Scream.
Middle of nowhere.
Screaming.
Woman.
Young woman. Screaming.
Gracie’s scream, gigantic for a tiny woman, echoed between the honeycombed rock of the sandstone cliffs, startling snoozing creatures in dry creekbeds and waking lizards lazing in bright sunlight. A hot wind burned through dry, scrubby savannah vegetation. Like smoke winding through high caverns and galleries of ancient paintings, rattling human bones scattered on ledges and sand beds and electrifying every being in this ancient country.
Snake.
Claire, our guide, grabbed Gracie’s skinny arm and dragged her away from the cornered snake. Gracie was screaming and trembling. The thin snake was about a meter and a half long, with pale brown and black markings and an underside of pale yellow. It had raised its head when Gracie began to scream.
“Snake! Someone is going to die!” Gracie shrieked, black eyes wide with terror.
Gracie was a trainee guide who lived in another Aboriginal community. Not yet 20, she clearly understood about brown snakes.
Understood enough.
Enough to be terrified.
The four other campers cowered behind Claire. But Gracie clung to her, her desperate eyes fixed on the snake coiled about two meters from them.
Gracie’s eyes–everyone’s eyes–were on the snake. And on me.
Claire put a finger to her lips and silently motioned the other campers to move back.
Gracie and I had been sitting cross-legged on a low, rough concrete curb at the Pig Hut when I heard–and then saw–a brown snake slither through dry leaves under our legs.
The snake responded to Gracie’s first scream. It raised its head and began to glide back toward me. I could see its glossy black tongue and pale belly. I sat motionless, observing events unfolding in slow motion. Must be venomous. Otherwise, why was Gracie screaming?
Now, the snake gently nuzzled its head against my left hip, maybe to see if I was alive. I looked down into its face, hypnotized by its flicking black tongue. I sensed its fear.
I think I must have been terrified–but at that moment, it did not feel like fear. I was trapped. I simply could not move. I was just plain stuck. I was sitting cross-legged on a low ledge, and I could not extricate myself in one easy, fluid motion that would not alarm the snake. I knew I’d have to grope around awkwardly to steady myself and get up from the ledge. I was terrified the snake might misinterpret that.
So, we sat. Snake at my hip. My hip is at its side. Side by side.
We sat together. Breathed together. I opened my aura to admit the snake’s energy. I felt it reciprocated.
Then Claire somehow managed to distract the snake. It slithered quickly to the far corner of the enclosed concrete floor, maybe a meter away.
Claire planted her boots firmly and leaned toward me. She whispered her order, reached out both hands and yanked me to my feet in one seamless movement. I stepped quickly behind her.
In silence but with strong, determined, hand gestures and the fiercest look I’d ever seen, Claire herded her charges to the open jeep a few meters away. We tumbled in and sat in silence for a few moments as the jeep gathered speed and clanked along the dusty track.
Claire, no more than mid-twenties, was only a few months into her job as a guide at Davidson’s Arnhem Land Safaris at Mt. Borradaile Station in northwestern Arnhem Land. She spoke steadily, but I could see her hands were trembling as she clutched the steering wheel. I marvelled at how calmly she handled that encounter.
My encounter.
Encountering a snake.
Suddenly, the spell was broken and everyone but me was yelling at once.
What a close call!
What an angry-looking snake!
Did you see his black eyes?
That tongue!
I was the only silent one as we rattled back to the base camp. Above the din of the motor, I heard my single thought: “I’m not very afraid of snakes.”
We’re holidaying in idyllic Mt Borradaile: a remote safari lodge nestled against the Arnhem Land escarpment. The landscape of rugged ranges is fringed by idyllic billabongs, a stunningly beautiful wilderness and cultural landscape sacred to the Aboriginal people.
Over dinner in the camp tent, Karl was reading from a book he found in the camp library.
Later, as we sat on our cots in our sleeping tent, he wanted to talk about the snake.
“Beloved,” he hesitated, clearly shaken by the day’s events.
“I’ve been reading. That snake has the world’s second-most potent venom.”
He pointed to the photo in the book.
“See here: it causes more snakebite deaths than any other snake in Australia. Sudden and early deaths have been recorded.”
That made for a rough night for Karl, though I slept soundly, waking early to rapturous birdsong. Familiar birdsong. Familiar rapture.
Karl and I caught the tiny plane back to Darwin the next day. Before that, Gracie and I spent lots of time reliving our close encounter.
“I’m frightened for you, Wendy,” she whispered as we sat together after breakfast. “Snakes always mean that someone is going to die. That’s what they mean to my people in my country. It’s the same here in Arnhem Land, Wendy; I’m pretty sure of that. Someone’s going to die, Wendy. I hope it’s not you. Please be careful. He was there for you, that snake. Remember how he kept trying to stay close to you…”
“I’m not going to die, Gracie,” I reassured her as we hugged goodbye at the airstrip.
“Goodbye, Snake Woman,” I yelled above the engine’s roar.
“You’re the Snake Woman,” yelled Gracie. “He was there for you.
The flight back to Darwin was more fun than the flight out.
Our pilot compensated for being late by showing us the sights en route. He guided the eight-seater plane as low as he could as we flew west along Australia’s northern coastline. We swooped to inspect stunning, vibrant green mosaics of monsoonal rainforests along the vast coastal floodplains and wetlands, massive sandstone cliffs and bluffs, tree-lined rivers, and inlets where crocodiles abound. Then, without warning, I discovered that we were flying low over my country.
I gasped and grabbed the seat for support. My country. Where I had walked barefoot for a year. Day and night. With snakes about. Imploring them to keep their distance. To let me share their country.
Snake woman.
I could see it all from the air, like a gigantic map or aerial photo: patches of remnant rainforest, a dry, winding creek, cleared land to the east. A tiny two-story shack with a recycled, stained iron roof. Dusty, rutted tracks, tiny bridges, a dry eucalypt forest, paperbarks, a sacred pandanus palm….
Deep Creek.
Engrossed in their low-flying adventure, none of the other passengers noticed I was crying.
My creek. My country. The country I had nearly forgotten. But not really…
I slept through the flight from Darwin to Brisbane, dreaming of my country. And dreaming of the snake.
Days later, we were back home in northern New South Wales. After a three-hour drive from Brisbane airport, we reached our bush abode. It had been a long day. The Beloved busied himself with dinner. And I searched for the journals of my year living in that forest. In that country with my creek, my paperbarks, and my pandanus palms. Deep Creek.
“Didn’t you throw them away?” Karl asked when he discovered me on my knees in the shed, surrounded by dusty folders and research papers. He knelt to inspect them. “Why do you need your journals now?”
“I thought I’d never need them,” I replied, reaching over to hug him. “But now, Beloved, I need them. I need to return to that forest somehow–not physically–but metaphorically–to understand it better. Yes, that time and that country helped me get a doctorate, and I’m grateful for that. But the other parts of it–Mica, the creek, and the forest–I never made sense of that journey.”
“That was well before my time, you know, darlin’.” The Beloved was smiling. He pulled me to my feet.
“That was a long time ago. I’m just glad he didn’t bite you,” Karl whispered as we stepped outside into the cool evening air. He turned to me, his smiling, weather-beaten face silhouetted in the moonlight.
“That snake could have ruined our anniversary, Wadi, for sure.”
I smiled at my love. My soulmate.
We did not know then that the snake was there for Karl. Seven years later, he’d die in a car crash at age 67. As his passenger, I would survive certain death and be reborn.
And 14 years later, in my 81st year, I’d publish the story of my sojourn at Deep Creek. I’d call it “Creeksong: One Woman Sings the Climate Blues.” And I’d dedicate it to Karl.
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