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brain felt loosened from its moorings. I ached all over. Arms, legs, and clothing were
shredded, my watch torn of. I was bleeding freely, matted with sand and bits of veget-
ation. Meanwhile the snake had sped into a crevice, so we retrieved my crumpled hat,
then limped back to camp to pick out the grit and patch me up.
After an hour's absence we saw the coachwhip's head extended several inches up
from the rocks. While I watched with binoculars and distracted our quarry with hand
waving, Claudia lowered a noose over its head from behind, only to have the snake
break the flimsy dental floss loop and disappear into its hole. Returning to camp for
shade and water, grimly resolute, I made a new noose out of stronger material. We
waited another hour, then crept over the lava and repeated the entire operation, but
the snake slipped out when the thick cord failed to close tightly. Game for a third try,
Claudia wove a stout pliable snare out of three strands of floss, and although she suc-
ceeded in approaching again, this time the snake dodged our trap. We conceded defeat,
and I returned to M.V.Z., disgruntled and nursing various wounds.
Two weeks later Claudia brought in a brick red Pisgah coachwhip and, although I'd
collected many reptiles for teaching and research, this snake made me uncomfortable.
The caged animal was subdued, a victim of trophyism on my part, its colors not magic-
al—the one that got away was surely bigger, brighter, faster. Obviously something be-
sides education and science had motivated our breakneck pursuit, such that this second
snake's capture felt unjustified, and I asked her to release it back at the lava flow. We'd
been more predators than scholars that morning, engaged in nature's rough and tumble
chase, and although brains and legs didn't carry the day, I'd gained an appreciation for
serpentine locomotion beyond anything written in topics.
Soon after that episode my Berkeley girlfriend and I split up, prompting a surreal six-
thousand-mile odyssey to check out new places and see old friends. On a Mohave back
road, emotional lid clattering like a cheap teakettle, I sang along with Bruce Spring-
steen's Born in the U.S.A., flooring the little Honda through gully crossings and ima-
gining myself airborne. When an elderly lady asked for help at a highway rest stop, I
held her trembling husband up to a urinal, one arm around his chest and the other bra-
cing against the wall while tattooed motorcycle thugs wisecracked all around us. By
day Emmylou Harris's Ballad of Sally Rose blared from the tape deck as Joshua trees
gave way to Sonoran Desert saguaros. Nights I endured spasms of guilt reading Mar-
ilyn French's TheWomen'sRoom because, although never abusive in the manner of her
scathingly portrayed male characters, I was too often clueless and selfish.26 26
I reached the Chiricahuas during a late-afternoon thunderstorm, wolfed down a
burrito at the Portal Store, and within minutes of driving up Cave Creek Canyon was
astonished by a four-foot green ratsnake stretched out on the road. This semiarboreal
species ranges from Costa Rican tropical dry forests to the Sierra Madrean sky islands
of Arizona and New Mexico, but is nowhere common. Recalling that Albert and Anna
Wright, authors of Handbook of Snakes, never found one in all their travels, I admired
the animal's gently tapered body, the long head with squarish snout and protuberant
eyes, and I lingered over its subtle hues. Its English name notwithstanding, the Wrights
referred to one sent them from the Pajaritos as “buffy or dull citrine,” 27 and mine was
an olive blue-gray, reminiscent of agave leaves. A decade of visits to these mountains
would pass before another enigmatic green serpent crossed my path. More fortunately,
on one of those sojourns I fell for Kelly, a charmingly intrepid desert lizard biologist with
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