Essays

Moseying: Locations of Interest

Guadalupe Mountains' Dark Canyon rattlesnakes
July 23, 2003

As I entered the last three hairpin curves at the mouth of Dark Canyon just southwest of Carlsbad New Mexico, a skunk stood his ground, daring me to go around him. I had already slowed to less than 20 miles per hour to make the curve, so when I braked I ended up just creeping toward him. I swung to the oncoming lane to go around him, but he charged at an angle to cut me off. I jerked the wheel to the right, juking towards the barditch. He stood on his hands as I floored the accelerator. If he sprayed, I remained blissfully unaware of the act.

I zoomed up the slope of the arroyo after bouncing across the low water crossing. A big 100 foot tall limestone cliff loomed dead ahead. Dark Canyon can run full – ten, twenty feet deep in water, tumbling boulders and tearing up trees and bushes and making an asphalt road disappear. It does not happen but once every lifetime, if that often. Three to five foot walls of water happen almost every year in the wet times, but only once every five years during the dry.

Slithering along, its scales silvery in the headlights, a three-foot rattlesnake waited for me just past top of the slope. Caught by surprise, I instinctually straddled it, as it steadily and unawaredly pushed along towards the west, its tail delicately held up above the pavement. To avoid the cliff, the road took a sharp turn to the right. As I came out of the turn, but before I tapped the accelerator, another rattler headed north for the cliff. It was almost to the edge of the road, and I stopped to watch him go. Its belly was full – of rabbit – judging by the size of the midsection. Its few buttons were also carefully raised from the road.

The road curved to the south, to cross the arroyo in the bottom of the canyon once again. As I began the dip to the low water crossing, another diamondback lay at the right edge of the road, pointing its head to the east. I did not stop this time, but just shook my head. I have spent a thousand hours purposefully driving lonesome rural roads late at night to watch wildlife – snake-hunting “herpers” are a different lot, you know. I have never seen three rattlers in less than a mile.

I never focused strictly on snakes – I like watching for everything when night-driving. In the aridlands, animals are mostly active at night – and some even have set times for their emergence. Spotted skunks like the 2 a.m. hour, for example, and our native army ant likes the dark of the moon. A person can learn a lunar calendar that invariably is accurate – for example, this is the time of the fat happy frogs. On the Llano Estacado leopard frogs begin singing as the moon wanes for the first time after the summer solstice. They will still be singing at the next full moon, but by then hundreds of tiny black tadpoles will be motionless as they nibble on the benthic algae.

The road cut back east again, and as soon as it straightened out, a fourth rattlesnake moved to the south. My mind jumped to the American Indian symbolism of the four directions – when phenomena occur in fours, Indians pay attention. Considered messages, portents, omens – four-fold phenomena are a time for the imagination to be exercised, so that a person grows and changes. How would I interpret the four-fold phenomena just presented to me? What symbolism would come to mind?

As I continued to build up speed on the straightaway just past the road junction at the end of the canyon, my headlights caught up with a gray fox scampering light-footedly down the road. I slowed down, and the fox did not deviate from its course, so I slowed to its pace. When the road curved one last time to cross the watercourse, the fox kept going forward, to disappear into a nogalito thicket.

As I headed for the highway home, an announcer on the radio proclaimed it midnight and began reading the news. “In today’s local news, a 21 year old man was arrested for starting a grassfire. He lit a tarantula after dousing it with lighter fluid, and in its agony it ran into tall grass in the barditch. A man watering his lawn witnessed the carload of drunk young men laughing at their torturing, and when the grass flared up with 4-foot tall flames, they jumped into the car and drove off, but not before the witness read the license plate. When the police pulled the car over ten minutes later, a thousand dollars of methamphetamine was found in the trunk of the car. The driver had previously been arrested six times for starting other fires.”

I clicked the radio off – why and how can humans be so destructive and self-destructive? The symbolism of the four-fold phenomena was too obvious – starting with the name of the canyon, for gosh sakes! I had to see the four rattlesnakes of Dark Canyon as symbols of the dark sides of the human psyche. I could also apply some symbolism to the skunk and fox, since Indian prayers not only are presented to the cardinal directions but also to earth and sky.

I started with the skunk – it could represent my need to be alert and wary, that unpleasantness abounds along the paths of the dark side – but what are those dark sides? The rattlesnakes could represent various characteristics. I do not kill rattlesnakes, for they are only what they are, and they only bite the inattentive or abusive. Their venom is obvious, but the venom of the dark sides of the human psyche is never as obvious.

One of the most common characteristics is the need to blame others for your own troubles. That will be the rattlesnake of the west. Another characteristic is to sneer at others as stupid, to make fun of others, and to hurtfully denigrate others, especially when not face to face. That will be the rattlesnake of the north. The serpent of the east is being resigned to a negative worldview, falling into a mental inertia, and never expressing any satisfaction, approval or joy in the actions of others – only disapproval.

As I sped along the highway, I debated the symbolism of the fourth rattlesnake. It could represent bullying anger, the urge to get back at others in revenge. That can be a terribly ugly emotion, but another option could be the urge to find solace in activities that numb the mind – television, alcohol, legal and illegal drugs. Yet another option could be the drive for hedonistic pleasure above all else. All are quite self-centered – so maybe self-centeredness should be the symbolism of the fourth rattlesnake.

We are blessed by the presence of many knowledgeable practitioners of the arts of psychological healing. A person entrapped by their dark side often slowly go into a downward spiral. Too often it takes an arrest for an illegal infringement on the rights of others for the full import of their actions to penetrate intellectual and emotional denial. But some, like the man burning the tarantula, keep getting censured by society over and over. A person can break loose of their dark bonds, but only if they make a commitment to do so – denial comes too easily. The fox symbolizes our ability to avoid the dark pitfalls along our way.