Olivia Strittmatter - Interactions with Nature

Blog Post 1 - Experience in a Natural Setting


So this blog post is about an experience I had late this summer, technically not during the semester but very close to the start so I’m going to count it.

This summer a few of my friends and I were hiking at Great Falls National Park up in NOVA. On one of the trails we were hiking on we climbed up a rock to get a better view of the river, and all was fine. Then one of my friends noticed a snake hiding in one of the crevices of the rock only a few inches from where she was leaning. I recognized this snake as a northern copperhead, one of the three venomous snake species in Virginia. I’ll add a picture of it below if I’m able to. Anyway, we all backed away a little bit so as to not disturb it (or get bitten), but we continued to look at it for a while. It was really interesting because even though we were so close to it, it didn’t show any signs of aggression or agitation. 

I thought that this related to what we were learning about in class because the snake didn’t see us as a threat and it was communicating that to us. Like what we were talking about in class, nature always is communicating with us, whether it’s sick or dying, afraid, calm, etc. We just have to be paying attention to what’s being communicated, and if we “listen” we’re able to live with the wildlife without causing harm to anything. The copperhead was calm with us because we were not being perceived as a threat to it at that moment. It’s especially important to pay attention to what’s being communicated when you are intruding on the habitat or others. 




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