Chiricahua Apache Birthday Bash

Chiricahua’s Sculpted Solitude. Said an FB friend: ‘Looks like a group of Elders watching over you’. Good one.

Evergreens hunched low against the wind. The haunting laugh of a canyon wren. A canopy of bright blue sky arched over a burning red desert. This is Chiricahua National Monument, a unit of the National Park System located in the Chiricahua Mountains east of Tucson in southeastern Arizona, USA. In 1976, the United States Congress designated the 9,440 acres as “Class I Pristine Wilderness”. The Wilderness Act of 1964 defined the wilds as “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, and where man himself is only a visitor who does not remain.”  According to the law, “Designated Wilderness” is protected from human developments which alter the land, such as roads, buildings, utility lines and mines. Here, a place a previous AZ article declared is the state’s most energized, engaging landscape, thousands of naturally sculpted rocks line canyon walls, as expansion and contraction due to temperature changes, the wedging of ice and plant root growth contribute to this break out of the earth’s complexion. The weathering of softer layers have left harder layers to stand out in relief, often taking dramatic, unusual forms. Erosion will continue as long as there are rains, ice, wind, and temperature fluctuations. Today’s rock faces are exposed and weathered away, others will be exposed to take their place, and on and on.

In the 17th century, as the Spanish frontier expanded northward, missionaries along the San Pedro River heard of the fierce enemy peoples living in these mountains to the East, moving into the homeland of the Chiricahua Apaches. The priests made no attempt to extend their missions in this direction, and by mid-century, the Spanish abandoned missions bordering the river. Good thing, for at the same time the Gasden purchase of 1853 settled our international border with Mexico and opened up a new frontier, the people were exposed to this fierce new band of semi-nomadic hunters. Separated from other Apache bands around 1690 and ruling the wilds of Southeast Arizona, the Chiricahua Apache were in constant movement, subsisting chiefly on the products of the chase and roots and berries. The ability of the Apache as foot warriors was exceeded by few native peoples. Masters of the art of concealment, they could appear unexpected at any time. So when my friend Chris Ferris and I celebrated our shared birthdays of April 8th stomping around the Sonoran Desert, checking out Arizona’s unique history and terrain, I had the thought that It’s always good to run with - rather than away from - the Apaches for a bit.

Going from the Phoenix area up to Sedona and Flagstaff, back down to Jerome and ‘Preskitt’, then down to the Southeast area of Bisbee and Douglas, there were those many moments of muted desert grace. Just after the sun disappears over the horizon, Saguaro cacti shadows stretch long and thin over apricot colored sands, during the fleeting interregnum between the blast-furnace heat of the day - still ramping up in April - and the cool, star-draped immensity of the nights. Silent stillness descends over the land of the lesser-known but equally grand canyons and into oneself, the bedrock bathed in a special kind of light, the uplifting winds sounding like blown notes on a native flute. It was good to celebrate growing a little older amongst the hoodoos and balancing rocks in a wilderness place that, in the Monuments words, “offers a superior kind of pleasure, where nature remains untarnished and undepleted.” People, too.

How To Catch A Cobra - Part 2 (The Tale)

That’s our snake catching crew, in the southern India countryside outside the town of Chennai, after having successfully bagged our first wild Cobra. Or at least my first wild cobra. J. Raja, his sidekick as well as the rest of the Irulas Tribe of Tamil Nadu have long been hunter-gatherers on the hot, dry plain-forests, practicing the art of snake catching for generations. Highly venomous snakes are caught with the help of a simple stick, and managed as I witnessed with bare hands and a rough metal scythe. Catching thousands of snakes for the former snake-skin industry, India’s Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972 protected snakes and banned the former practice country-wide, inspiring the formation of groups like the Irula Snake Catcher’s Cooperative. Card carrying members like J. Raja switched to snake catching for biomedical research and producing medicinal products, the removal of venom producing life-saving anti-venom, with captured snakes released back into the wild after four extractions. The Irulas are also known to eat snakes and are very useful in village rat extermination.  

More on the contribution of snake men to the greater good when we get back to the snake farm, Herpetology Headquarters, officially known as the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust Centre for Herpetology. But how we side-wound our way there and even found these guys in the first place is a whole other story. As Sarjan, my trusted guide on the Cobra quest well informed me: “In India and in our Hindu mythologies you’ll find there is always the story behind the story.” And there was, a winding tale to that ecstatic, exotic morning we literally bagged with a pillow case a wild Spectacled Cobra, or Indian Cobra (Raja Raja), our “lucky” find coming only after my second eight-thousand-five-hundred-four-mile jaunt to the Indian sub- continent. Per the previous post, I kidded my friend Rajiv of Mystical Journeys that I couldn’t in good conscious return to India for a second time and fail to cross paths with the cobra, given my love for snakes coupled with the animal’s role in human history and ritual, its impressive, threatening, hooded stance and renowned ability to kill a human with a single bite. In India, 250,000 snake bites are recorded annually, on the order of 100,000 people dying each year.

 These were some of the facts learned at the very start of the snake tour, beginning at the Chennai Snake Park — officially the Chennai Snake Park Trust. Along with other indigenous reptiles, the park displays a collection of captive snakes with an unblinking eye toward fostering interest, education and empathy toward the singular species. Awareness is spread among the public on India’s snake conservation and anti-snake bite efforts, as well as the history of real Snake Catcher cooperatives. I enjoyed learning of facts like the establishment of the Big Four —  the four venomous snakes responsible for causing the greatest number of medically significant human snake bite cases in India — our later catch of the Spectacled Cobra being one, along with the Common Krait, Saw-scaled and Russell’s Viper. As an interesting aside, that species was named for Patrick Russell, an 18th century Scottish herpetologist who first described many of India’s snakes, the name of the genus (Daboia Russelii) from the Urdu word meaning “that lies hid” or “the lurker” a spooky but apt title. I even had my first brush with a real cobra at the park as well as a genuine Tamal snake man, who lead a show for visiting Indian school children, displaying harmless as well as poisonous specimens and canvasing public support for snake protection amongst the young.

Still the nagging thought persisted that I didn’t travel all the way back to India a second time to see a Cobra at a zoo. Doubts raised their hooded heads, as Sarjan fielded several calls from different potential snake hunters, revealing our plans to be… murky at best.  One was away, one snake catcher was feuding with another (funny), everyone making it very clear that January was not high Cobra season. Its understandably hard to pin both snake and snake catcher down this time of year, as you’d be hard-pressed to find a Diamondback Rattler in Arizona during the chilly winter months, with the same natural law here. Sarjan shared his semi-reliable back-up plan, that of a contact in Varanasi who owned a “Big cobra man”. But, learning as I went along, my original hope to see and hold a basket cobra — half the infamous roadside show, performed also by a flute-like musical instrument player who seemingly charms the snake to music – had significantly shifted. Snakes actually lack external ears, though they do have internal ears, the response being to movement and not noise. But those city snakes are defanged and turned out to be a bit depressingly domesticated. Sure, they were cool to touch and emulating Shiva with one round the neck and over a shoulder was fun, but catching the wild cobra became The Mission. And if anyone was going to prove a reliable guide it was mystical journey man Mr. Kumar (Rajiv Rajiv). Maybe a semi-dark, somewhat obscure plan was best when hunting the notoriously clandestine shape.

With that in mind, we set out in the pre-dawn hours to meet the snake catchers, embarking together from the quiet, gated Herpetology Centre into the countryside. Our crew sauntered along what looked like rows of Eucalyptus trees, the hunters poking at the brush underneath. We traversed farmland and rice fields, crossed waterways, dug into huge, hip-high dirt termite mounds, overturned downed trees and kicked at piles of cut, dying shrubbery. The walk was pleasant as the sky brightened, hopes kept in check, knowing well how some big expectation would kill the experience.  We tried some conversation, J. Raja as a non-Hindi speaker billing himself as semi-fluent in English, which wasn’t exactly the case. Inquiring of his history — how long had he been snake wrangling, was he ever bit, what then? — were all answered in his native tongue interspersed with bits of English. “Yada yada yada four hours, four hours yada yada” he would say emphatically, pointing to a bite scar on his hand, with me basically deducing (with some help from Sarjan) that one had four hours to live if bit. Questions like “Did you take anti-venom? Were you hospitalized?” were met with “Yada yada yada one month’s rest yada yada.” Despite the language barriers and off-season logistics, the search was ON, the snake-catchers being dogged in their pursuit of digging, scratching at and overturning the landscape. While enjoying the hunt, after miles walking and several hours, it appeared we were coming up empty-handed, and so the convoy turned and began making its way back to the home Centre. 

I was off on my own when it occurred. The lead snake man had been poking at a bush and excitedly called to his buddy. “Paul, Paul, Paul,” shouted Sargen, “come come!” And then there it was, the three-foot beast I’d traveled half-way around the world to behold: a yellow-tan female Spectacled Cobra, the Spectacled name derived from exhibiting a rear hood mark with two circular patterns connected by a curved line, evoking the image of spectacles. The impressive hood expanded and it hissed and struck aggressively. Beautiful. There’s a video that goes with the catch, my favorite segment being about :23 seconds in when Sargan, in a mellifluous Indian accent, shouts, “We finally find the big cobra man!” 

Thinking back on it all now, it was one incredible moment of ecstasy. Afterwards I felt wiped out, like I’d just made love - content, calm and basking in the afterglow of an farfetched sensorial experience. We pillow-cased the catch, took some trophy pics and made a triumphant return to the snake farm. At least triumphant for me, perhaps all in a day’s work for my comrades. There the snake would be turned over to Morrey along with a half-dozen another real, hard-core snake men, all who wielded the big Four around with such ease, they had me voluntarily abdicated my former status. Over breakfast, I considered the bad rap snakes have had through the ages, and the connection to and reverence for the natural world that we’ve somehow lost. But we can regain that sense of awe. And in that way, maybe snakes are a good place to start over, resetting our fears and misperceptions and in a way rediscovering Eden. With that, we’re back, on the lookout for Michigan’s only poisonous snake the Massasauga our own local “lurker” with some final notes from the road along with specifics on our upcoming Spring and Summer schedule at the start of April. 

How To Catch a Cobra - Part 1 (The Head)

On left - the Indian or Spectacled Cobra (Naja Naja). On right - Human (Homo Sapien) subtribe Hominina

Once upon a time I fancied myself a snake man. Have you ever met a snake man? A dude slightly obsessed with the scaly, legless, sometimes venomous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes? Snakes on the brain, like male Medusas. They’re out there. And I know a few good ones, this being the tale in part of why I no longer consider myself an honored member of their ranks. But first let’s go back to the beginning, the place where the snake, right from the get go, caught a notorious rep. In my own life, as far back as I can remember, the gold-red ribbon of a Garter Snake or the flash of a Blue Racer’s sapphire sheen always warmed my blood. The first decent story I ever wrote was all about time spent on the hardpan of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, licensed by the state to remove rattlesnakes from people’s yards. Like a self-dubbed Snake Sheriff, I kept the peace between the local snake population and local female people population. The sub-title of that story Snakecharmer was originally How My Love for Rattlesnakes Cured Me of My Fear of Women - a black and white tail of somewhat creative non-fiction, as I really did live with a Diamondback Rattlesnake that hibernated in my fireplace one Southwest Winter.

That old story hints at one of the reasons snakes first made my tail rattle: because they gave me the power to make girls shriek. Later I loved them because they’re nature’s pirates, outcasts from the start. Today I identify with snakes as symbols of transformation, recognizing the animal’s extraordinary ability to shed its skin, as the moon sheds its shadow, points the way to the power of life and the now. Emerging an entirely new creature, throwing off the past and living on,  the snake regenerates itself on average two to four times a year, varying with age and species, with young snakes actively growing shedding their skin every two weeks. The human being, however, through spiritual purification practice, can renew its own identity in every moment. Knowing the deepest teachings are unspoken, let’s sum it by saying that having a complete experience watching a high-altitude Black-tailed Rattlesnake in the mountains of northern Arizona once helped me better understood my meditation teacher Shinzen Young’s claim for the miracle of mindfulness: “In the beginning every retreat changes you. Then every sit changes you. Until eventually when every moment changes you.”

Regardless of why I personally love and identify with them, the snake, with its many distinctive and in some ways contrary attributes, has been worshipped, feared, puzzled over, hated, loved, exploited, exterminated, studied and even petted. Snakes have been used in magic, witchcraft, religion, medicine, war, torture, sport, science, commerce and entertainment. On the one hand, snakes are a symbol of procreation, health, longevity, immortality, and wisdom; on the other, they represent death, disease, sin, lechery, duplicity, and temptation. Snakes are living, breathing paradoxes. Say what you will about them, Mankind has seldom ignored the great snake. In her poem on snakes, to quote Margaret Atwood: “Those who can explain them can explain anything.” 

As a Snake man then (or former one) you can understand my disappointment in traveling for the first time to India - King Cobra Country - and returning without having seen a single Shape (Snake in Hindi). That first tour of the Hindu world was a TRIP in the truest sense, an odyssey organized by Vedic Astrologer James Kelleher - incredibly learned in the ancient art of mapping a soul’s journey by the light of the stars. The trip was lead by Rajiv Tomar of Mystical Journeys, from The Taj Mahal to the Holy, Crazy city of Varanassi and down to temples all over the country’s southern tip. Mystical Journeys, with their emphasis on spiritual, cultural and adventure travel in the country, in their own words, “Leads the traveler to a new horizon where astrology, culture and adventure meet.” Their mind-blowing network of educationalists, spiritualists, Saints & holy people, guides and other teachers comes down to Rajiv’s connectedness. the man, along with his son Caran and second-in-command Sarjan Kumar and other trusted foot soldiers. On that first trip, I watched Rajiv confront a police officer on the streets of Chennai - some altercation that was effecting our group’s safe passage - that earned him the nickname The Bengal Tiger. As to impressions of the man, I’ll borrow George Bernard Shaw’s take on Gandhi - you might as well ask for someone’s impression of the Himalayas.

It was in conversation with Rajiv on the bus after a particularly intensely joyful experience at Rameswaram’s Arulmigu Ramanathaswamy Temple that a Cobra Tour was first concocted. “That was !ncredible !ndeed,” I beamed. “And I can’t wait to see the cobra.” His face fell - he explained we had passed the places to see the traditional basket-cobras dance to the flute. I could hardly express disappointment, the trip was so extraordinary, and so responded “I just love seeing wildlife and especially shapes.”. And of course Rajiv’s twinkle was back minutes later, as he offered, “Then you’ll just have to come back to India!” And although it was a comical, creative idea between two new friends then, a year later, this February, I was back, to attend Kumbh Mela, the mass Hindu pilgrimage of faith in which saints and sadhus all gather in millions to bathe in the Holy Ganges River along with a Southern India Cobra Hunt on the itinerary. Slither back soon for How To Catch A Cobra (Part 2) - The Tale - to come.