summer 2018
It started on a walk with Mike, my excellent friend and excellent hiking partner, telling me about his hike at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, Washington, where he saw two bald eagles at the same time. Some of us go a lifetime not seeing a bald, and here, he sees two at once.
I am envious. So I have to brag to him that, during the Geminid Meteor Shower a few years earlier, I saw two meteorites at the same time. I had never even thought of such a thing until it happened!
Jump ahead to last weekend, when Lisa and I are hiking along the Laurel Ridge when a massasauga rattlesnake crosses the trail just in front of us. We back off to a distance we think is out of striking range and stand, staring. Hold on, there are two of them! Two poisonous snakes! Best I can tell, they are fighting.
Some snake fights don’t look as vicious as we might expect. Snakes, when they are both male and there is a snake babe in the neighborhood, will fight more to assert dominance and less to actually injure their rival. Their movements resemble a syncopated dance, oscillating and dipping, bowing and quivering, matching each other’s movements and rhythm.
Then just this week in the park, I see — count ‘em — two daddy long legs playing together. Are they playing together? They are tumbling about on the ground just at my feet. And no, they are not playing, not in the engaging-in-enjoyable-and-recreational-activity sense. But rather, they are playing in the c’mon-baby-let’s-get-it-on sense.
(Take a moment. Pac-Man’s female counterpart is Ms Pac-Man. Why is she not Pac-Woman? Here we have a male daddy long legs and his feminine counterpart, the female daddy long legs. Why is she not “mommy long legs!”)
I am not particularly a pervert, but I do get comfortable hanging out for a few minutes gaping at these two arachnids as they bump and grind. Rock it!
I finished a draft of this article and went for a walk. In the park, of course. And of course, before the rain came, two swallowtail butterflies were flitting about, doing what I’m going to call The Dance of Life. They described a double helix from the ground up to way above my head.
So let’s see. Two eagles, two rattlesnakes, two daddy long legs, two swallowtails… the survival of the species. The Dance of Life.
