"Snake!" shouts a man. He is hiking a sandy stretch of trail with his wife and small children in Arches National Park, outside of Moab, Utah. The path is easy to follow, a connecting link between Sand Dune Arch and Broken Arch that cuts a swath through low scrub. I have just left the trail head but I spot the man several hundred yards off to my left. This part of the high desert is open and flat. You can see for miles.

His cry sends chills through my body. All the time I've spent hiking in canyon country and I've never seen a snake. I know they live in the desert. I know they live in Arches. But I've never set eyes on one, until today. For some reason, maybe he thought it was funny, or maybe he freaked out, the man picks up the offending creature and hurls it like a boomerang. This is what I see, a wavy black line, an emblem of all snakes, silhouetted against a vibrant blue sky.

I am transfixed by this image of a flying reptile caught for a moment in a place it does not belong. I wonder what kind of snake it is. My first thought is, "must be a rattler," as in Midget Faded rattlesnake, Croatalus viridus concolor, whose bite is ferocious despite its diminutive name. This is the snake that everybody has warned me about, so it's the first one that pops into my mind, even though the Midget Faded is a retiring sort of fellow and sightings of it are rare. Besides, I think, no sane person would risk getting bit just to heave a rattlesnake through the air. So I decide that it must be a garter snake, or more likely, a gopher snake. Gopher snakes are not poisonous. They can grow up to four feet long, twice the length of a Faded Midget, and they are known for keeping rattlesnakes away. If there is such a thing as a good snake, I guess a gopher snake would qualify.

Almost as soon as my mind registers the arc of the snake, my stomach tightens. In a few seconds, the reptile will crash land on terra firma, and I picture the snake's brains knocking loose and rattling around its head. A grotesque thought. I am sure the snake will die, and I wonder what it feels in those final moments of free fall, before gravity exacts its price. This is what I imagine will happen, but I could be wrong. I don't go looking for the snake, so I can't say what its fate was once it landed. Maybe it did die on impact, or maybe it suffered a lingering death from internal injuries. Then again, maybe the bushes or the sand cushioned its fall and the snake glided away only slightly bruised, or even unscathed. Anything is possible in the desert.

Which is why my reaction to the snake both surprises me and does not surprise me. Under ordinary circumstances, I would never feel sorry for a snake. Not the one I saw squashed flat on a road, the tire marks visible on its back. Not even the one that my uncle ran over while mowing the knee-high grass in the barnyard before my grandfather's funeral. But I am not in an ordinary place. I am here, in "God's navel" as Edward Abbey called this wild, desolate and achingly beautiful country. The average summer temperature is one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The annual precipitation is nine inches. In this place every breath, every heartbeat, is a celebration. Even a snake's.