I was taking a little me time at a cabin. Pretty remote, a 45 minute drive down a dicey mountain road to the beginning of civilization (a convenience store and a church). I was there solo to unwind.

One night I made a nice little fire down a hill from the cabin, maybe 40 yards away. Around 10, I put the fire out and started back up to the cabin. The porch lights were on and throwing some nice ambient light, so I decided not to turn my headlamp on and harsh the vibe with blue light. I couldn’t easily see the ground where I was starting from, but the path was well-maintained gravel and I was familiar the terrain.

After ten feet, I froze. I’m a person who struggles to trust my instincts sometimes. But my lizard brain was picking up on something not consciously perceptible, and I have never before or since had every part of my screaming that something was wrong.

I turned on my headlamp and saw, about twenty feet up the path, a fucking rattlesnake. Then I immediately started second-guessing myself. Do we even have rattlesnakes in this part of the country? And it didn’t even rattle, isn’t that their whole thing? Also it’s night, aren’t they active in the daytime with the sun? I stared without moving an inch, barely even breathing, just silently gaslighting myself. After a few minutes it continued on its way and finished slithering across the path back into the woods.

I ran up the rest of the hill and into the house. Promptly grabbed my phone and typed “rattlesnake [regional area I was in]” in the search bar. So, it turns out there are rattlesnakes there, and yeah their pattern is exactly the same as the one I saw. Something primal in my body knew, and I’m really glad I listened to it.

That I’m my age. I’m in my late thirties, but sometimes I still feel like I’m nineteen.