I was wondering on the drive to the studio this morning, if you would like to hear about the beautiful, gorgeous goldenrod along the sides of the roads--I did stop to take some pictures--or, the very beautiful but very alert, copperhead snake.

I think the snake.

It was yesterday, at what I call 'the animal crossing', which is the first curve out from the lake house where I most often see the Real World passing through.  He was halfway out into the road-- a long line of copper argyle. Snakes are valuable predators in the animal kingdom, keeping down the exploding populations of rodents and smaller mammals that ensures balance in the natural world. Regardless of their virtues most people do not like them.

Long ago snakes were sacred to people all over the world. I've often wondered if our fear of them comes from some deep recognition in us their primary symbolism is transformative power. To be bitten by a snake and survived its poison was seen as a call to the life of the sacred. Snakes represented the fundamental life force that adheres to the truth that existence requires change and growth. Like them, we must also shed our skins, our old ways of being over and over again when our lives begin to feel closed and constricted. Change is scary. How can we know what will happen to us? That flash of fear when we let ourselves wander down the road of different possibilities is real. But if we hold ourselves back, we drain away our own life force.  It stays curled within us, growing more and more constricted by skins we could have shed.  Maybe next time you have a snake moment you might think of this elegant fellow and remember he was risking crossing the road because what he needed was on the other side.

If you have time, and are over fifty, read on. Here is a wonderful poem by Stanley Kunitz about shedding layers.  Stanley lived to be 101.

I have walked through many lives,                              In a rising wind       
some of them my own,                                               the manic dust of my friends,
and I am not who I was,                                             those who fell along the way,
thought some principle of being                                   bitterly stings my face.
abides, from which I struggle                                      Yet I turn, I turn,
not to stray.                                                                exulting somewhat,
When I look behind,                                                   with my will intact to go
as I am compelled to look                                           wherever I need to go,
before I can gather strength                                         and every stone on the road
to proceed on my journey,                                           precious to me.
I see the milestones dwindling                                      In my darkest night,
toward the horizon                                                       when the moon was covered
and the slow fires trialing                                              and I roamed through wreckage,
from the abandoned camp-sites,                                   a nimbus-clouded voice
over which scavenger angels                                         directed me:
wheel on heavy wings.                                                  "Live in the layers,
Oh, I have made myself a tribe                                      no on the litter."
out of my true affections,                                               Though I lack the art
and my tribe is scattered!                                               to decipher it,
How shall the heart be reconciled                                   no doubt the next chapter
to its feast of losses?                                                      in my book of transformations
                                                                                     is already written.
                                                                                     I am not done with my changes.


                                                 "The Layers",  Stanley Kunitz, from The Wild Braid