Itty Bitty Green Welcoming Committee

Early Saturday, it cooled off a bit and started to dry out, after Friday evening's latest round of punishing thunderstorms. The weekend appeared to be shaping up to be a good one, weather-wise, so my husband and I planned an overnight backpack into the Quehanna Wild Area. (Have I ever mentioned that I married a sort of modern-day Thoreau?)

The many delights of the day included a newt, tadpoles just starting to grow legs and think about crawling up onto dry land, a plethora of black damselflies with lacy wings, deep and delightful greens worthy of a rainforest, and an afternoon by the creek where the morning haze cleared out and the sky turned bright blue and put on a display of puffy white clouds that was absolutely world-class, among the best I've seen.

But I chose to show you this because it just delights me: say hello to half of the tiny green welcoming committee that we almost stumbled over on the path to our campsite.

This adorable little green creature, about a half-inch to an inch wide, and less than a foot long, is a smooth green snake, and I admit that I don't think I've ever seen one before photographing this one. There were two of them: the other one stretched out, this one coiled; and they were both away like a flash and disappeared into the underbrush just as I snapped a few quick shots. This one, coiled and wearing a sort of happy-friendly-welcoming look, wins points for overall cuteness, and may in fact be the prettiest little snake I've ever seen in the wild!

Here let me follow up by sharing a great truth about backpacking. It is not just a delightful and whimsical experience, full of relaxation and joyful contemplation of the woods' wild beauties, but one potentially beset by misadventures and dangers as well. Outdoor humorist Patrick F. McManus nailed it when he referred to camping as "a fine and pleasant misery." (I highly recommend his book by the same name; it contains both wisdom and humor, and as such, is nearly a work of perfection.)

I got so many biting fly bites on Saturday afternoon - I think six or eight - on the back of my left hand, that my left hand swelled up, turned bright pink and hot, and got insanely itchy! My husband threatened to leave the woods to take me to the emergency room if it stayed swelled up like that, but eventually the swelling and the heat and the itch went down on its own. After several hours of misery, I might add. (All the while, my husband offering helpful suggestions, such as: "Try not to think about it!" and "Stop itching!")

Also, we were surprised by a late-afternoon drizzle that moved in quite suddenly and lingered for hours, forcing us each to put our tent fly on and retire inside (for a better night's sleep, I like to take my own tent when camping out; so we each take a tent, but we set them up side by side, like a pair of kids playing house). So much for the online hourly forecast that we saw before leaving - the weather we got was almost NOTHING like what the weather forecast called for!

Oh, and P.S.: Scratch the almost-full-moonrise I was hoping to capture on camera, dramatically rising over the tamarack forest in the Valley of the Elk. I never even saw the moon, although my husband assures me it poked its head out and looked around sometime after midnight, long after I was asleep. Let's exercise a bit of poetic license here. Let's just pretend that I saw it and it was lovely; if I had, the moonrise might have looked something like this.

Added to my agenda for the week: a trip to the dollar store to buy myself several to many tubes (one to place in every bag I own) of histamine-blocking anti-itch cream . . . the only thing I know of that Truly Stops the Itch. (Oh yeah, I already owned a tube of this miraculous cream. And where was it? SAFE AT HOME!!!)

So now you've been warned about both the beauties and the perils of the Pennsylvania woods . . . ;-)

And to continue reading about our adventures in the woods, take a look at Sunday's blip entry.