Mystery Question of the Day: Why Do Lesbians Love Hiking?

Yesterday, Pontifica and I set out to explore Palm Springs Carl Lykken trail, one of the city's only hiking trails that allows dogs. We brought ol' Delilah, the 12-year-old dalmatian who gives a licking and keeps on ticking. The steep trail was skirted by messy, yellow-flowered weeds, unstable-looking sandstone boulders, and critter holes that swiss-cheesed the terrain. It was the kind of place that made me think of rattlesnakes.* Every 200 yards or so a pustule-like opening produced a stream of angry black ants. This trail was loads of fun! Five minutes into it, I told Pontifica I was scared and asked if we could go home, but she said no. Then I found this very cool little spider. It looked just like a daddy-long-legs (Tylenol-shaped little body, skinny long legs) except way more colorful: The legs were black-and-orange striped. Its belly was bright-orange. And there was a little red dot on its back. "Look how cute this is," I said, moved to tenderness by this sweet, small creature.
Pontifica was also charmed. "Oh, wow, how adorable!"
A bit farther up the trail, we looked down at our feet. Hundreds of these same little spiders were coursing down the trail right for us.
"Aaaaaaaagh!" we screamed in unison.
Soon Pontifica had the pleasure of having one dart right up her leg.

"Funny," she said later. "How when you find just one, it's so wonderful and cool, but when there's thousands it suddenly becomes menacing and horrible."

We pressed on. Pontifica had to keep reminding me that we agreed to go for a full half-hour before turning back. In the final minutes she counted down..."3 minutes left," "2 minutes left," and so on till the final 30 seconds. We stopped at a large boulder shaped like a stepped-on tennis ball and gazed out over the valley. "Great," I said. "That was so great. Let's run back."

And so, we ran. Pontifica in the front (I admit I preferred this out of a fear of rattlesnakes), Delilah in the middle with her happy scissoring gait, and me in back--zig-zagging to avoid the copious tiger daddy-long-legs, and high-stepping through the black ants.

Suddenly, Pontifica jolted to a stop and shouted, "Snake!"
Instantly, I crouched down--as if it weren't a snake, but a dangerous bird on the attack. "Where?"
"Right there, I don't think it's a rattlesnake though. Nope. Looks like a common garter snake. Poor thing, it's probably more scared of us than we are of it."
Given this information, I strode to the front, clapped my hands in an awkward way I'd not used since toddlerdom, and shooed the poor thing off the trail (that is, after I screeched with fear and inspected it carefully from a distance, asking Pontifica repeatedly, "Are you sure there's no rattle?")

On our return, we felt we'd had a true heroes' journey. A homeless man gave us a hearty thumbs-up as we retrieved the plastic bag of Delilah's poop from where we'd tucked it under a toppled roadside sign--a YIELD sign, by the way...Jeez, does God plant metaphors, or what?

*And when I think of rattlesnakes, I can't help but romanticize the idea of Pontifica trying to carry me on her back down the steep trail, a deep double-puncture wound just above my ankle.

Comments

[Mick]

Oh, God! My first thought? "How the hell am I going to carry the dog back if she gets bit?!"

I mean, Ava's a big girl.