This morning I was up by the garage watering my herb patch when I met one of my friends, a small shy garter snake. Because I keep fresh water in a dish for him and for his relatives, and perhaps for other reasons, these snakes have befriended me. They appear when I do slithering out of subterranean hiding places and circle around with forked tongues extended apparently “reading” me  – or that’s how I interpret their actions. It is impossible not to note that their intentions are always friendly. If their water dish is empty, when I fill it the littlest one who is always waiting (except on rainy days) dips in for a drink. This morning a large three foot long garter snake –my biggest – arrived almost immediately afterwards and the baby slipped away. Henry didn’t seem thirsty, just curious, as he slithered through the herb garden like a fat striped serpentine ribbon. I have made it a practice to have conversations with these snakes if they stay around; or at least monologues. I bend down as low as I can so that we are communing closer to eye level, sometimes I sit on the ground. I am particularly drawn to a snake’s extraordinary eyes.
 
My snakes know that I am very appreciative of the job they do during the warmer months. They keep the garage free of rodents, and in the winter they cluster in huge bunches in my woodpile to sleep. There is a southern window that they all gather in during spring days in order to warm up. I deliberately leave a space for them to sunbathe in that window. Shedding snakeskins decorate many logs in my woodpile and presently I have one that is draped over the window like a feathery rope. I am not sure what that snake was doing while shedding his winter coat!
 
Few people share my enthusiasm for snakes or my belief that we have formed a relationship that has endured over many years. Routinely, I am accused of the usual – anthropomorphizing – projecting my caring feelings onto cold blooded animals that are incapable of emotion - the ultimate dismissal of one person’s experience that I have come to resent, mostly because I know better.
 
Recently, the discipline of Neuroscience has come to my aid. Neurobiology and Neuropsychology are disciplines that study the nervous system and the brain from different perspectives and now these interdisciplinary sciences are extending their research to include non – human species (although how they continue to separate the brain from the body remains an enigma to me – the nervous system extends throughout the body – it doesn’t simply exist in the brain).

The first time I visited the Pedernal that overlooks Abiquiu New Mexico, that incredible flat-topped mesa where the Navajo ‘Changing Woman’ was born I fell in love! I was with my friend Iren who showed me a place where an enormous band of chert was located on the side of the mountain. The colors of the stone took my breath away – bitter orange, blood red, rust, dusky purple, ebony, charcoal, dense white, light yellow, pale pink, deep rose, blue gray – every color on the spectrum except deep blue was visible. I already knew that this multi-colored stone had been traded throughout the Americas by Indigenous peoples for millennia; I wondered if the arrowheads I had that came from Maine could have come from this mountain…
 
As we climbed through a forest of tall conifers I soaked in the view of a magnificent multi-layered tree line that stretched all around me as far as I could see on one side. The views of the distant snowcapped mountains were spectacular. I experienced a peculiar kind of “high” that I mentioned to Iren, noting vaguely that I suspected it had something to do with the trees.