Doc
says yer gonna die..
Like to
paddle remote rivers? On warm, sunny
spring days? Do you like pristine cobblestone beaches?
If you do,
watch where you sit. That is the moral of this story.
The Glady
Fork of the Cheat is a fast, clean, easy whitewater run in northern WV.
It is
remote, and rarely run. The price you pay for paddling the beautiful Glady Fork
is trees.
They fall
across the river in the most inconvenient places, and you have to carry your
boat around these trees.
Glady Fork ducky
I had just
portaged my canoe around a tree. I looked back to see if people were ready, and
I saw them huddled in a circle looking down.
When I
dropped my canoe, they were heading my way. Dave told me that Sharon had
clipped a snake with her boat, then
almost sat on the poor thing when she fell out of the boat.
The
consensus was "some kind of water snake". Being a friend of the
snakes, I went to look it over.
I found it
a few feet from shore. It had an indistinct brown body, but the girth was large
given the length of the snake.
It also
had a large triangular head and a patch of bright copper colored scales on the
head.
Indisputably
a Copperhead, one of the more common poisonous snakes in our area.
When I
mentioned this, thoughtful glances were exchanged.
Sharon
looked at me and asked "what would have happened if I had sat on
it?".
Remembering
the punch line from an old, tired joke, I looked her in the eye and replied
"Doc says yer gonna die...".
Keith Finn
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