My Childhood: Hiking On Little Mountain

My dad and I often hiked on Little Mountain. We always woke up early in the morning, quickly wolfed down breakfast, and drove over to the flanks of that large hill. Once there, we’d get out of the car and begin the two or three hour long hike to the top of the hill.

Once, my dad and I made a trap. It was primitive, simply a wire cage with a spring loaded door. We carefully placed the trap on a rabbit trail, put in some bait and snuck away. We intended to come back in a few days to see if we caught anything. We didn’t, but it was great fun.

Sometimes we found snakes. Harmless snakes, you know, gopher snakes and the like. I usually saw them first. When I did, I’d run after the snake excitedly. My dad would always yell out "Make sure it’s not a rattler!" He didn’t need to do that, I remembered Lyle Creek!

Sometimes I’d even catch the poor little snake. Then, for a few minutes, my dad and I would observe it, touch it, play with it. He’d explain something about it to me, or I’d relate something that I knew about this kind of snake. After we had studied the creature for a few minutes, we always released it back into the wild. We knew that mom wouldn’t appreciate having snakes crawling around the house.

We often saw lizards, sunning themselves on large rocks in one of the many gullies. I sometimes tried to sneak up on them, and attempt to catch them. For many months, I tried, but to no avail.

Then, one day, I was unusually careful or lucky, or the lizard was careless, and I managed to grab one. I caught it by the tail. Boy, was I surprised when the tail came off in my hand. My dad laughed and laughed. Then he explained that lizards can loose their tails. It’s a survival mechanism. They quickly grow it back.

One day, we were hiking around in some bushes, and I stumbled across a horseshoe. It was a well used horseshoe, but I took it as a good luck sign. I’ve kept it tacked to my wall since then, in every apartment I’ve ever lived in, carefully situated so the ends are pointed up. My mother told me to do this when I was a kid, so the luck wouldn’t run out.

I have kept it all these years as a memento of the great times my dad and I spent together on Little Mountain.

I've got some modern-day pictures of Little Mountain in this collection from a trip I took in 2004.