They were just gardener snakes. They were not at all dangerous, unless you were a frog. But hey, I could have a cardiac arrest from fear, right?
Snake is often a message about changing yourself. Shedding your old self to step into your new self. Emy and I both experience such shifts and changes in who we are each year in the BWs that the appearance of snakes is not surprising. This was also the year I was teaching Kundalini Yoga classes. Kundalini energy sits at the base of the spine like a coiled snake and then rises up the spine like the caduceus (the symbol that represents physicians). Kundalini yoga is a powerful technique to help you raise that energy up your spine to the crown of your head and your connection with the Divine. Kundalini yoga is very different from other yoga and I would recommend everyone give it a try. It is not for everyone but can be very powerful.
Anyway, the snakes could certainly also have been a message about the Kundalini Yoga I was teaching at the time. I was actually in the process of closing my healing business; I had gone back to a full time job the year prior and trying to do both was becoming more than I wanted to continue to do. I had so little free time, I had decided I wanted to devote time to pleasure activities rather than more work. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed the healing work very much but I needed play time. My Yoga classes were being taken off the books. Upon reflection the snakes were very much about the changes I was going through; I did not even realize the moment as I wrote about these experiences. This is the power of writing, even if you are just doing it for yourself.
One morning I woke early and decided to go over on our swimming beach. To get there you had to walk past the “bedroom”, through the woods and then you would come out on the other shore. This was lovely in the morning because it greeted the rising sun. I love the feel of the warm sun on my skin. I was sitting over there, journaling and meditating. It was glorious! I suddenly felt eyes on me. You know what I am talking about? How you just know when you are being watched. I turned and looked back over my right shoulder and there about 10 feet away was not 1 but 2 snakes sunning themselves and watching me. EEEEEKK!
My initial response was to get up and run back to camp. But wait; there are also 2 snakes back at camp. So I made an agreement with Sid and Sylvia. We could share the sunny rocks along the lake. How do you like that? I was making an agreement with them to share their home. Ha, we humans have some egos, don’t we?
I stayed on the beach for probably another hour. There was no safe place to run to anyway. I did keep an eye on Sid and Sylvia; I wanted to make sure they didn’t want to get too friendly. They keep their end of the deal and I kept mine; we shared the sunny rocky shoreline. It is a glorious thing to face your fears. To push yourself past what you thought you are capable of. There are many everyday ways of doing that; pushing yourself past what you thought you could do or accomplish. Years later I still terrified of snakes and would run away without warning family or friends that danger is near but, I know that if I need to, I can stand and face my fears too.
After a trip to Peru in 2020, my fear of snakes began to shift. They still startle me but I can watch them move along the ground and appreciate them for the gifts they give us and their part of the ecosystem.
BWCA #3 (which was in 2015) happened during the warm and sunny month of July. Ugh, once again perfect snake sun tanning weather. I know, I know! I faced my fears the year before. I coexisted, free of cardiac incident, with the 4 snakes; I really didn’t want to have to do it again this year. What to do? Think, think, think. This world is full of magic. You create your reality. Your thoughts are infinitely more powerful than you give them credit for. Sometimes we need a feather like Dumbo had. Do your remember that story? He only thought he could fly when he held the “magic” feather. Sometimes we are so stuck in what we believe is true or the limitations we have placed on ourselves, we need a magic feather.
I finally came to a solution. I called on the owl, eagle, and hawk and asked them to keep our campsite free from slithering roommates. I am good with the circle of life and decided that my feathered friends would be happy to protect me from horrible reptiles. Isn’t fear a funny thing? I lived in Florida for 10 years where there were alligators everywhere. I had no fear of the gators. I wasn’t stupid about them. No table scraps for the gators, but I never had this “fear” response to them.
The campsite from year #3 was not a campsite. Just an open patch of land in our hour of need. When we went traipsing out of camp we were walking through tall grass and pine forest floor. We were not on paths intended for hiking humans. I would call repeatedly on the owl, eagle, and hawk while nervously scanning for any sign of slithering on the forest floor. While on the rocky beach I was watching near the rock for any sign of unwelcome sunbathers. You know what? I did not see one snake the whole 5 days. It was perfect snake territory and perfect snake weather. I set my intention and asked for help and it was granted. I had a blissfully snake free year. Emy was not so lucky but I will let her tell you about Oscar the Tarantula.
Stacy Crep 