Nathan's Post - Rattlesnake

I took the priest's quorum to Writing on Stone provincial park for a quick camping trip this week. I had never been there, and was surprised at how nice the area is. The young men and I ran around and on the hoodoo formations in the park all evening. I had to stop myself from doing some the climbing and jumping that they were doing, as the last time I did a similar risky activity with the young men I tore my MCL. As we were walking back to our campsite at about 9:30 pm, one of the park workers was on the road and asked us if we wanted to see a rattlesnake. As we approached him, coiled up on the road was what he described as a good size rattler, about 7 years old (it had 8 rattles, but they can shed their skin more than once during a year when they are younger). It was smaller than I expected, but still has about 5 feet long. He used a rake to annoy the rattler into moving. I have to admit when the rattler took a strike position with its rattle going my heart started beating a little faster. Two of the young men took a big step backwards at that point as well. Eventually the rattler slithered off into the grass, shaking its rattle as it went. Two of the young men who are attending priests quorum are moving on this summer as they have graduated. I'll miss having Colton around the quorum. He was a good example to the other young men, and a very steadying influence on them as well. After some late campfire talking we finally got to sleep around 1:30 in the morning, only to be waken up at around 7 a.m. by some strong winds and weather that looked like it might dump a lot of water on us. Myself and a couple of the young men saw the advantages of pulling ourselves out of bed and breaking our respective camps early, as taking down tents and packing up in the rain is not pleasant. All in all a good camp, and we had one of our less active quorum members attend. Hopefully I will see more of him in the coming weeks.