We built a new shed this July with the help of that carpenter from Silk Hope, and I was hot to get all my wood under it. I cut cedar boards and posts to make a rick, then set in to moving everything under cover. A lot of creatures like to shelter under a woodpile, and I was amazed at all that boiled out as I carried the wood from a loose pile to my new stack: wood crickets, skinks, just-hatched fence lizards, a field mouse family, wolf spiders . . . I was slow and let them all find their new places.
At about three o’clock in the afternoon, working out the last quarter of wood under the cedars, I picked up a log and there she was, just a few inches from my hand, shining in the sun like a new penny. Eastern copperhead for sure, heavy-bodied but not large, maybe three feet long. She was not aggressive or frightened, just curious. Slowly she uncoiled and tried out different spots in the woodpile while I worked around her. I’m not afraid of snakes but I must admit she made me nervous. Finally, I took a long-handled hoe and moved each stick of wood slowly aside until she was completely exposed. Sitting on a log, I watched her as she took her own sweet time and slipped into the field.
I was a little unnerved but still grateful for her visitation. A goddess in the woodpile, I thought. And she was beautiful. It put me to mind of my grandmother Lilly, whose South Carolina family danced all over the color line and who had been bitten once by a copperhead. Moving a woodpile on a hot summer day, as I remember.
