i got bitten by a snake on saturday night. i've attached a rinky-dink cellphone picture of my feet from ~70 hours after the bite. Can you tell which foot it was? Boring details follow.

i was camping in the Shenandoah wilderness with a group of friends and acquaintances. i had hung the rope for the bear bag before the sun went down, but later on, after packing up from dinner, our bear bag started to look like it might be too heavy for the branch i had slung the rope over. i went off in the darkness (my flashlight batteries were shitty rechargables which kept dying on me) to see if i could put the rope in a better crotch of the tree. On my way up the side of the hill to the rope, i felt a sudden pain in my foot, and cried out. The folks back in camp immediately shouted to me and asked if i was OK, and i said "yeah, i just stubbed my toe on a sharp stick, i think." But it fucking hurt. i went up to the rope, and found that i couldn't really do anything about it succesfully without resetting it entirely. i didn't want to pull it down and try to rethrow it in the dark. and did i mention that my foot was hurting?

Two of the other campers (R. and A.) followed me up to the rope, carrying the now-full bear bag. They had a good light. They stopped a couple feet away from where i had cried out and said, "ooh look! a snake!" That's when i started feeling worried. We struggled together to delicately hang the bear bag without breaking the branch it was slung over. I kept screwing up the knots on the rope.

Then we all went back to the camp, and sat down and looked at my foot with the good lamp. You could see the puncture wound, and you could see the toe that was hit was starting to swell up. One of the folks who had seen the snake (R.) had fortunately been a nature instructor, covering topics including snakes, and she was certain that the snake was non-venomous. Her best guess was that it was a milk snake, (though later, after access to reference material on the 'net she decided it was probably most likely a corn snake). Whatever it was, it was most likely a young snake, because it was apparently only about a foot long.

However, being sure that it was non-venomous wasn't terribly satisfying to me because my foot continued to swell, moving up from the toe towards the ankle. We decided to try to make it out to the road where the cars were parked. Because we were short on good flashlights, R. and i were the only two to go, and everyone else stayed in camp. (R. apparently also is trained in wilderness search and rescue... man was i lucky. i'd never met her before this trip). Actually, as we were leaving, the idea was that if the swelling started to go down, we would turn around and come back. i had high hopes for that scenario.

The tough part about this night trip was that we had hiked in ~4 miles earlier that day, basically all downhill, on terrain that varied from mild inclines of dirt to scrambling piles of loose rocks. We were on an ~8 mile loop, so no matter which way we went, there was a lot of uphill to be done. There was actually another parking lot that looked much closer to where we were by trail, but neither of our vehicles was parked there, and it looked like that lot was at the end of an unimproved road -- there would be no traffic there that night. So it seemed like the other segment of the original loop would be easier -- part of it was on an old graded road; and we decided to take that route. The swelling did not reduce, however, and a few hours after leaving camp, with remarkably few wrong turns for a night hike on unfamiliar trails, we finally made it back to the car. The last little stretch of the walk was actually along the main road through the park ("skyline drive"), and the moon had come out enough that we didn't need the lamps any more. You could see our shadows quite sharply as we walked, and we saw a deer (or two?) wandering along the road. it was a wonderful night-hike, except for the pain in my foot. R. was very cool, and kept an extremely level approach to the situation. i was worried, but managed to not panic or freak out, thanks to her being so calm.

Once in the car, we found a nearby town that had an all-night hospital, where R. got 'net access to ID the snake, and i had my blood drawn just to be sure that the typical markers of venomous snakebites weren't present (they weren't). They also gave me a tetanus shot because i couldn't remember when my last one was. They iced my foot, and then later they gave me instructions that said "DO NOT ICE your foot!" or something like that. and they gave me antibiotics to try to stave off whatever kind of infections might come from whatever the snake had bitten before me. They were very friendly and reasonable.

We left the hospital around 4am. R. was extremely good-humoured about the whole thing. We decided to drive back to the other parking lot (at the end of the unimproved road), which turned out to be probably 40 miles away by road from the earlier parking spot. We got there around 5am, at which point i was near to falling asleep from fatigue, though fortunately, R. was behind the wheel, and she was alert. It took relatively little time (not counting the wrong turns) to hike back in to the campsite from that point, and we got there right as the sun was coming up. We told the rest of the party we were back, and then crashed out for several hours.

Woke up, ate breakfast, and then A. and i went out the "easy" way to the car in the nearby lot, while R. and the rest of the party took the same route we had taken the night before. A. and i drove the car back around to the original spot so we could meet up with them back at the original trailhead. We got there several hours before they did, and A. was awesome about helping me keep my foot elevated and helping me stay comfortable. It was really nice to just lounge in the shade of a tree with her and talk. We had a some humorous interactions with other folks who were heading into the trailhead, too. When the rest of the group showed up a couple hours later, they reported seeing a 4-foot rattlesnake on the trail on the way out. on the one hand, i'm sorry i missed seeing a big snake like that. OTOH, uh, yikes.

I ended up missing a day of work trying to get back from DC to NYC. But A. continued to take care of my sorry ass despite her having to deal with a ton of her own troubles, and she even took some time off from her work on monday morning to make sure that i got to the train station OK. I owe both her and R. more thanks than i can imagine how to repay. The train was much better than the chinatown busses i usually take on this trip, but of course it was > 5x as expensive. damn gov't subsidization of roads. but that's another post...

So anyway, i now have:

• an antibiotics prescription
• a swollen foot
• a cane
• some new friends
• a ridiculous story