Try Not To Imagine A Snake

One year, the wall of one of the cabins was teeming with ribbon snakes; this was discovered when one stuck his head out of a crack in the plaster right over my Aunt Pat’s shoulder. Ribbon snakes have a comically bemused expression, when they poke their heads out of the wall, but the sight of one didn’t make my family laugh. They tried to keep the snakes away by putting duct tape over the crack. When the duct tape started to wiggle they realized they’d just trapped a snake on it. Aunt Pat can’t stand to kill any kind of animal, so she let the snake free outside, but he couldn’t get clear of the duct tape adhesive and he died.

One year, my cousins and I were fishing for crayfish in Dixie cups in a still pool at the bottom of a ravine. I’d filled all my cups with the little crustaceans, so I started to climb out of the ravine to ask my mother for more. I put my hands up on a fragile shale ledge, then pulled myself up suddenly, and came face to face with an adult queen snake. Adult queen snakes do not have a comically bemused expression; they have the classic calm, sociopathic expression one associates with a reptile. She flicked her tongue at me. I screamed, and went tearing down the side of the ravine in a jangle of broken shale.

Once, when driving from one part of the park to the other, we saw an enormous bright yellow rattlesnake coiled right in the middle of the road. I don’t know what was wrong with it, to make it that color; rattlesnakes in West Virginia are usually soft cream with brown blotches. But this one was bright, and it had a rattle, and it was poised with its head reared up, making nonchalant eye contact with anyone who looked at him. I wanted to open the door to get a closer look, but my parents wouldn’t let me.

These are the other snakes I try not to think about, when I try not to imagine a snake uncoiling at the base of my spine. I’m grateful that there’s never actually been a snake uncoiling at the base of my spine, because I wouldn’t know what to do. Should I ignore it, to avoid demonic possession? Should I scream and throw myself down a noisy shale ravine? Try to get a closer look? Strike its head with my heel and find my leg doesn’t bend that far? Get the duct tape?

Here’s something to imagine, to get your mind off of snakes at the base of your spine: imagine a world free from fear.

Imagine a place where you knew that no one was going to get you, not the devil and not anyone else. Imagine a world where you know you’re safe, not because all the snakes have been killed but because the snakes don’t harm you here. Imagine that a bat flies right at you, but you don’t cringe from the bat; you only admire its soft fur and smooth wings. Imagine that a katydid zips into your cabin and makes that blood-curdling noise in the middle of the night, but instead of startling, it fascinates. Imagine coming face to face with a calm and regal snake, close enough that she could bite you on the nose, and marveling at the geometric beauty of her scales. Imagine opening your door to make eye contact with a bright yellow rattlesnake, because their color is so beautiful.

That’s where we’re headed.

That’s the country God intended.

That’s the place without fear.

Imagine that, as much as you like. It won’t be accurate; nothing we can say could ever do justice to the beauty that waits for us there. But it won’t hurt you. You don’t need to be afraid.

He has not given us a spirit of fear.

There’s no fear in that country.

Do not be afraid.