Strolling along the usual path on a blue afternoon, air sweet with the promise of summer.
Your thoughts are up there with Cazaly and the birds when all of a sudden, the earth becomes electric and demands you pay attention right now, right here.
Desmond the dancing Jack spotted the tiger snake before I did.
His senses are as keen as the dart of a young tiger’s tongue, so when he jumped and flicked his head around, I knew he’d seen or heard or smelled something unusual.
Luckily, he was on a lead, so I was able to tug him backwards before he gave chase.
But he didn’t pull on his lead.
He stood still and tensed his body.
Tail up, ears pricked, eyes fixed and blazing.
Something in him knew this strange legless thing demanded respect.
It must be allowed to go quietly on its way.
All I managed to catch was a green-black sliver of something like a ribbed power cord disappearing into the grass off the track.
I suddenly became aware of my flimsy shoes.
We turned and backed away to find a new, and hopefully less threatening track.
It seemed the most sensible thing to do.
Of course, this is snake season.
They’re just waking up and doing what they do.
Nevertheless, even after all these years of snake spotting, I still get a thrilling shiver up the spine when I see one in the bush.
The experience is a 1000-volt slap to remind me I’m alive and this thing unfolding in front of me is actually not an Instagram reel.
In this shopping life of zero interest, magazine jeans and vanilla kitchens, we become lazy.
It’s not often all our buried senses are fully engaged, and the awareness of our fragile mortality occupies front and centre of the mind.
This happens when you’re about to step on a snake.
When I first arrived in Australia, such was the power of National Geographic and late-night sensational wildlife docos, I was convinced I would drop dead at the sight of a tiger snake.
Even the name conjured up a leaping reptile that could tear your throat out with a single bite.
Thirty-three summers later, I am not so much terrified as filled with reverence when I see a snake.
They embody all the beauty and terror that nature has to offer.
Like the Medusa, they are unapproachable, unknowable, mysterious, cursed and deadly with beautiful god-like skin, and they move with god-like power and grace.
In 1923, the writer DH Lawrence published a poem called Snake about finding a big poisonous one drinking from a water trough on a hot day at his home in Sicily.
He watches the snake before throwing a log at it as it disappears into a hole in the wall.
He then feels petty and small for his craven act in trying to hurt the creature he was so afraid of but which he secretly admired.
It’s a simple and beautifully written anecdote.
To me it also conveys unspoken feelings of how fear, insecurity and humanity’s destructive drive to dominate nature are all connected.
Lawrence wrote his poem long before arguments over environmental science and climate change appeared.
But its themes of man vs nature are still being played out.
When the earth rises up and threatens to bite you, it’s time to turn back and walk a different path.
Oh, and maybe get some bigger boots.
John Lewis is a former journalist at The News
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