Dropped in the middle of remote Victoria, Explorer Sinean faces a fear she’s never had to before in Ireland – snakes.

 

We Are Explorers acknowledges that this adventure is located on the traditional Country of the Taungurung and Gunaikurnai People who have occupied and cared for the lands, waters, and their inhabitants for thousands of years. We pay our respects to them as the Traditional Custodians and recognise that sovereignty was never ceded.

The hug is a little too tight, coming from someone I hardly know, and there’s more worry in his voice than I’d like to hear before setting off alone on an adventure that has me pretty nervous already. ‘Wear your gaiters. Have you packed the snake bandage?.’

A friend’s parents have dropped me off at the Mountain Creek campground, equipped with an old map and supplies for a four-day adventure in the alpine region around Mt Bogong.

I’ve never hiked alone in Australia, and I’ve been warned that this part of it is particularly ‘snakey’.

We don’t have snakes back home in Ireland, and any glimpses I’ve had of them elsewhere have been mercifully fleeting.

Read more: Going Solo? 5 Tips for Adventuring Alone in the Wilderness

 

I wonder how many are in here…

Meeting the Locals

A few kilometres later, I’m standing at the bottom of ‘The Staircase’, a steep trail that eventually takes me up to Mt Bogong before I continue deeper into the national park.

While I work up the courage to start the climb, an Australian hiker joins me in front of the info board. He’s armed with a small axe and what looks like a handbag. My mind is fully occupied with thoughts of snakes, and I only realise later that this should possibly have worried me.

As it is, we have a nice chat. He’s training for a long walk to the Blue Mountains, for which he intends to hike about 60km per day, foraging along the way.

I tell him how nervous I am about the snakes, hoping for some reassurance. No such luck.

He tells me it’s only Brown snakes that’ll chase you, which is the first I’ve ever heard of Australian snakes actually chasing. The new knowledge does nothing to calm me.

He says the most important thing is to freeze, not to run. They’ll listen to my heartbeat through the ground and decide whether I’m in fight or flight mode. He’s gone before I can ask which one I’m meant to be in, and how I can possibly control that.

Read more: How to Keep Yourself Safe Around Snakes in the Outdoors

 

Staring at trees as a coping mechanism

Scared Sensuous

The air mixes cocktails under my nose as I huff and puff my way up the steep incline. Warming earth laced with something sharp and green, all bathing in the medicinal scent of eucalyptus. Only a small part of my mind registers this.

 

The background to all my snake thoughts looks lovely at least

 

I’m straining with all my senses for the signs of snakes. Was that a hiss and slither? Or just the buzz of flies, a scuttling lizard, dry leaves falling? When I stop to catch my breath and look around, my vision has a funny warping effect from all the time spent focusing on the path in front of me.

Every now and again, a movement further ahead draws my eyes away from the path. A friendly-faced wallaby freezes for a few seconds, then thumps off into the bush.

I spot the first snake less than 5km into my walk. Black, with a red belly.

If my eyes hadn’t been glued to the path I would’ve stepped right on it.

Its dark body criss-crosses the pool of light and makes it dappled.

My wildly beating heart must be playing a lullaby through the soles of my feet, judging by how relaxed the snake is. I wait. And wait, and wait. I start to wonder if it’s dead, and take one shaky step closer. Finally, slowly, it unfurls. It stretches itself long across the path, then pulses its way slowly into the bush.

Read more: Herping: A Beginners Guide to Snake Spotting

Just Don’t Step on Them

I think of the Gary Larson comic strip entitled ‘God makes the snake’. A bearded old man in a robe stands on a cloud, rolling out long ropes of clay and saying, ‘Boy… These things are a cinch!’. I wish I could find snakes funny.

I want to find them beautiful, to see them for the necessary part of nature they are. There is something pure about them, at least. They are movement made muscle, reptilian consciousness in its simplest form. Something in me recoils from them though – some primal fear instinct that was never tempered by positive interactions with snakes.

People here always seem to use the word interaction, not encounter. I love and hate that.

It shows respect for the animal as an equal party in the situation, an agent with a will of its own. But it also highlights the fact that I’m not the only one who can decide how our meeting goes. I could do everything right, and still get unlucky.

I try to think in snake. I try to understand them. I ask every Australian I meet what the right course of action is when I meet one.

‘Thump the ground with your hiking pole.’
‘No, don’t do that!’
‘Move back.’
‘Stay still.’
‘Get the hell outta there!’
‘Only the browns will chase you.’
‘Nah, they’re chill, it’s the Tiger snakes you have to worry about.’

Everyone knows best but they all know differently. I still know nothing at all, except that I really don’t like snakes. I wonder if people are just teasing me, until a feisty little snake up on the plains actually does chase me.

Really, I should admire its courage, being ready to take on this huge lumbering thing that has disturbed its peace, but all I think as I scurry back is ‘Fuck, fuck fuck!’.  All thoughts about the ‘right’ course of action are forgotten in a spasm of panic.

Read more: How To Survive A Snake Bite

The Price of Paradise

I slowly settle into the rhythm of the hike. Usually, my mind would wander when my body does, but now I’m fully present. I stop to catch my breath and look up often, not wanting to waste the whole hike staring at my feet as I move through this alien landscape.

I started surrounded by vibrant green forest, with giant tree ferns and broad-trunked gums. As I move up, these are replaced by tall white gum trees, which give way to scrubby versions of themselves.

Finally, the trees dwarf and redden, and then I’m up on the plateau, surrounded by alpine Shaggy pea and Mint bush, Snow daisies, Billy buttons, Pink trigger plants, and countless other flowering plants that look like tiny living ornaments, carefully tended by the wind.

Read more: How To Identify an Australian Native Plant

 

A kaleidoscope of colour

 

For a moment I forget my scan of the path, my eyes following the contours of all the surrounding mountains instead.

I hadn’t even noticed the panorama sneaking up behind me, but now all those moments of concentration are worth it and I’m willing to accept as many snake sightings as it takes to be in a place like this.

The Snow gums on the faraway mountainsides are a grey stubble. Closer up, they’re bleached or burnt bones sticking up barrenly from the greenery. Later, at Cleve Cole and Ropers Huts, they’re healthy, striped giants which protect the colourful tents nestled between their roots.

Each afternoon when I arrive at camp, the light is turning golden, and I can’t help but walk barefoot on the clover lawn that spreads between the snow gums. All the fear flows from my body, leaving only peace and gratitude.

 

No more worrying for the day

Masters of Mindfulness

I wish I could be more reasonable about the whole thing. Kookaburras, the most cuddly-looking bird I’ve ever seen, literally eat snakes like this for breakfast. I’m constantly vigilant as I walk, appraising each object on the path in front of me.

‘It’s a stick, it’s a stick, it’s a stick’, becomes my mantra.

The strips of gumtree bark which wind around my ankles or the rustle of a trapped grasshopper send shocks of adrenaline through me which cause my whole body to convulse. No wonder my mind is as exhausted as my body in the evenings, and I barely manage to stay awake for the sunsets which redden the skies and set candy floss clouds alight.

Does it count as mindfulness when all your thoughts are constantly focused on one thing? I’ve heard that Jain monks use a soft brush to sweep the ground in front of them before they take a step to avoid hurting any creatures.

 

Oh yeah, I’m hiking! Not just terrified all the time

 

Although my motivation was less monk-like, I too spent my time sweeping the path in front of my feet – every single piece of earth that my foot touched on that trail was first touched by my eyes. I didn’t expect to get a lesson in mindfulness from serpents, but never in my life have I been more present than during those few days of hiking.

Every single hiker I met had horror stories to share about their snake interactions. No one was dismissive of my fears, but they all seemed so damn relaxed about the whole thing. I wonder if Australians are just masters of the type of mindfulness and presence necessary to safely hike in places as ‘snakey’ as this.

Maybe it’s like driving. You have to accept that there’s an inherent level of risk involved, and that you need to be alert at all times – but you can learn to relax into it, and the sense of freedom it gives you makes it all worthwhile.

Mind you, the only thing I hate more than snakes, is driving.

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