Labor Day weekend. Annual canoe trip, carrying gear to camp two nights on the river. Saturday we make good progress, start looking for a gravel bar to camp on around 3:30. The one we’ve usually used on this trip has sprouted lots of eight inch high vegetation this year, not tent-friendly, so we go on. At about 4:00, we’re at an official float camp, and decide to use it, as it’s a bird in the hand and we’re getting tired. First time in years we’ve used a float camp rather than a gravel bar.
Camp is nice enough. The sites have good-sized picnic tables and a fair amount of flat sandy ground. I put our tent up with its back side nudging into a thriving poison ivy patch. I haven’t had poison ivy in years, so I’m not really worried. I do have to walk into it a bit to set some stakes, and I’m thinking, this is a lot of poison ivy.
Rain was predicted for every day of the weekend, and we were getting some in camp. Instead of changing into my “evening clothes”–dry stuff–I figure I might as well just keep wearing my damp river shorts and sandals. Anything I put on will get damp or wet from the rain anyway.
Sunday’s canoeing is short to our second gravel bar, a particular one we use each year. We get there at lunchtime, unload the canoes and set some stuff out to dry, and nibble away. I notice a cluster of little blisters on my left foot, under a sandal strap. I put two and two together, and conclude I pushed my luck too far. I was cavalier about the poison ivy, and it got me. First time in 35 or 40 years. Well, at least it’s not itching yet. Still, I’m somewhat bummed out.
Sunday night in the tent, I notice this little speck on my white T-shirt. The speck moves. Holy crap, I’m seeing a chigger! They’re hardly ever seen, as they’re really small, and they’re so light you never feel them on you. I scrape it off, and a few minutes later see another one on my arm. Over 25 years of camping, getting my fair share of chigger bites along the way, without ever actually seeing one, and now I see two in as many minutes. Hmmm. I sprinkle sulfur powder generously between my hips and the tops of my thighs. I definitely don’t want the chiggers to go there. I also dab some liquid soap on the poison ivy area and sleep with my socks on.
In the morning, I show my wife my left foot. She says she doesn’t think it’s poison ivy–it looks like chigger bites. A lot of chigger bites. It dawns on me that I put two and two together and came up with five. I didn’t get poison ivy.
Apparently that float camp was the site for this year’s national chigger convention. They held one of their seminars in the room under my sandal strap. At home, I count over 40 bites just on my left foot. There are probably half that many distributed on other parts of my body. They’re starting to itch. I’m not looking forward to the next few days.