This is so not fair. It’s my birthday. Well, almost my birthday. I am finally going to be a teenager. Finally. But here I am, laying in my sleeping bag on a blue tarp in a campground in the Australian rainforest. We’re here because Soren wants to see birds and what Soren wants is what he gets. I tried to convince my parents to go to a cool resort with it’s own water park so we could hang out by the pool and eat regular food at the buffet but they insisted that this would be fun. I was not going to sleep in the tent with my super annoying brother. He was probably in there counting backwards or reciting bird lists. I was ready to fume all night but jet lag caught up and I crashed.
In my dream, rainbows were trying to swallow me whole. My eyes flew open and I knew I was not alone. I slowly reached for my flashlight. I could feel a presence at my head as I turned and shined my light into the stare of a huge snake within an inch of my face. Of course I did what anyone would do, I stood up (even though they tell you not to move in the guidebooks). “A snake,” I thought I said calmly and quietly. But everyone woke up so I knew I wasn’t as serene as I’d hoped.
“What’s going on Oliver? “I heard my dad say as he was unzipping the tent. My dad’s curly mud brown hair stood up around his head like he’d had an electric shock.
With my sleeping bag pulled up under my chin, I was not about to take one of my hands out and actually point to the snake. Somehow, even though he was barefoot, my dad had a big stick in his hand. Right behind him stood my mother with her arms holding back my little brother Soren. Well he wasn’t that little, he had just turned ten, only two years younger but a whole lot littler.
Since mom wouldn’t let Soren get any closer, he yelled his questions. He always had questions, about animals anyway. I heard all about the cassowary-how they can kill a person with a kick and how nasty they are to everything and everyone. Who wants to hear about that? He’s such a weirdo. He never asked me about my games or boards or really anything. Mostly he just talked about birds. And apparently snakes.
“Does it have a diamond pattern on it or more of a solid color? How long is it? Can you see if the tongue is forked or straight?”
See its tongue? It almost ate me. Dad finally breathed and said it’s an Amethystine python. “It’s not venomous,” he explained while he ran his fingers through his hair, “but they can hurt you. Not this one though, it’s just a young one- maybe 5 feet long. It must have been attracted to your body heat. They are pretty common up here in Cape Tribulation.”
Common? There were more? I let go of the bag and took a big step backward. That snake was not getting me. Dad nudged it with his big stick till it slid on and then he walked it about 50 feet to a tall tree. It coiled itself around the trunk then almost leapt up to a branch and quickly wrapped itself around it. Soren squealed.
I decided I would sleep in the tent with the rest of my family. If I could sleep. I was still mad at Soren for talking non-stop to the cute girl on the plane about the evolution of birds from dinosaurs. She kept trying to watch a movie or I had hoped, talk to me. Soren ruined everything. He ruined vacations- who wants to go sweat and swat bugs in a rainforest when there were places where you had everything you needed, all you can eat buffets and lots of regular people to hang out with.
My mom had insisted on a tour the day before at some stupid cultural center. “It’ll be fun!” she chirped. The guide was a real Aboriginal man. His skin color was so dark, it absorbed all the light around him. He had an accent but not like the ones the staff at the hotel had- he didn’t say ‘mate’ or ‘crikey’. His voice was light and deep at the same time.
He told us that the serpent or snake was the most important symbol in his culture. He said it was a benevolent protector of the Aboriginal people and a punisher of the law breakers. I guess they use them to go after the white Americans who sleep outside in the rainforest. I didn’t know I was breaking the rules, I just wanted to get away from Soren.
Of course Mom and Soren peppered the guy with questions. “Why do you call snakes Rainbow Serpents?” “Are there snakes that are colored like a rainbow?” “How can a snake punish someone? Bite them with their poison?” I perked up at that question.
“Long ago, my ancestors saw rainbows like we do today. They were in the dry outback of Australia where water is scarce. My great, great, great, great grandparents noticed that the end of the rainbows landed in pools of water that we call billabongs. Billabongs is our word for lake. The shape of the rainbows looked like a serpent in the sky and led our people to water. Because there are so few billabongs, we would meet other people there. The Rainbow Serpent showed us how to get along. We say the serpent is our symbol of unity and cooperation. Aboriginal people take care of each other and the animals and land around us.
“But what about the birds?”
The guide smiled at Soren, his teeth starkly white against his pitch black face. “All the animals are important to us. The birds, the kangaroos, the insects. We live together.”
Soren started to ask yet another question, I could see his lips starting to move but then he just looked at the guide. The man held his gaze a long time, his eyes soft, as if he knew Soren was different. I was surprised to see Soren stop talking and staring in the eyes of a stranger. He never did that. I had to look away from them both- it was so intimate and uncomfortable.
“Nasties” as they are called in Australia, crawl, slither, hang and ambush all over the country. Crocodiles swim in the rivers and in the ocean and can weigh up to 1.5 tons. I read the introduction to the guidebook Mom insisted I read on the plane since Soren was doing all the talking. I sure didn’t think I would be sleeping with one of them. Twelve species of snake have a fatal bite and a hundred species have some kind of venom. Tiger snakes attack people. The taipan bites three or four times to make sure you die. The funnel-web spider, the deadliest spider in the world, also lives in Australia. Swimmers have to watch for the deadly box jellyfish, sea snakes, and the blue-ringed octopus. Of course, great white sharks are also frequently spotted.
On TV back home, I had seen Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter, caressing these deadly creatures but I had no intention of having my own encounters. I was looking for adventure but only in the right places. I was hoping my close encounters would be with a pristine pool and a zip line. Rainbow serpents were not on my list.
As I laid out my sleeping bag and fluffed my pillow, Soren had his notepad out and more questions. “How long was it Oliver?” he asked, “and what color?” I watched him write the facts down in his tiny print. He never learned cursive writing. He said it was because “the endings are too soft.” When Dad turned off the flashlight, Soren counted backwards from twenty-two to 2, like he did every night so he could go to sleep on an even number. I tried to sleep too but kept hearing the Australian rainforest chirp, buzz, and whistle. I knew that the birds Soren wanted to see were out there somewhere, eating fluorescent bugs and gulping down little toads. The python was out there too. My hands were sweaty and not just from the tropical heat. Every time mom or dad moved an arm or leg, I thought it was the snake again. Think about the beach, about surfing, about being underwater, I told myself.
I tried to slow my breathing like my mom was always telling Soren to do when he was about to have a meltdown. I didn’t know that I would have to be dealing with snakes and Soren. Not fair. In my anxious sleep, rainbow colored snakes chased me. Australia had wound its way through my skin and entered my dreams.
It was already hot when I finally woke up, alone again but this time the screens on the tent were safely zipped shut. Dad came over, “Hey Oliver, see any more snakes?” “Very funny Dad, at least I tried sleeping outside.”
“Eat breakfast Oli,” mom said as she handed him a cereal bowl. “Then pack your daypack. We’re going for a hike.”
As I packed up, I thought of the thousands of other hikes my ‘back-to-nature” parents had taken us on. Last year, dad and I went snow camping on Mt. Rainier. We had to carry a ton of gear. This would be a piece-of-cake. It was warm and sunny. We were here in Australia for summer vacation. Soren wanted to see the birds, I just wanted to see some waves and hang at the pool but my parents had decided that a visit to the most northern part of Australia, where there is actually a rainforest, was the place to go.
Hopefully, Soren would see his birds and we could get out to the beach or maybe get to a hotel with a pool like civilized people.