The Blue Light

Keith Anderson

Having been born and raised in North Dakota some 70+ years ago, my boyhood days were quite adventuresome.  In fact, my two chums and I did some things that would raise the hair on the back of your neck.  I’d like to tell about one such time.

            One day we decided to make some snakeskin belts.  Well, the three of us headed five miles out of town, down to the Powder River where there were some caves.  We figured that would be a good place to find the one kind of snake we knew about -- rattlesnakes.

            We found this one cave with an opening big enough that I could just walk in.  The other two boys decided not to go inside.  I entered with a big, heavy stick thinking I was gonna kill me some snakes.  [Boys at our age don’t have good sense.]  Right when I got inside, there, two feet in front of me, was a big rattlesnake coiled up, rattles up in the air…shaking back and forth.  His tongue was twitching.  He was just gettin’ ready to uncoil and strike.  All of a sudden, coming in from the side of the very dark cave was a hazy, blue light.  Now I was able to see lots of coiled snakes up on a ledge at the back of the cave with their rattles shaking.  When this blue light passed by them, they went down out of their coils and just lay there totally quiet.  Then I looked down at the snake next to me. He was out of his coil and laying practically at my feet.  Of course, I got my stick, jumped on him, and killed him.  When I was quite sure he was dead, I grabbed him by his rattles and drug him outside.  He was about five feet long.

            While this was all going on, the other two boys standing outside heard all the rattles.  They peeked their heads around the corner to see what was happening.

            On the way home, the other boys asked me if I had seen the blue light.  I said, “Yea, yea, I did.”  I never gave it another thought until years later.  I then realized that it was my guardian angel!  Had that snake bitten me that day, I would have never made it because the first thing we would have done is to take off running.  Since we were miles out of town, I would have been history.

Today I know that I have worked my guardian angel to death.  I can only imagine…when I walk through the gates of heaven, he’s gonna wipe the sweat off his brow and say, “I thought this was never going to end!”