Webs
The benefits of being on a quiet trail alone: the quiet, and the aloneness. The drawbacks: potentially spicy wildlife encounters, and spiderwebs.
Of these two things, the cougars lurking in the trees and the bears snuffling through the underbrush get all the glory. But after having spent a lot (and I mean a LOT) of time on the trail in the last four months, I now know the small creatures are the ones you have to watch for.
You’re 100% sure to come across them, but the chipmunks aren’t going to leap at you from a tree or eat you for breakfast. However, they are going to create noises that make you think something much, much larger is skittering through the underbrush. The leaves they displace while scrambling away far outstrip their actual size.
This kind of scare causes my feet to depart the earth and my heart to shoot into the red zone. Again, a reaction completely disproportionate to their size. Same goes for the presence of a snake on the trail which somehow my eyes differentiated from the thousand and one tree roots I’ve (so far) avoided. Again – the leap, the shaking limbs, the hammering heart. All from the smallest of creatures going about their business and wondering what the interloper over there is cursing about.
But there’s another kind of creature encounter on quiet trails that doesn’t involve the actual creature, only their leavings; yes, the spiderwebs.
This is not a sexy hazard of the trail. It’s not the same as a thousand-foot drop to the side, where a misplaced footfall could mean a nasty tumble. It’s not a bear making Taco Tuesday out of you and your sleeping bag. Breaking through hundreds of spiderwebs is not dangerous (unless you happen to run into a poisonous one that is still with it’s web, in which case, new nightmare unlocked).
But it is unbelievably, repetitively, annoying. When on my home trails in the alpine desert, I come across a few webs but not enough to be bothered. But on a trip to the Washington rainforest where I was training for a trail running event, I logged many early morning miles where I discovered that rainforest spiders are prodigious to the point of workaholism. At least once, I did an out-and-back run and they had already strung up the beginnings of a new web to replace the one I broke on my way in.
At first, I felt bad about messing up their homes and their sources of dinner but the sentiment didn’t last long. Trying to brush away bits of web only leads to their further integration into skin, fabric, sunglasses, etc. By the time I was finished, I was wearing a couture overcoat of the strongest tensile material on earth.
So, yes. Watch out for the smallest ones. The spiders with their persistent and careful construction. I salute them for these things and more, but I also wish that every now and then, they would take a night off.
Inspired by events on the Wonderland Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington.
On the land of the Cowlitz, Muckleshoot, Nisqually, Puyallup, Squaxin Island people, and the Confederated Tribes & Bands of the Yakama Nation (source).