On Fridays, while Alden is at school, both boys spend the day at home, which makes it a good day for adventuring. Last week, Robbi painted pictures of dragons and Kato and August and I drove out to Eastern Neck Island, a beautiful little nature preserve with a number of kid-friendly trails.

One of which starts with a long wooden boardwalk.

At the end of the boardwalk is a cluster of trees. And in the cluster of trees are big black snakes.

I’ve been taking the kids out to Eastern Neck for years, since Alden was just a tiny thing, and this was my first encounter with the big black snakes. Here’s how it went down. I was carrying August and Kato was walking a bit ahead of me on the path when we heard a heavy THUMP on the ground about three feet away from us. I turned to look and saw the snake above, which had just fallen out of a tree.

The boys were stunned but calm. I let out an appropriate sound of surprise, scooped Kato up with my free arm, and got away from the snake. But after a few minutes of careful observation, it was clear that he wasn’t interested in attacking us directly, so I crept back to take the picture above. I’m guessing he was a bit winded from his fall.

I just can’t help what might have gone down had we  been standing a few paces closer to the tree.

Disaster avoided, we hiked on. To the viewing platform. Supposedly for viewing birds, I’d guess, though I’ve never been to Eastern Neck when critical masses of viewable birds were present.

Nevertheless, we enjoyed the view of the wetlands, and the bay beyond.

Not far from the elevated platform is a little hut with slits cut in the walls for even more stealthy (if slightly less elevated) viewing.

We hung out on the platform for a while, convinced that the big black snake couldn’t climb up all those steps.

But eventually it was time to come back down.

When we passed by the site of “leaping big black snake incident,” the offender was no longer in sight. Most likely he was climbing another tree, I figure (though how a snake climbs a tree is a puzzle I do not care to contemplate).

As we headed back along the boardwalk, we left memories of his long black body far behind us.

It was Friday, the sun was out, and we still had hours and hours to play.

And so we did.