The day was grey and breezy with fast moving squalls in air that was warm one moment and then gave me a chill in the next. Phoebe was coming up from Brooklyn just for an overnight, and both of us had been thinking how little we had seen each other this summer, so we planned a short day-hike at Schunnemunk Mountain. I have clear memories of hiking that mountain as a kid with my father and brother. I don’t know which trail he took us on, but there was a fire tower and my father loved to hike to fire towers (back when our area still had the erector set structures) and we would climb them; and one time there was a ranger on duty, I think it was this time, at Schunnemunk, and we climbed the tower and the ranger showed us the maps and the telescope and I remember there was a fire that day, out west in the county, with whitish smoke and a wind from the south.

Knowing my daughter knew nothing of Schennemunk – few people do – we researched a few trailheads and put in at Gonzaga Park, site of an abandoned monastery. We didn’t see any clear indications of the trail, so we struck out east knowing we would hit the Long Path somewhere near the top of the ridge. Schennemunk Mountain, basically, to give you the location, is basically that block of land north of Monroe, bounded by Route 208 on the west, Route 32 on the east and the train trestle in Salsbury Mills to the north. Schennemunk Mountain is the tallest “mountain” in Orange County, and the joke is you have to be able to spell it to hike it.

We hit the Long Path and turned north. The trail was like an old road vanishing in tree growth wildly cobbled by the exposed stones of the mountain. The fall flowers were blooming, and we were soon in a stand of scrub oak and pig nut hickory, and I think here and there I spied butternut. The scrub oaks were loaded with green acorns, and I refused to think what that might mean in terms of the coming winter. Why spoil a perfectly fine day? The rain was heavier now, and we put on our rain ponchos.

The happy self-deceiver, I forget how out of shape I am, but my circulatory system is such that it soon gives me a second wind. But no matter how in shape a person might be, it’s still the shoes that get you. I have good hiking shoes, but not wearing them often opens up tender spots, and about one hour into our hike, I began to feel my left heel. “Band-Aid?” “No, I thought about them last night before I went to sleep but forgot them this morning.” “Me too,” I said. Hike on!

We began to see orange newts along the path, here and there, scrambling out of our way, doing who knows what in the leaf cover. Beautiful and precise, we began to notice them with increasing frequency. “Eye of newt.” “Are they poisonous?” “No, they just go good in soups with incantations and spells. An indispensable ingredient found in sorcerers’ larders from time immemorial.”

We have strange conversations out on the trail. After clambering down the steep, stone sides of a canyon and back up the other side of a gully to regain the ridge, “You know what I feel about topography like this?” “No, what?” “I feel, with topography like this, the glacier didn’t do its job thoroughly enough. Look at this place!” “Dad, give it another 40,000 years.” “OK.”

Two hours out into the wild and my foot was telling me to turn back. “How about we take a water break out on that stone ledge, have a look at the valley and head back?” “Fine.”

The ledge was about fifty feet off the trail and, this being one of the few times I was the lead hiker, I stepped through some ridge grasses and yellow flowers onto the stone slabs and BANG!

The two of us heard and saw the snakes simultaneously and I stopped immediately within five feet of the closest snake, the green one, and I watched in close-up the rattle rattling. I was not overly concerned because obviously they had seen us first and they were in retreat across the top of that particular ledge of stone with an overhang of stone behind them. I backed off and my daughter backed way off, and I asked for my camera which she dug out of my knapsack. With my few steps of withdrawal, the green rattler stopped to look at me in more detail. I approached cautiously, zooming the camera for some amateur video. The first snake was fully black and disappeared completely while I was filming the rattle end of the tail of the green snake. The growth rings, or shedding rings of the rattle, revealed its age to be at least ten years. The big snake began to coil on the stone in front of us and we took that as a sign for us to begin our trek homeward. What a day, what a sight. The air turned cooler, and a light new squall brewed to our south. The little baby package of a storm came at us with great indifference.

We both felt immensely lucky to have witnessed the snakes in the wild.