My Week of Living Dangerously

I made the mistake of mocking danger.

But geez, I couldn’t help it. I mean, the signs were everywhere. Literally signs. From the time I arrived in San Francisco to the time I flew out of Las Vegas a week or so later, I saw signs, placards and brochures everywhere warning me of the potential life-threatening conditions I faced from simply stepping foot on a section of planet that must be fraught with so many natural risks that one can barely walk 100 yards without being issued a dire warning.

I grew up in Southern California, so it’s possible that I was always surrounded by these threats to public health and safety. But way back then, my sweet mother used to cushion the back of the station wagon with blankets and pillows so my siblings and I could nap while my father drove us to and from our camping vacations in the High Sierras. (What’s a seatbelt?)

Nevertheless, here are the perils I faced during what I began to laughingly refer to as My Week of Living Dangerously: 

It was a mistake to laugh, because as we travelled from Southern California to Las Vegas on Interstate 15 on Friday, July 17^th, we drove through fire.

A real wildfire had jumped the freeway and set fire to over 20 vehicles that sent up clouds of thick, black smoke. Helicopters and airplanes zoomed over our heads dropping water and orange, powdery flame retardant on both sides of the road as we inched our way north, squeaking through minutes before fire and law enforcement officials finally decided to shut the entire freeway down in both directions. It was an unexpectedly harrowing and exciting drive to Las Vegas.

But that wasn’t the scariest thing that happened. A day earlier, my husband and I were hiking in Chantry Flats when I saw THIS on the trail a few feet ahead of me:

It doesn’t matter that my Uncle Pat, who likes and knows snakes, later informed me it was a non-venomous gopher snake. Even if that gopher snake was harmless, I still nearly jumped a foot and cringed as weebly-jeebly shivers shot up and down my spine when I saw its lengthy body stretched across the trail.

“Make it go away!” I screeched to my husband, who looked so calm and unaffected, I was afraid he might try to pick it up and give it a good eyeball-to-eyeball stare.

He didn’t, thank goodness, because I was nearly having a conniption, worried that the snake was going to suddenly coil and strike, as if it couldn’t wait to get its sharp fangs into my leg.

It didn’t, and after a minute or two, it lazily slithered up the hill, until its last bit of tail disappeared into the brush and I gathered the courage to continue hiking.

Of all the real and potential dangers I faced that week, it was only the snake that scared the living crap out of me.

I WISH THEY HAD WARNED ME.

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