"Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood."

—Mary Oliver

My uncle Bob, known affectionately as "the snake man," had dozens of jars filled with snakes and snake eggs preserved in formaldehyde, lined up on shelves. As a boy these eerie contents fascinated me and sparked my curiosity. Little did I know at the time, these jars would profoundly shape my interests and aesthetics for the rest of my life, a realization that only came to me in adulthood. Growing up in the countryside and mountains of Pennsylvania, I spent much of my childhood wandering through the woods, turning over rocks in search of snakes—black snakes, garter snakes, ring-necked snakes, red-bellied snakes, green snakes, and many others whose names I didn’t know. Alongside them, I found salamanders, newts, frogs, and tadpoles in the shallow mountain creeks.

My uncle had a deep love and fascination for rattlesnakes. He was a Ranger for the National Park Service and a photographer for National Geographic. A quirky, brilliant man with a photographic memory, he worked in national parks across the country but eventually settled as the lead Ranger at Lake Mead and Hoover Dam, just outside of Las Vegas, Nevada.

Years ago, when I lived on the road in a Chevy conversion van with my yellow lab, Knavin, I visited him. His house was a museum of artifacts and books. His fascination with rattlesnakes had grown into an obsession. Every room was filled with anything that had a rattlesnake printed on it—menus, soft drinks, shaving cream, pendants, stickers, old signs, pretty much anything you can imagine. His living room was a library of books, each with little tags marking every reference to a snake. His whole house was a cabinet of curiosities, making me feel like Alice in Wonderland, like I had slipped between the panes of reality.

Then he opened the door to what felt like Oz. A large room stacked floor to ceiling with aquariums, each housing a living rattlesnake. I was immediately greeted by a symphony of rattles that shook me to my bones. I wandered from aquarium to aquarium as he shared the details of each snake—where he found them, what kind of rattlesnake they were, their natural habitats, and what they liked to eat. He cared for each of them in a special way, viewing them with love and curiosity.

He then asked if I wanted to help feed the snakes. My heart leapt—of course, I did!

Each rattlesnake's diet varied depending on what it would naturally eat during that part of the season. The first rattlesnake we fed was given a live mouse, the cutest little thing with white fur, a pink belly, and red eyes. As my uncle opened the lid of the habitat and dropped the mouse in by its tail, my racing heart sank into my belly. I felt like I was that mouse, thrown into the cage. I was torn between wanting the mouse to escape and wanting the snake to eat.

The mouse sniffed along the edge of the glass, oblivious. The rattlesnake was coiled in its den—a plastic dome resembling a rock cavern. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the snake began to move, stirring so subtly that it was almost unnoticeable. The suspense built as it skillfully brought its diamond-shaped head with its black eyes to the very edge of the shadow, where it paused, unmoving, completely still. Waiting, as Mary Oliver would say, “with the patience of vegetables and saints…”

I was paralyzed, watching as the mouse grew more curious about its new environment, unaware of the danger lurking in the shadows. The mouse began to meander closer and closer to that fateful shadow until at long last it reached its final destination. But it wasn’t quick, no. What I witnessed next would change the rest of my life.

Just as the mouse got close enough, the snake slowly broke the shadow barrier with its black tongue first and then, slowly, its whole head. The snake pressed its nose firmly against the mouse's nose. The snake did not eat the mouse in haste. Instead, there was an eternal pause as they stood there nose to nose. I held my breath. I swear the earth stood still. I stopped blinking. Maybe the snake was praying, saying grace, moistening its lips, communing—I don’t know. Time was no longer relevant.

I don’t actually know how long this moment lasted, but swiftly and without urgency, the snake in one bite devoured the mouse. The mouse gave no resistance.

My uncle startled me as he motioned me on to the next one, but I was finished with the feeding. I excused myself and walked quietly out the door. I went outside and stood in the blazing sun, unable to gather myself, and I don’t think I even tried. Whatever I thought I knew about the world, about the universe, about God or faith, suddenly evaporated. I was struck dumb by this immense sense of awe. I stood there in the Nevada heat and marveled at the world around me. Forever, I am in allegiance to that moment and to the faith it instilled in me that astonishment is a far greater force than knowledge.