Park rangers are among my favorite humans, and they are among the few people from whom I take orders. If they tell me to avoid a trail, I avoid it. If they tell me to watch out for rattlesnakes, I keep my eyes and ears peeled. If they tell me a particular trail leads to a spectacular view, you'd better believe I'll be right there with my camera at the time of day they tell me has the best light. They are concerned with my safety as well as my enjoyment, and I've heard too many of their horror stories about arrogant hikers and campers ending up injured or, in one case, dead. I listen to every word park rangers say and adjust my plans -- and behaviors -- accordingly.
Except this one time.
One May several years ago, my friend Mary and I decided to do a little exploring along the Lewis and Clark trail in North Dakota. It was the week before Memorial Day, which is the start of the tourist season around there, so there weren't many tourists, and we often had the trails, interpretive centers, and scenic stops almost to ourselves. It was wonderful, and it added to our sense of exploration in the footsteps of great explorers.
After several days' travel, spontaneously staying wherever we could find a vacancy, we found a park where there were cabins for rent. The park looked beautiful, and the cabins were rustic, which appealed to our sense of adventure. They were also inexpensive. Woo-hoo!
We stopped at the ranger station to secure our lodging and asked about the trails. The ranger was an obliging older gentleman who told us about the various hikes we could take, scenic ridges, lakeside strolls -- wonderful!
"But," he added, "it's tick season, so make sure you're careful. You don't want to get sick from tick bites."
"Yeah," chimed in another older gentleman standing at the counter, "I heard about that Boy Scout who come in here just covered in 'em. Had to strip him naked to find all of 'em. Pulled nearly 80 off him."
The two men nodded to themselves, lost in momentary recollection. We smiled, thanked them, and paid our money then headed out to the cabin.
"Don't forget about the ticks!" the ranger called after us. We chuckled a little.
On the short drive to the cabin, Mary and I exchanged funny stories about ticks. When I was a kid, I walked by the open bathroom door one time while my brother was standing at the toilet and spied one on his rump. "A tick!" I shouted, pointing, which caused him to whirl around, still peeing, trying to get a look at his hindquarters.
Mary told me that she'd once found a tick embedded in her leg and frantically tried several things she'd heard people do to get them to back out. She smothered it in Vaseline, but it stayed put. In a panic, she remembered hearing that touching a tick on the behind with a hot match would make them unbury themselves from one's skin. But she forgot to blow out the match and ignited the Vaseline, setting fire to the stubble on her unshaved leg.
Oh, how we laughed together! Har, har, har.
After we deposited our things in the cabin -- which was, by the way, every bit as rustic and lovely as it sounded over the phone -- we decided to take a walk. Recalling my childhood, "tick season" simply meant you had to be on the lookout and that you had to check yourself and your clothes upon returning home to make sure one of the little buggers wasn't wandering around, looking for a good place to dig in and get a meal. So, we put on some socks and long pants and out we went.
Into hell.
We decided on the shorter lakeside stroll, thinking we would take a longer forest walk in the morning after a leisurely cup of coffee and pastries on the deck on the front of the cabin. We were on the trail about ten minutes, chatting away, when I felt something on my foot. I looked down.
To find it covered in ticks.
Covered. Not one or two or five or even ten. C-O-V-E-R-E-D in ticks. And they were crawling under the toes of my socks (I was wearing socks with sandals), up my legs, and -- to my surprise -- all over my arms as well. I brushed like mad, Mary helping me remove them until she noticed that she, too, was covered in them. We danced like monkeys on hot coals, shaking and brushing and shrieking.
It was about that time that I looked around and got a better sense of what "tick season" meant in those parts. The grasses on either side of the trail were so loaded with deer ticks that they were bending and swaying low to the ground. On the trail itself, we could see armies of them crawling toward us like starving vampires scenting a blood feast. We were horrified.
We ran like hell back to the cabin. But the nightmare had only just begun.
I'll spare you all the details, but the essence of the entire evening -- until we fell into fitful sleep from sheer exhaustion -- was that we dug and plucked and squashed and slashed and shrieked and shuddered and danced around until we simply no longer cared. We inspected each other from top to bottom, picking ticks out of hair, off of backs, out of folds in our skin. Modesty? Modesty be damned! There were ticks all over us!
The next morning, we turned in our key and went about our business, but only after we did another body-and-clothes check back at the cabin. On our way out, we instructed the ranger on duty to tell the older guy from the night before that we'd picked better than 100 ticks off of Mary and nearly that many off of me. We had an all new respect for Tick Season.
As for the Boy Scout story: Nearly 80 ticks? Pfffft! Wimp.
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