The Unexpected Friend

**Dedicated to my known friends- love you all!! And to my unexpected friends, my yet to be known friends- can’t wait to meet you!  Anne

I have a dear friend who loves nature. Love isn’t quite the right word, but it does the trick while I wait for the right word to reveal itself. Her relationship with nature is one of mutuality in the respect, appreciation, giving life and flowing through the cycles of the seasons they offer to one another. She and I share the seeking of symbolism and the introspection that come when considering the quiet gentleness and unique powerfulness of nature to stop us in our tracks. Yet we differ in how we come upon those moments. She sees the bumble bee landing on a flower for lunch and admires the strength and nourishment of the flower as it cares for the bee, how the bee passes that on as it continues its journey, the pause it offers to her in her busy life. This is captured in her photography and artwork, forever a memory of a single moment of the pureness and authenticity and gifts of nature.

If you follow my blogs, you may be thinking I am about to write about my pup, our walks, and all I learn from her explorations and unending curiosity. That’s how I typically find my moments with nature and the abundance of ideas and inspirations nature offers. But not today. That would be too expected. And today’s blog is about the unexpected.

My new and most unexpected friend.

I met this friend yesterday. While standing at my kitchen counter working on my laptop answering emails, something caught my attention in the backyard. I looked through the window and noticed what looked like a strap on the grill cover had broken and was fluttering in the breeze. Given that cover had not been taken off in several months, I stepped outside to check on this.

And met my new friend… a black snake.

What I thought was a broken strap fluttering in the breeze was his head popping up over the side of the grill to take a look around the yard, much like a periscope in a submarine. I DO NOT like snakes. I DO NOTx1000 like snakes. In fact, that awful noise you heard yesterday was probably my scream when I realized I was almost eyeball to eyeball with a snake.

I ran into the house, grabbed my phone, took his pic as he started to slither across the top of the grill and stretch his 3-4 foot long self out in the summer sun. I looked down to text the pic to my neighbors, begged for someone to rescue me from this incredibly huge beast (in my mind!), and looked up to find the snake had disappeared. While running through my house to cut around to the side yard to look for the snake, I found my wonderful neighbor already running into my backyard, ready for action. Rescued! Such gratitude to have people so willing to be there for me.

My neighbor confirmed this was a black snake and that they are good to have in a yard. They have their role in the food chain of eating mice, other snakes, etc. He set about shooing the snake from my yard and into the common area so my little pup would be safe from the snake, the snake would be safe from my pup, and his wife and I would be able to sleep that night knowing the snake was elsewhere.

I knew the snake was good to have in nature, but we weren’t friends. While I could welcome his helpful presence into my yard, I certainly didn’t choose to have him there. I viewed him as a threat, something to fear, an unwelcome presence. I was against him being in my life.

All of those thoughts changed in an instant. Moving at full speed on his way out of my yard, the black snake ran into a copperhead. Literally ran -or slithered- into a copperhead curled up under the bush next to the grill. The copperhead lunged and struck at the black snake, revealing himself to us, and the black snake disappeared. The black snake was never a danger to me or the people and pup I love; the copperhead was the danger. The copperhead was a danger lurking in the shadows that we weren’t aware of until the black snake crashed into him and drew him out.

This moment has been weighing on me and that is why I’m writing and sharing it. Nature offered this moment of reflection and growth to me, and my values system requires me to be a good steward with this opportunity.

At first glance I saw the black snake as my enemy. I rallied for help in getting rid of this snake, ignoring his worth in nature and in caring for my home and pup by eating mice, other vermin, etc. I now see how he possibly saved my dog’s life, or mine, or my friends and neighbors by revealing the true danger that needed to be seen and removed– possibly losing his life in the process if he was poisoned when the copperhead lunged and struck him.

The black snake was my friend, and I missed getting to know him. I missed appreciating him and truly considering what he added to my life in how he offered himself as a pest eater and as a sacrifice to draw out the true danger. My singular narrow negative point of view that snakes are an enemy got in the way of me being able to see his importance in the circle of life and consequently offering respect and acceptance to him.

The black snake was my unexpected friend. And a part of me is grieving him. And a part of me is recognizing the growth I need to make in looking for the good in what I currently see as bad.

Where does this opportunity exist in your life?  Your relationship with others in the person you avoid or talk poorly about because their presence in your life feels emotionally threatening? In your relationship with yourself in the places within you that you don’t like and try to ignore or stuff into your pinkie toe and pretend that it doesn’t exist? In your relationship with your feelings, or perhaps the feelings of others, in those feelings that challenge you to acknowledge their existence and thus their impact? In your opinions and perspectives that are unwavering in their truth and as a result unyielding to the truth of other perspectives, other ways of being, and willingness to reconsider yourself? Is my black snake and his sacrifice a gift to you as well through this blog? Are you maybe softening a bit around the edges, perhaps opening a bit of yourself to new points of view, being a bit more open to the gifts in life?

Is there someone you currently consider your enemy that may actually be your unexpected friend when you challenge yourself to see their worth rather than staying focused on your own fear???

I would never have thought a snake would be my friend.

 Shame on me.

Lesson learned.

As always,

Embrace your best self!  Anne