John 'The River Guy'

Maybe I’m demon possessed? But I’ve hardly ever encoutered snakes while out in the water. Regular water snakes or much less often, venomous ones. I know they are out there. I just don’t see em.’ I may encounter a non venomous snake every other summer and a venomous one every half decade. This from swimming two to three times per week from May 1st to October 31st. I’ve actually gone entire seasons without spotting a single one. Any reasonable person would surmise that, that’s plenty of opportunity to run into a snake. But, when it comes to water, people get unreasonable. Especially water they cannot see the bottom of. That’s where tales of six foot water moccasins climb into fishermen’s boats. The fisherman then escape and go home. Only to find a knock at their door. They open it to find ‘Johnny Cottonmouth’ staring them down and then giving a deadly bite. At least he gave them their mail first. Or that’s where stories are conjured about hapless skiers falling into a bed of cottonmouths. I heard it happend up at Lake Guntersville. Or was that Lake Martin? I just got the answer that it actually happened on Lake Bulls#*t. If Lonesome Dove, would only realize the nonsense they caused out of their own fiction.

Over the past twenty years I’ve encoutered only two incidences involving water moccasins. Oddly, both times it occurred in south Etowah County’s/St. Clair County’s Canoe Creek. While Swimming off of a pier at the end of Rainbow City, Alabama’s Babe Jackson Drive, I swam 200 yards to another slough across the channel. Looking back I saw what appeared to be a ‘momma’ and one of her children swimming across the path I created about 40 yards behind. They stopped and stared a bit. I got more angry than scared as I knew I couldn’t swim back that route. Just to be safe I swam back to where I started at an angle to the right of where they breached water about 50 yards to their right. Soon, I was back to my starting point in safety.

That same summer I was swimming back into the boat ramp at Greensport, St. Clair, County, Alabama in Neely Henry Lake. With the bank to my left I spotted a cottonmouth swimming to my right roughly 30 yards away. We simply passed like two ships in the night, he or (she) not even stopping its pace. I slowed down my pace just to keep my eye on it. It never even let up or came toward me. I knew it’d make for a nice story around the campfire. For whatever reason I didn’t feel alarmed or threatened. Maybe it was the fact I was 40 yards off of the bank and couldn’t do much about the situation. More likely, it was the fact that I’m sane and reasonable. Should you watch where you swim and where you step each time you go out? Absolutely! Should you be terrified to the point you become paranoid. You make that call! Tragically, you’d lose out on one of the best times of your week, if you choose to go down that path.

I look back on all of my swims and realize I do have fears. It’s just that they involve overzealous teenagers on jet skis not watching where they are driving. Or melanoma if I don’t wear sunscreen or don’t swim in the more shaded parts of the day. But it’s certainly not wildlife, that’s for sure. Be mindful, but not ridiculous. I’ve been doing this for over twenty years and there is a lot more to be concerned about than a fabricated wive’s tale.

Stay Wet,

-John