Rice Fields

The beautiful rice fields

A few weeks back, Elena, Casey and I headed off to rice fields.  This was a momentous occasion - the final hike to still be completed on Venture Out's "Top Ten Hikes Near Virginia Tech" list.  Not that this list is anything special.  Venture Out is just a little outdoorsy shop on campus that happened to put together a list of their favorite Southwest VA hikes.  And not that it should've taken me over three years to finish the darn list.  But it did.  And on October 5th, 2013, I finally finished the darn thing.

Rice Fields again

Don't get me wrong.  I've done the Cascades at least four or five times, Kelly's Knob the same number.  Dragon's Tooth and Angel's Rest have seen me twice.  I'm a fairly frequent visitor to the Devil's Marbleyard.  But alas, I had not finished the list.

Rice field lived up to the excitement that had started to fester in me as I realized that I would actually complete this mini goal before graduation.  Though the hike up was essentially two miles of plugging up the mountain with few breaks, the two mile mark or thereabouts made for a nice change.  The trail evened out into a nice ridge trail that wove its way over fairly level ground until it opened up into a vast meadow, aptly dubbed rice field (or nearly aptly dubbed seeing as there was no rice - but I suppose the image of the meadow atop the mountain was enough to spark visions of rice fields in lands far away).  As the trail mellowed, my stride lengthened, I breathed more easily, and I quickened the pace.  And then, as I looked down at the ground in front of me I noticed something different.  My momentum carried me into the next step and I took off shrieking like an offended puppy.  The snake was about four feet long and looked particularly menacing right as I nearly stepped on the thing.

The black rat snake, after Elena poked him

Elena and Casey, safely in the back of the line, stopped where they were and laughed at me until I inched back to where I'd started.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't dislike snakes.  They're quite beautiful and in the times that I've had the chance to hold them, I've realized that they're actually pretty cool animals.  But by god, I was not prepared to almost flatten one with my foot.  We took pictures and posed with the seemingly unperturbed snake until Elena poked him with her finger at which point he decided that "fight" should beat out "flight."  I took that as my cue that it was time to continue walking.  Elena took it as hers that it was time for an epic photo shoot.  Needless to say, no one was harmed in the process - but I was slightly disheveled and the not so little rat snake had decided we were not friends.

eating questionable weeds

We made it to the fields with no more exciting incidents, although the hike in and of itself was nice.  When we arrived, I curled up on the ground with my sleeping bag as a pillow and took in the breeze.  Casey and Elena thought I was silly for bringing a sleeping bag on a day hike.  They have a point, I'd reason to admit, but when we get stuck overnight for some bizarre reason, they'll be happy that I lugged the two pounds of fabric up the mountain with me.  The views were magnificent, the fields were awesome, and I got to try my hand at eating some weird root vegetable that Elena claimed was edible.  The root of Queen Anne's Lace maybe?  I'm not dead yet, so I suppose she was right.

In other news, Sassafrass tastes like apricots.  Try it sometime.