One last snake

Chilly today--raining at times, and no warmer than 50 on Aqueduct Rd--but I ran into my favorite, and likely last, "narrow fellow" of the year. A rubber boa, stretched across the road, moving slowly, blending in. I'd never seen one of these before but I knew instantly what it was.


When I reached down to pick it up, it wrapped into a ball around my fingers, sticking its orange burnished tail out, as if to mimic its head. I read later that this maneuver isn't likely to foil an intent predator--fat chance an eagle, fox, or raccoon would be deterred from gobbling up this little guy. But it does allow the boa to fend off a mother mouse while it eats her entire, pinkie litter. (As result, rubber boa tails are extra hard, and often quite scarred.) I also learned that these snakes are more tolerant of cold weather than almost any other.



An aerial view, after I set it down:


To my college teammates, who, in Oregon, years ago, claimed I couldn't catch a snake--ha!

I'll admit, I finished my run, then drove back to the snake with my camera. The jog went okay, but my leg did bother me 10 minutes in. The same thing happened Monday on Hwy 167, when I tried to run down a slight hill. Both times I stopped and stretched, and was able to go on with my run. I'm hoping its healing, even as symptoms persist. Yesterday, however, I was able to run without incident: 14 on 167 from mile 10 at about 6:30 pace. Go figure.

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10 mi, 70 min; Aqueduct Rd on Williams Butte

Tuesday, 10/19: 14 mi, 130 min; Hwy 167 from mile 10

Monday, 10/18: 10 mi, 70 min; Hwy 167, close to home (back and forth)

Woe is he who eats too many wasabi peas

Enough said. I'd planned to go a few miles longer, but cut it short, exhausted. They say one's diet is crucial to training. I believe that, but seldom abide by it. Example A: today.

Also saw my biggest rattler yet on Conway Ranch Rd, in the vicinity of Rattle Snake Gulch (which, after this summer, I truly believe is rightly named). Girthy feller, maybe 3 feet long. Let me tell you, rattlers get a little nervous when you come up on the jog. Thank goodness for low light and shiny scales that gleam (unlike a twisted piece of sagebrush) from 100 yards away.

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16 mi, 112 min; Conway Ranch Rd-Hwy 167-Cemetery Rd-Black Point Rd-Mono City

The north shore

Yesterday, S's last day in the Eastern Sierra, I ran down from Mono City to Ten Mile Beach, on the lake's north shore. It's so named because the turn to the water is immediately after the 10 mile marker on Hwy 167. It was awesome to run away from the sun, with a slight breeze at my back. That's the furthest on 167 I've run to date.

S met down there, and we enjoyed some crackers and cheese, and couple Blue Moons, by the water on a one-plank, ground level bench someone had left. The place was just magical, an immaculate evening--the water glass still, luminous, and reflecting thousands of red-necked phalaropes twisting and peeping low over the lake in sinuous flocks. Many American avocets around, too, flying back and forth along the shore in groups of 10 or 20--long, wading legs trailing awkwardly--and further out, untold grebes to the horizon of the lake like ant on an endless tabletop. The north side of the lake is officially my favorite, I think. I'm going to do an easy run along Ten Mile Beach soon--the sand seems firm enough.

As for today, I went back in that direction and jogged around Cottonwood Canyon, still craving the view up there. In my second to last mile, I suddenly heard a rattle from the sage just off the road I was on. There was a snake. It was on full alert, and kept up its racket (with its head and neck reared back in a V, ready to strike) for at least three or four minutes as I watched. I was amazed its tail didn't tire out! Finally, I caved, went on--no sound on the way back.

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10 mi, 70 min; sandy run in the vicinity of Goat Ranch, at the top of Cottonwood Canyon Rd

Friday, 9/3: 13 mi, 88 min; from Mono City to Ten Mile Beach, via Cemetery Rd (with an additional mile O+B east on turnoff to the water)

Carrying a torch

It's encouraging to have a practical purpose to inspire a run. Like you need to drop a letter in the post office box a few miles away, for instance. Or ... well, that's pretty much all I can think of.

But this morning I ran back to the house with another purpose. With a message. Last night, my housemate, a videographer, mentioned that he'd always wanted a classic shot of a rattlesnake striking the camera (affixed to a broomstick, of course). Conway Ranch Rd is the place, I said. Then, around 10 am, about three miles in, there a snake was, reclining lazily in the sun on the soft sand at the edge of the road. Heck, I thought, I'll just run back to the house to rattle off an alarm.

So, I drew a line with my shoe across the road's sand--opposite the rattler--to mark the spot. Then I giddy-upped the 3.5 miles yonder to Mono City, finishing my run earlier than I'd planned (only 49 minutes). But I felt like a scout relaying an crucial message (kind of like the fabled Pheidippides, who ran from the Battle of Marathon back to Athens to deliver an announcement of victory ... and then keeled over dead with exhaustion). There was umph to my step. Never mind that the news was slightly ludicrous, deranged. It felt good, too, to run in a new direction on 395, back toward Mono City.

J, I said, rattler! Lickity split, he duct-taped a pink, plastic coat hanger to the end of a spare crutch--the perfect implement for wrangling. We piled into his truck and drove over, noting that there were probably a thousand snakes nearby, and here we were chasing just one.

Of course, it was gone. It'd been about a half hour since I'd seen it. The snake had seen enough sun, I guess, and the chase was half-baked idea, in the first place. But at least I made the effort.

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AM: 7 mi, 49 min; up 395 to the back side of Conway Ranch (rattler!), and back

PM: 5 mi, 35 min; Lee Vining Creek Trail and around town

Wednesday, 9/1: 15 mi, 105 minutes; down old 395 to Cemetery Road, around Dechambeau Ranch, then through it, and on til Mono City

The oncoming moon

Aqueduct Road and Lower Horse Meadow tonight. As I finished up down through the meadow, the full moon rose in a saddle of the ridge that leads to the top of Williams Butte, a sway that looks just like a horse's back.

I'm sorry to continue going on, like a kook, about snakes, but c'est la vie: Starting out on Aqueduct Road this evening, I passed a white truck--a couple of hunters with, in no particular order, their compound bow and a black dog in their laps. Didn't think a thing of it, until, returning, I leaped, in my usual awkward and compulsive way, over a garter snake in the road, yellow stripes down its dark back.

The sun was gone--no snake in its right mind would be lying exposed. Sure enough, and sadly, it seemed gone. I was sure it was the truck that had run over it. It was still warm, though cold-blooded, like a rock cooling off after dusk.

I squatted by the little snake, perhaps a foot-and-a-half long, resting my elbows on my knees. Then, with a finger, I felt it, pushing one of its curves, gently. There was no stiffness in it, just residual life, the twitch of nerves. So as if drawing pictures or patterns in the sand, I puppeteered for a moment--I don't know why--pushing the snake forward in curves, allowing it to crawl one last time. It was playful and solemn, like the best of ceremonies I think, and it made me happy to imagine I could help it go where ever it was going.

At last, I made to lift it off the road--and, it yawned. It opened is tiny jaws, each like a fingernail, as wide as they would go, nearly 180 degrees. I wondered if it, still alive within, somewhere, though not on our plane, was remembering the last cricket or blind, newborn vole it took from the grass. Weirdly, I almost wanted to give it my finger--let it clamp down harmlessly, soothingly at the last. But I did not. It was not a gasp, just a yawn before a long, early hibernation. Or a waking? I moved it off the road--and it yawned, again. The final stretch, I thought. I watched it, for another moment, but it didn't move again.

When I finally uncoiled from my squat and went on with run, I would find that I was stiffer, colder, too. But beforehand, high in the blue above us, a raven called out. Perhaps the bird--a mere black dot, overhead--would find this garter in the morning, and to help, I coiled it in a corkscrew, turning it into an artful eye that would find the raven and the sun lifting over Mono Lake. Or the oncoming moon.

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10 mi, 69 min; O+B on Aqueduct Road across Williams Butte, as well as Lower Horse Meadow

Monday, 8/23: 10 mi, 70 min; loop around Dechambeau Ranch from Mono City

It's alive ...

Both the blog, and the rattler I saw today as I crested the hill northeast of Conway Ranch. I had shooed a garter off the road a few miles earlier, and must have been channeling a charmer's energy. The broken sagebrush strewn across the road even had a sinuous quality.

Luckily, I saw it before it was trouble. It was on the left side of the road, and I was jogging down the middle. Thick, girthy, its pale sides glinting in the post-6pm sun that was pouring its final moments over Conway Ranch. I suspected at first glance that the snake was no gopher, and it's six-tiered rattle confirmed that hunch.

I stopped, of course. I often feel guilty when I pause while "training", and feel the pressure to keep on, to keep the heart-rate up--I just can't help it. One part of my soul loves to linger, the other chafes. But I fought my guilt off for longer than usual this time. If anything, rattler's would have such an effect. I circled around it, squatted down. It raised its rattle and gave two shakes and side winded to the dirt lip at the edge of the road, with its head tracking my shins the whole time (don't worry, I wasn't dangerously close). I think I stood, or took a step closer, and then it slithered quickly over the little embankment and coiled, in a perfect pretzel shape, in the tight clearing between several sagebrush. Its rattle was upright before its body, like a shield, its head reared back--a classic display. It would take a fool to mistake this for an ordinary snake.

But I followed it, stepping off the road, and observed the rattler for a few more minutes. Its forked tongue--jet black at its prongs, a pearly coal further in--slid out and down, in a slow, sense-ful flicker, and then, sometimes, curled back over the top of its spade-shaped head. I stepped from side-to-side, trying for the best angle to see the creature, and it's dagger-face followed knowingly. From the road, before I left, I couldn't resist boyishly prodding its side gently with the twiggy tip of a sagebrush branch, and it turned toward the provocation violently, giving two isolated rattles--like the single click of a castanet--that were quite elegant and clear in their message. (When I told this story to a friend, she mentioned that it's usually males 18-30 who get bit by rattlers ... I can't fathom why.)


Then I went on another 14 miles, or so, down Goat Ranch Cutoff to Cottonwood Canyon Rd, to Highway 167 (a stretch I normally don't reach), and back on Cemetery Road to Mono City finally, after dark.

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19 + mi, 135 min; a big Conway Ranch Loop

Week total: 75 mi

Also: A Mono-logue post about a gull, "An elder in our midst"

Rattling off the miles

Today, prompted by a bulldozer up ahead (still widening the road), I diverged from my usual Conway Ranch Loop, running around the hill on the Northeast side of the ranch, instead of over it, on a jeep trail I'd never tried out before. The road dipped through a spot of willows near an irrigation ditch, and there, I leaped! Even belly up--clearly deceased--a snake triggers instincts I can't suppress.

I kept going, but as I so often do, turned around. Because it didn't quite look like a gopher snake. Sure enough, it wasn't. It was a rattler. I squatted, flipped it over.

How did I know it wasn't just feigning death, like a hog-nosed snake sometimes does? Well, red ants crawled over its body, and there was a coagulated explosion on one of its long sides (evidence that it had been run over). I brushed two fingers across its amazingly large, smooth, ribbed and layered scales (see photo ... someone else's), and noticed its black tongue was sticking out, still, from the point of its diamond head as if the snake died mid-taste. And I counted four tiers to its rattle (incredibly, these are modified scales), which means it was just four years old.

I paid a little more attention to the ground for the next few miles. A good run, otherwise.

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13 mi, 91 min; Conway Ranch Loop (slightly modified) with Goat Ranch Cutoff O+B extension

Tuesday, 6/27 -- AM: 10 mi, 70 min; old 395 to Cemetery Rd -- PM: 4 mi, 28 min; Mono City Sage Ramble

It's a zoo out there

Some notable animal sightings on my jaunt to Dechambeau Ranch and back.

First, I shooed a wee, gray garter snake off E. Mono Lake Drive, for fear of its life (I've seen several squashed around the neighborhood). I actually said "Shoo," and whisked my hand like a brush, to make it slither, which it did.

Then, on the jeep trail at the end of the Drive, I came across a modest-sized gopher snake. Not sure there are any gophers out here, but what do I know--maybe there are gophers that dig sand and pumice, and feast on succulent sagebrush root.

Some call them bull snakes. Take your pick.

Anyway, I crouched down with this 2.5 foot gopher/bull for a few minutes to observe. Not great for training, but hey, it was an easy day, and I was in no hurry. One should always have time to commune with the wildlife. I usually do.

The serpent let me nudge it a few times--I mean literally push a curve into its smooth, scaled side--but it didn't budge. Seemed a bit stiff. It was only when I stood up and loomed again that it wended into the brush, and disappeared like a barber pole turning out of sight. Gopher snakes have a beautiful checkerboard back that kind of plays tricks on the mind if you watch for a long time. I took a few steps to run on, but then decided, nah, I better go after it in the brush. But it was gone, must have slunk down a hole (dug by a gopher?). It felt slightly radical to be looking around for snakes in the sage in my short shorts.

Snakes love pavement, and shadeless roads in general, and so do runners (not the shadeless part), so I've had more than a few encounters with them. All practice for when I finally run across a rattler. I'm betting on this summer. In any case, this won't be my last post about my running relationship with snakes.

Now, a follow up on pinyon jays: Down where the the jeep trail from Mono City dumps onto Cemetery Road at Wilson Creek, I flushed another flock. This time, they rose in a united squawk--and sheesh, there were so many. I tried to count them as they passed a certain point in the sky, but my eyes (and legs) couldn't keep up, and I lost count in the 30s. Actually, I think I counted the 30s twice, accidentally, before I called the exercise off. They were hard to count because they weaved all over, trading places with each other, unlike another more regimented, tight-flying type.

But there were about 50, I estimated. As I learned the other night, their flocks can get as big as 500 birds, and many individuals spend their whole life in the flock they were born into. They nest in a colony, too. I'll have to read more about their society.

And finally, running through Dechambeau Ranch, suddenly there was a great, gray motion by my left shoulder! An owl that I'd roused from a low crux in cottonwood! It took flight without a sound, but I locked one eye with one of its--we were both a bit scared.

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75 min, 10+ mi; Around Dechambeau Ranch from Mono City, evening