Ignorance isn’t Bliss
By
Crazy Anglican
It seemed like a great plan. Three of my greatest friend’s Dave, Ron, and Scott planned a camping trip on Cumberland Island in South Georgia. Dave had told us many times how beautiful it was there. He told us of the serene camping sites and the bonus of a protected beach. After many suggestions on Dave’s part Ron, Scott and I decided that we would go down with him for the weekend and escape the pressures of working and going to college at the same time.
My first hint that this trip might be a disaster came from my Dad. He stated quite simply and clearly that it was tick season on Cumberland Island and we should postpone the trip till later in the year. Now in all the time I’ve known my father I’ve never known him to suggest travel changes without a good reason. For some reason, I still don’t know exactly why, I ignored his advice and went on planning our trip. I’m not the squeamish type so the thought of a tick wasn’t too bad. I grew up near the woods and picking up a tick wasn’t unusual if you got outside at all. I just didn’t see ticks as a reason to delay the trip, but Dad isn’t someone you just ignore. He’s quiet and sensible and I had the feeling that I really needed to look into things further.
I called the Ranger station, on Cumberland Island, to arrange for a campsite. I was informed that all of the sites were full except for the Back country sites. This meant once we got on the island we would have a five mile hike to our campsite, and we would have to hike another two miles for fresh water. I remembered Dad’s advice and asked “I heard it was tick season down there how bad are they?” The ranger said “Oh they’re not bad”. He then followed it up with “If you do a tick check every hour or so you’ll get them off before they embed. They have to be embedded for twenty four hours before you can catch Lyme disease from them”. For some reason I heard “not bad” the phrase “tick check every hour” and the words ‘Lyme Disease” did not even enter into my mind. I was so excited about getting away for the weekend that I jumped at the ranger’s untrustworthy advice.
Now the preparations for the weekend were underway, and I forgot my uneasy feeling about it. The day came for us to leave. We packed up the car and headed for South Georgia. After a night at an Inn near the docks, we got aboard the ferry early in the morning and were on our way. Once we got to the island we started our hike to the campsite. Four and a half of the five mile walk was great. We had a wide dirt road to walk on and we stopped every hour, just as the ranger has suggested, for our tick check without seeing the first one. We strode on secure in the belief that we knew exactly what we were doing.
Four and a half miles into our walk we came upon a sign that said “Hickory Hill .5 mile” and pointed off of the road down a narrow path. This was when things began to get ugly. When we reached Hickory Hill; we stopped to do another tick check. At this point I realized how smart I wasn’t.
Now I mentioned earlier that I had had ticks on me before, I meant to say that I had had a tick on me before. I’d never seen more than one at a time. As a matter of fact I didn’t even know there was more than one kind. The official count for me was thirty-one on my pants and sixteen on my shoes. Luckily none of us had any of them on our heads or shirts. They got on us from the palmetto fronds we waded through on the way to the camp site. After carefully removing each one of the little beasties, I was amazed to find out how many pretty colors these blood-sucking critters display. There were four different varieties on me. In addition to the common brown wood tick, I was host to bright red Deer ticks, black Lone Star ticks that have a bright white star on their backs, and the worst of the four, invisible Seed ticks. Seed ticks are baby ticks that get underneath your skin like chiggers and itch just as badly.
Now at this point, I feel it is safe to assume that any sane person would have never have made camp. Everything was still packed in our back packs and we were completely mobile, but the only way off the island was by ferry and it wouldn’t be back until the next morning. We were stuck so we decided to make the most of it. We went on a mile hike to go get fresh water. Our environment did force us to make some lifestyle accommodations. Usually, among guys, we don’t help each other out with grooming. My friends and I had to relax this rule for the weekend. As I stood by filling our canteen with water I noticed that my friends resembled apes on a documentary. They had picked up the habit of picking ticks off of one another.
After getting our water we continued to make camp and Scott apologetically confessed that he couldn’t stand any more and had to go to the beach. We agreed that he should go on ahead there was nothing that we couldn’t handle without him. After he left, we quickly made camp, gathered our beach gear, and made off after him.
Now the sign at our campsite said “Beach .8 mile” which in our minds meant that it would be a simple and short walk to the beach. The idea of getting out of the woods, and free from the ticks were the only things on our minds. Like everything else on this trip, however, there would be nothing simple or short about our walk to the beach. By now we had adapted reasonably well to the idea of tick infested palmetto fronds, and when we saw a thicket ahead, without a word, we sped up to speeds that would make Olympic track stars take notice. Desperation will do that to you. We eventually got free from the woods, and were ready to put the day’s disasters behind us, or so we thought.
Our first indication that we were out of the woods was a huge kudzu covered hill that our trail snaked around. Our first indication that we were not out of the woods was the sound of Scott screaming for help from the other side of the hill. This was the first time in my life that I had ever been within shouting distance of one of my friends and had no earthly idea of were he was or how to get to him. We kept shouting to him and encouraging him to stay put and shout back so that we could find him. We eventually found him, and then we found the beach.
The beach at Cumberland Island is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. For the first time that day I breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed. This was why I had come. The fresh smell of the ocean, and the cool breeze made me feel better instantly. It probably seemed even more wonderful in contrast with the misery that we endured before and after our stay there. I really considered moving our campsite out close to the beach, but Mother Nature, having given us a rest, sent a thunderstorm to force us back into the forest.
At this point we remembered that insect repellent washes off. Of course, we had left that in the tent. So on our way back we encountered our second swarm of parasites. This time it came in the form of large, black, swamp mosquitoes. Now, once again I had no frame of reference for the term swarm of mosquitoes. I can only say two things to describe this situation. First we had to keep moving because the mosquitoes were not quite so bad if we kept moving at a fast walking pace. This did prevent us from paying close attention to our landmarks, however, and soon we were hopelessly lost. After following the trail to the same tree four times we realized that we had to stop, or we would continue traveling along the same looping path indefinitely. This was when the mosquitoes really swarmed around us. We all swatted our fair share, but Scott got the record by killing five mosquitoes with one slap. I’m not really sure how we got out of the woods, but I’m sure that it had a good deal to do with Dave keeping a level head about the situation as he had for most of this fiasco.
Upon returning to our campsite Dave said something that made me realize that he truly was one of my best friends. He said “You guys get some rest, I’ll make dinner”. We immediately fell asleep on the floor of our tent. I woke up a few minutes later to Dave’s exclamation “My God look at this!”. I wasn’t going to let him face this new misery alone; I got up to see what he was talking about. He was staring at the ground which, up until this point, was the last of our worries, but I was curious so I looked down too. At first, I didn’t notice what he was worried about. All I saw was a typical forest floor with ants foraging on it. Then I realized that these were big, round, brown ants that looked kind of like wood ticks. In fact, the entire campsite was covered with ticks scurrying back and forth like ants. I had never seen them do this before, but by this time I was resigned to the fact that I’d probably learn quite a bit about ticks before I left the island.
The ticks on the ground, though, finally convinced us that our camping trip was over. So six hours after setting up our tent we broke camp and began our trip back to the ranger station. By this time it had gotten dark so the trip back seemed like it would never end. We were all tired, cranky, caked with dust and we couldn’t see a foot in front of us in the inky darkness of the woods at night. Around midnight, however, we found the ranger station, washed, removed the last of our ticks, and fell asleep on the porch.
The next morning, when the ranger woke us up, we asked why the trails had been so hard to follow to the beach from our site. He told us that “People had been feeding an alligator back there, and it got aggressive so we had to reroute the trails”. So after ticks, mosquitoes and a horribly long walk we drove to Jekyll Island got a hotel and slept for twelve hours straight. When we got up we went to the best seafood restaurant we could find and got on the road to Savannah. From that point on, “roughing it” to me means “no internet access”.
Get bent.
