Settled in the Wild by Susan Hand Shetterly

Author:Susan Hand Shetterly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2010-06-20T16:00:00+00:00

Letting Summer Go

Here, in the most northeasterly part of the country, I dropped my fear of snakes. I could pick up any snake I found, and did, and if by chance one bit me—if I handled it carelessly—a bite was all I got. In Maine there are no poisonous snakes left. We can live with snakes without prejudice. The primal fear of snakes that once saved human lives is not necessary here.

Before the hard frost, when night temperatures drop but the days heat up, and light in the hardwood trees looks burnished as if it had passed through a glass of hard cider, snakes bask on the road at the end of my driveway. The pavement is a smooth outcrop radiating the last warmth of summer. The noon sun beats down on their backs, and their bellies take in the stored heat of the road that cuts through woods and the few small fields like an ancient seam of basalt, a smooth extrusion.

But, of course, the road is not an outcrop, and cars come along and kill the snakes. I have found them, their spines and fine ribs exposed, their jaws smashed. I pick them up, and so do my neighbors, and we set them down on the shoulder for a raven or a skunk, a fisher or a fox to eat.

A week ago, I found a young garter snake stretched out on the road like a chunk of clothesline, alive. It was about a foot long. I thought at first that the tip of its tail had been run over. But when I picked it up, I saw that something wet and pink hung from its vent. Garter snakes will sometimes lunge and bite when they are handled, but this one did not. They sometimes let go drops of musk from glands at the base of the tail, cool to the touch, smelling sweet and rotten. This garter did not. It had dark pebbled scales highlighted in yellow stripes, one stripe on either side and one along its back.

I was on my way to the bay to see if the winter ducks had flown in yet. I stuffed the injured snake into the chest pocket of my fleece jacket, zipped it up, and felt the animal settle at my right breast. The wind was blowing. The mid-tide water sloshed against the rocks. I walked the head of the bay, past feral apple trees where bright red apples hung, and where fresh deer tracks pocked the ground. There were no ducks out on the water. Three loons, two parents and a grown chick, floated close to shore.

This time of year, I, too, search for the last warm corners, for the sheltered haunts where the sun is hot and where summer seems to linger. But in truth, it has already gone: the bumblebees and the flowers they threw themselves into are dead; most of the warblers have left, except for a few yellow-rumps picking at spider egg sacks that hang from shed rafters.

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