Slog: To walk slowly, encountering resistance.
Trudge: To walk wearily, with heavy, slow steps.
A few days after SuperK and I returned from our China trip - 30 hours door to door with a 15 hour time difference - I drove out to my favorite hiking grounds, figuring to burn off some of the jet lag and some of the let-down, the depression that I always fight when I make that jarring transition from hectic, non-stop movement back into my fairly ordinary life. The older I get the harder the reentry becomes. I really did feel like shit when I started my hike on a familiar trail, one that climbs steadily up to a great jumble of huge boulders, my stopping point overlooking the river valley a few thousand feet below.
It's going to be difficult for me to convey what a miserable time I had. As we say, when we're trying to move something forward when we've got nothing: "I got nuthin'." I was tired and loggy, lacking the energy I normally have, crucial to completing this somewhat challenging hike.
I'm moving along when I hear - alarmingly close - one of the most distinctive sounds I've ever heard: a rattlesnake rattle. This part of the trail was winding through shade and sun and had a heavy coating of dried leaves that are often rustling as billions of small lizards flee my approach, so it was hard to clearly see what exactly was on the ground. Plus, I was zoned out. I almost stepped right on top of this gentleman. I imagined a rattlesnake rattle sounding like two or three large beads shaking around inside a dried gourd - in reality it was more like a ton of BBs being quickly tossed back and forth.
I, as they say, Stepped Off. My first thought - after I had put some distance between me and the snake - was to get a closer look, maybe snap a picture. My second thought was that my first thought was really, really stupid, and I pranced away. It was a pretty big snake and I had no idea what their striking range was, so the thought that it was a good idea to get closer exited my brain as quickly as it entered. I realize he was afraid of me. He didn't want to bite me - he wanted me to go away. I also realized I was afraid of him. He had sharper teeth and was lighter on his feet - or would have been had evolution gone his way.
Have you ever seen a snake locomote? It's mesmerizing. Those dudes can move right along.
I went away. I started at any sound I heard for the next hour, imagining big snakes, out to get me, to do me grievous bodily harm. The fact that I've hiked every week for four years and never seen a rattlesnake meant nothing to me. The snakes were everywhere, they were massing in the hills and swarming toward the trail. There were going to be mountains of snakes blocking my way when I tried to get back to me car. There would be so many snakes that the mountain lions wouldn't be able to eat me.
On this hike I then saw not one but two big snakes that weren't rattlers. They had this really cool black and orange striping alternating down the length of their body. I don't know what kind of snakes they were but I was still a little rattled by the rattle19snake so I didn't want to get into any snake-Seaweed confrontations. Unfortunately, one of the snakes was stretched across the trail, right in the middle, basking in the sun, not going anywhere, head kind of angled back to look at me, tongue flicking in and out. I tossed some dirt toward him. Nothing. I tossed a couple of bigger clods of dirt at him, one of which stopped when it rolled up against his body. Nothing. I walked over to the far edge of the trail, keeping as much real estate between his non-head end - do snakes have an ass? - and the end of the trail, and successfully got around the dude.
As I finished my hike I was glad for nature. I enjoy losing these animal to Seaweed confrontations. I'm the interloper, I'm the one intruding on their territory. I imagine myself getting bit by a rattlesnake and saying: "Eh. Chalk one up for the reptiles." Who have been around about 320 million years, or about 319 million 800 thousand years more than humans.
When I got home I jumped into the shower to wash off the trail grunge and I noticed that I had gotten a blood blister on my stomach, probably the result of some chafing as I hiked. I gingerly probed the blister with the tip of my finger, only to see eight little legs begin to writhe. Tick. Really, really gross. I've never had a tick and frankly, I would have preferred a rattlesnake bite to the site of that little fucker buried in my flesh.
What does this have to do with recovery, you ask? What indeed.
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