All through these (and the following) overgrown sections of trail, I talk to the snakes, “Hello snaky, snaky, snakes, just passing through, don’t mind me.” at the same time, I’m probing the trail ahead with my hiking poles to make sure any somnolent snakes wake up before I tread on them. As for the ticks, I talk to them too. But I’m much less polite, “Ticky, ticky, tickies … eff orf.”
I won’t be hiking this trail again until the fall, when the vegetation has died back a bit and the bugs are a lot less active.
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