New Scabs

My wounds will scab over eventually, I think on the return trip from Spring Mount, Pa. The backs of my legs have been rubbed raw, courtesy of a taut, coarse rope I used to crawl upside down across a thirty-foot stretch of open space nearly forty feet above the ground. I'm taking a canopy tour with the good folks from Spring Mountain Adventures: zip lines, rope bridges and other obstacles among the towering trees.

My hands are already red and aching after spanning a series of dangling, knotted ropes. It feels good in the sense that I am accomplishing something. Sometimes pain can be a good thing: "Pain is weakness leaving the body," and "Pain is the body letting the mind know it's doing something worthwhile," as others have said before me.

One of the zip lines spans nearly three-hundred feet if I remember correctly, guaranteeing the "zipper" speeds of at least forty-five miles per hour. Beneath me, chipmunks dance around charcoal-colored boulders, no doubt trying to evade the black rat snakes and rattlers who would love nothing more than to make a meal of them. We finish the course by rappelling down a man-made rock wall.

Speaking of snakes, I begin the day as I do most: walking to the coffee shop for fresh coffee. During the walk I came across a mature garter snake --- the same garter snake I've seen almost every day this summer. (That's him below.) I like to think there's an unspoken bond between us --- man and serpent. Or perhaps I unknowingly speak parseltongue, the language of snakes as described by J.K. Rowling, author of the "Harry Potter" books, one of which I am now reading. Or perhaps he's simply staying still so I don't eat him.