Hidden in Plain Sight
Volume 1, Issue 31 — Until You See It
IN THIS ISSUE, Denele Campbell tells us about the unseen corners of darkness, Matt McGowan brings us the second in a series about a float along the Current River, and the little white dog has something to say about the slow red fox.
Snake
By Denele Campbell
I came home one late summer day and went to my little office off the bedroom. My youngest cat, Alizé, who typically accompanied me to the office and then vultured on my computer monitor to supervise my work (back when they weren’t flat screens), stopped at the office doorway. After a while it occurred to me that she was acting strangely, staring up at the shelves in the corner of the tiny office. I examined the shelves, thinking there had been a small furry offering left for me somewhere nearby.
Nothing. Still staring. More searching. Nothing. After a time, Alizé elevated her concern, issuing a low growl from her delicate throat.
My normal activity in those days had been to leave the house open all day, both the kitchen door on the east side and the solar porch door on the southwest, thus airing out the premises and providing unfettered access for the cats and dogs. Now, at her urging, I turned myself fully to the shelves, using a broom to sweep under them. I examined each and every shelf. Finally, following the direction of her stare, I focused on the top shelf near the ceiling. There, carefully camouflaged between the manila envelopes and file baskets, was the rather large head of a very healthy mature black snake.
The location, cleverly selected for optimal cold weather snake condo housing, proved to create difficulties in accomplishing a successful removal. First of all, I didn’t want to get bit because even a non-venomous snake can impart diseases like staph. Secondly, I didn’t want to risk a sudden aggressive move on the snake’s part precipitating a ridiculous female-type shrieking and freaking-out reaction on my part.
I put on my leather work gloves and got the hoe. I used the hoe to try to drag it down from the shelf. Everything else came down—a rainstorm of envelopes, packing materials, a box of old Christmas cards—but not the snake. With its body leveraged between the wall and the back of the shelf, the snake had no intention of giving up its newly purchased real estate. Strong words about its unacceptable intentions and widely known rules of property ownership, me being the one paying the mortgage and so forth, made little impression on the snake.
Even stronger words muttered to myself about getting serious helped bolster my courage to the point that I dragged over my desk chair and stood on it to reach up and grab the intruder by the neck. Immediately there were coils of its long body wrapping forward to choke off this violation of personal space. My second hand went mid-body to thwart that move. Then I had it, although it took another few long moments of pulling to disentangle its length entirely free of the shelving.
We made a quick journey out through the solar porch and into the yard out by the back fence before I threw it into the grass with a stern warning about further in-house visits. I estimated the length at about six feet. Until colder weather, I began closing the solar porch door.
Denele Campbell writes historical non-fiction books of Washington County as well as the occasional story of adventure. “Snake” was originally printed in her book I Met a Goat on the Road: And Other Stories of Life on this Hill, available through Amazon.
Northern Inhospitality
Two Days on the Current Prove Not Every Float is Perfect
PART 2 of three parts. Read Part 1.
By Matt McGowan
A Saturday or Sunday float on the Buffalo River can feel like a family reunion. You never know who you’re going to run into — a coworker, neighbor, cousin — but even if it’s someone you don’t know, you can still count on them being friendly.
I’m trying to remember if it was ever like this on the Current.
It started out in a way that made me think it would be. After floating an hour Friday night and camping on a pastoral gravel bar, I woke up late Saturday morning to Kyle greeting people on the river. “Mornin’,” he said. “Mornin’,” they said back to him. These friendly exchanges made me want to get out there and commune with people who loved the river as much as me.
Well… Did they?
Before I finished packing up, a hundred boats had floated by our camp. The people in them were yelling at each other across the river, trying to be heard over speakers blasting Toby Keith and Rascal Flatts. Upriver, one person had managed to get his boat stuck on rocks, the only shallow water in sight. “Shit!” he was yelling. “Shit!”
I made a comment about the Houston-like traffic jam in front of our campground. “Hordes of humanity,” replied Kyle. I laughed, but I was feeling a little embarrassed. Maybe I shouldn’t have talked him into coming. I knew how he felt about crowds. (Recently, with our wives, we’d visited a different national park, based on his Google search of “least visited national parks.”)
When we got on the water ourselves, we became part of the armada. Floating this way can be quite intimate; it’s nearly impossible to avoid getting physically close to other paddlers. Though they had gotten an early start, which one would associate with alacrity, these folks were a bunch of sourpusses. I said hello to several people, who muttered a grudging reply or looked at me like I was speaking Swahili.
Then, suddenly — or at least that’s how it seemed — we were the only people on the river. It was eerily quiet. Instead of loud music coming at us from multiple directions, I could hear water lapping against my boat. It took me a minute to figure it out. Ah… we’d outrun everyone.
“We’re not paddling that hard,” I said.
“Nope,” said Kyle.
We stopped at a gravel bar and ate lunch in the shade of a spindly birch. Not too far up the beach was a tricky spot, a little chute and riffle next to a toppled tree. It wasn’t a problem if you paid attention more than what the river asked for 98 percent of the time.
After lunch, I cooled off in the river. Kyle was standing on the gravel bar, closer to the riffle, and I heard him cluck. I looked upriver and saw what I expected — a paddle and beverage containers bobbing on waves. I swam out into the current and retrieved these items, getting a thanks from a man who’d lost his beer and not a word from the man who’d lost the paddle.
“I wouldn’t drink that, if I were you,” I said to the man who’d lost his beer. He laughed.
Then I realized he was the same guy we’d encountered upriver, one of only a few who’d been friendly. After we’d said hello, Kyle and I realized he was floating with his wife, who then asked him if he wanted to pull over. The man shrugged but otherwise didn’t answer. She asked him again. This time, when he didn’t immediately reply, I felt like I was in their kitchen during the tense moments leading up to a quarrel. The man finally answered. “No, but do YOU want to pull over?” he said. Kyle and I paddled out of there.
At Pulltite, about halfway to the takeout at Round Spring, I noticed several outfitters lining the bank. I told Kyle I was going to go talk to them.
I found a boy wearing a t-shirt with his employer’s logo on it. Could I hitch a ride back to Akers tomorrow morning, I asked him.
“You’ll have to go talk to the office,” he said, pointing behind him.
I walked up the hill.
“We ain’t got no drivers going up there tomorrow,” said a salty woman behind the counter. She’d just sold a twelve pack of Busch Ice to the man in front of me, and now she wished I’d get out of the way so she could sell more beer and spray-on sunscreen.
Outside, Kyle was shaking his head. “I guess nobody wants to make any money around here,” he said.
“I guess not,” I said, and we walked back to the boats.
Part 3 will appear in the next issue along with a general rule about the time it takes to float a stretch of river. The writer, Matt McGowan, is author of the recently released novel, 1971, available through Amazon.
Chronicles of the Little White Dog
By Mark Pennington
A fox leapt the fence, caught a squirrel, realized it couldn't jump back out carrying the squirrel, ate as much as it could hold, and then buried the remains in our bag of shredded leaves and jumped out. The little white dog waited until the fox was getting ready to leave and threw a fit.