Broke Off Mountain

DAIMON AT THE THRESHOLD   (Dangerous Love Affair At Broke Off Mountain)

In any love story is the moment, typically awkward, when the two protagonists first meet. In this case: a beautiful summer morning at a campsite on the slopping flank of an ancient volcano in Northern New Mexico. Still waking up, feet brushing the soft grass… sudden alarm prompts an instinctual jump to the side. Here it is, in full rattle mode, raised to strike: Crotalus viridis, the Prairie Rattlesnake.

That was close: 2 feet to the left and i would have stepped on it. The consequences? Hard to say. Could have been a dry bite, or a venomous one. Could have been serious.

The date is 1 MULUK (‘Rain’), a sign governing the flow of water in all its forms. Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent, is one of its patrons. In native indigenous ceremonies of the Americas, rattle gourds are used to call on the rains. Here, it hasn’t been 2 hours before thunder is heard and rain descends. Complaining about the drought? Go step on a rattlesnake!

MULUK also pertains to signs and guidance, and on a personal level, the synchronicities are even more striking, so to speak. Today is the 24th anniversary (that is, 2 Jupiter cycles) of the Serpent-Jaguar vision that defines my work and personal destiny.*

Thus begins 5 days of a one-sided love affair: i can’t seem to leave the poor creature alone while she coldly tolerates me. She? Yes, this is a pregnant female bound to stick around until giving birth. This one remains within an approx. 400 sq ft area, though one is never sure. In this terrain of dry grass and dead wood jumble, you’ve got to watch your every step. Think you can locate a 3ft long snake from a safe distance? Think again. For a snake is the shape of water: it curls in the grass invisible, adopts the shape of a dead branch, takes on the shifting patterns of light and shadow. Reflecting ambient light, its skin mirrors grass, wood, rock, water, sunlight. A camouflage master.

It's quite the game of hide-and-seek we’ve got going.** There she is now, but won’t later. Checking back at the same spot, i find that she has gone… No, wait, she’s still there, it’s the light that changed position… Risky? Yeah, some. Until you can locate her, tread very carefully. Don’t Tread on Me!

After that, stay out of striking range. Says the internet: “A rattlesnake can typically strike about 1/3 of its body length. So, a 3-foot snake has about a 1-foot striking range.” For safety’s sake, let’s add another foot — because of the “typically” in that sentence, because it’s pulled from the internet, and because i have not measured her.***

So 2 feet away is about how near my hands — holding a wholly inadequate phone camera — dare to move. At any rate, proceed an inch closer and the rattling starts. Don’t Tread on Me! No hands-on relationship here. At campsite some 40 feet away, i am grateful for sleeping arrangements in a zipped-up tent. Heat-seeking snakes (genus Crotalus in particular, equipped with a pair of heat-sensing organs) have been known to sneak into sleeping bags at night. Again, this is a pregnant female, so probably not. Still… When fantasizing about a fabulous creature sharing my bed, a 3-foot long venomous snake is not what i have in mind.

The grass around has changed... its vibe not so care-free anymore. When in the past i would go lie in the grass to star-gaze, i now remain in the tent. And is it just me or are the resident rabbit and chipmunks unusually subdued? And the field mice have vanished. It’s like a night curfew has descended upon us. As for the vibe of the creature from up close, well, it’s intense. Deadly serious, day-in, day-out. An awesome (awe-full-some) thing to experience.

Eventually, as with all love affairs, the curtain must draw. But as i enter her perimeter for a tearful farewell, she is nowhere in sight. I look and look… can’t find her. Either she’s vacated the premises or has found the perfect hiding place. On the one hand, i feel betrayed: tired of me? Don’t want a proper goodbye? On the other, i am relieved: it’s hunting season and a safe bet that the folks who will next take over this campsite, were they to come upon her, will not have the same loving disposition.

I miss you, sweetheart.

But as i come to reflect, literalizing this creature would be a mistake. No, this was no mere snake but a figment of the deepest imagination, a daimon issued straight out of my personal myth. An expression of Quetzalcoatl, He the great emerald dragon — ever-dying, ever-reborn. He who reappears time and again, pregnant with potential, at critical junctures in a perennial revolving cycle (again here: 24 yrs, 2 Jupiter Returns later) before vanishing back into the depths, as suddenly and mysteriously as it had come.

*  On that day, as 24 yrs ago, the Sun was 27 Deg of Leo. Sabian symbol “Daybreak — The Luminescence of Dawn in The Eastern Sky”: a straightforward, potent image that speaks of emergence, resurgence, renewal, cycles of change. Of revelation, awakening.

**  You can play the game in the appendix gallery.

***  Indeed, researching the topic back at home, I find that “there is no consensus in the available literature about how far rattlesnakes can strike, with estimates ranging from one-third to the entire body length of the rattlesnake”. So i may have underestimated its reach.