Wood Ticks

My grandma and I spent a few hours out in the woods on my grandparent’s farm yesterday. I drove up there to take my final project photos for my photography class. We took our time as we walked pausing often to look around us and observe what we saw. We spotted paper thin bark peeling off the side of birch trees, fallen trees with their roots exposed, moss covered logs, fungus growing out of the side of trees, and even found some bones. We heard all sorts of noises, frogs barking and growling (did you know they bark and growl), wood peckers pecking, birds calling, bugs buzzing and the wind rusting through the trees.


It wasn’t until we were back at the house, sitting on the porch, that we started noticing the wood ticks crawling on us. They actually crawl around for quite a while before latching on. Gives me the hee bee gee bees. Even after I thought I had found them all, hours later I still found a few more. Yuck. Creepy crawly bloodsucking little bugs! This is the time of year when wood ticks abound out in the country. To avoid them, I suppose I could have taken my pictures in the cities or not gone out in the woods. However, if I had done that I would have missed out on a two hour walk with my grandma. I would have missed out on seeing so much of God’s beautiful nature. I would have missed out on all the fantastic pictures I took.


Now I don’t intend to draw a deeply theological observation out of this or throw in a Bible verse and sculpt out a matching message. What it simply made me think of was how in life sometimes the walk in the woods comes with ticks. We shouldn’t miss out on that beautiful walk just because we might pick up a few wood ticks along the way.