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Peek over the rail can lead to great reward

• John Lorson: The Rail Trail Naturalist
• August 13, 2021
• 905

If you followed behind me while I bicycle up and down just about any back road or rail trail, you would likely be entertained at my reaction to the bridges along the way.

Crossing a bridge is never a face-forward glide for me. Instead, you’re likely to see me touching the brakes, craning my neck and often even standing up on the pedals to get a better look at what’s beyond the bridge rail.

Often, the practice yields nothing more than a passing glimpse of a lonely, stone-bottomed streambed. Occasionally, if the water is clear, you can peer right down into the depths to find suckers and shiners flashing about through the deep. Every once in a rare while, however, one may find something exceptional milling about in the stream below.

One glimpse of a giant snapping turtle on the prowl or a beagle-sized beaver making its way downstream with a willow branch in its mouth will convince you instantly that you simply must take a look every time you cross a bridge from there on out. The day I found a trio of river otters hunting a narrow, cloudy tributary below me assured I would never again cross a bridge without looking down.

If I’m not in any sort of hurry, I’ll often stop for a moment or two just to give the view a good, long look. Bridge crossings offer an entirely different view from the prescribed route of travel — a perpendicular perspective from a notoriously parallel path, if you will. During the summertime, when pedaling down the trail is often akin to riding through a tunnel of green, a quick look over the railing offers a deep penetration into the surrounding landscape. Creatures off the beaten path can easily be caught unaware as traffic passes by on the trail.

On a recent morning, I paused at the rail over a small tributary that leads to Killbuck Creek, where I’d recently spotted a muskrat cruising the shallows. Finding the waters undisturbed, I was just about to pedal on when I caught the tiniest of movements from the corner of my eye. There, at eyeball level, perched in a multi-flora rose that had grown out from the bank to arch across the stream like a flowered trellis was a small green coil of life, punctuated with a pair of brown-framed black pupils. A thin, forked tonged dashed and retreated from an unflinching smirk.

Uncoiled, the eastern garter snake may have stretched to around 18 inches, and it was so close I could have reached out and touched it. The snake had now both seen and smelled me. Its forked tongue is replete with sensory receptors that not only detect tiny variations in smell, but also relay distance and direction information to its brain — could have known exactly how close I was even with its eyes closed. The reptile's survival strategy of remaining perfectly still until the danger had passed played well into my intent to photograph it.

The garter snake had chosen a great spot. With an appetite for small fish, insects, earthworms and amphibians, this snake could essentially just hang around all day with a superior view of the goings on at near the water below. Garter snakes can vary widely in color, and it seems almost a given that any garter snake you see will match its surroundings with uncanny accuracy. The tangle of multi-flora surrounding it on all sides offered great protection from aerial predation by herons, hawks and crows, and a mink, raccoon or fox would have had a heck of a time making its way through the brambles undetected.

Fortunately for both man and beast, neither had more than a passing interest in the other, and we simply carried on with our business, leaving at least one of us a bit richer for the experience.

Remember, if you have comments on this column or questions about the natural world, write The Rail Trail Naturalist, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email jlorson@alonovus.com. You also can follow along on Instagram @railtrailnaturalist.