It was important just\u00a0to do<\/strong> it.<\/p>\n I’m trying to maintain little bits and pieces of my old life, the one before July 7<\/a>, when I was still focused on becoming as healthy as I could in the final stage of my\u00a0recovery from brain surgery.<\/p>\n This hike, like the playfield track running<\/a>, is a marker of my progress. I was doing it every week before vacation, and intended to continue it when I got home.<\/p>\n The trail is rocky and the mountainside is rocky. There are rattlers and copperheads and they are on the move now, looking around for hibernation spots already. I watch my step.<\/p>\n I’m not sure why I spotted the little garter snake, though, so small and well off the trail.<\/p>\n Can you see him, in the featured image above?<\/p>\n Here’s a closer crop:<\/p>\n There’s people who think that the only good snake is a dead snake, and if I was one of them I would’ve killed this harmless little guy. I wouldn’t dream of it, though. He was hardly bigger than a shrub branch.<\/p>\n Plus, I saw this snake as a good omen. Part of the mountain, as I am part of the mountain when I hike it. I said hello and moved on.<\/p>\n Then I heard a couple birds calling out, up on the steep bank to my left. Something about the call made me think it was an alarm call – an unusual pattern.<\/p>\n I looked up and saw a bear walking across. Silently – how do they manage that?<\/p>\n Pretty big, but not huge. Same spot where I saw two cubs, back in June, but never saw the mother bear.<\/p>\n This one\u00a0saw me, and I yelled at the top of my lungs, “GIT! GIT OUTTA HERE!”<\/p>\n The bear ambled on.<\/p>\n The rest of the hike, I was yelling at nothing into the trees and whacking my hiking poles against tree trunks. I wasn’t actually afraid, just wanted to be sure the bears and snakes heard me well in advance. I knew they\u00a0would steer clear then.<\/p>\n I guess that’s what I’m doing these days, all the time. Yelling at trouble. GIT! GIT OUTTA HERE!<\/p>\n I’m coming up the mountain. I don’t want nothing else to get in my way. No snakes, no bears are gonna stop me.<\/p>\n Made it in 42 minutes up, 30 minutes down. My best time ever.<\/p>\n Today’s penny is a 2011, which is I believe the first time I went up this mountainside – before the trail was even blazed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a treat for myself, I made the time to head up the mountain on a strenuous hike. This trail is the one that traverses steeply, gaining more than 1,000 feet just in the last section. My previous time, mid-June, was 45 minutes going up, but after two months away I wasn’t hoping to match … read more The snake and the bear<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[321],"tags":[47,790,937,959,179,953,994],"class_list":["post-9042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tress","tag-47","tag-bear","tag-hiking","tag-mountain","tag-nature","tag-snake","tag-trail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9042"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9048,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9042\/revisions\/9048"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"snake](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/snake-crop-1024x677.jpg\")
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