by Tim Homan
Because I have often walked slowly and pushed a clicking measuring wheel in front of me, giving the chitin-covered warlords -- yellowjackets and hornets -- a little more time to sound their silent alarms and release their safeties, and because I have frequently stood stock still taking notes, giving them plenty of time to launch a sortie against a stationary target, I have been stung far more than most hikers per walked mile. The following story recounts my most painful experience with the hardwired warriors of the hymenoptera tribe.
During the late summer of 2006, while I was finishing the trails in the combined Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock and Citico Creek Wildernesses (for a 3rd edition of that hiking guide), flying thumbtacks fired me up at least once on four of my final five hikes. I was lucky the weekend the little kamikazes cut me some slack. I was filter-pumping water from Slickrock Creek while Page and two hiking buddies looked for a suitable branch to hang the bear bag. Page inadvertently scuffed over the entrance to a hidden underground garrison during the search. The pheromone-activated fighters immediately dispatched a steering committee. The completely partisan committee promptly steered Page, Roger, and Nelson away with a single, highly persuasive injection to each of them.
My next to last weekend was by far the worst, seven self-inflicted stings at once, eight total and the most ever during a single dayhike. All those stings occurred during a work trip up Haoe Lead Trail*, the next to last hike to complete my forest work. It was early September, the nights cooling off, a time when yellowjacket numbers are high and their pheromone fuses are notoriously short. Since I already knew the route was obstructed with at least three summers of sun-gap growth, I opted to roll my measuring wheel solo and spare my usual companions the aggravation. In the toughest tangles, it felt more like wading than walking through blackberry briers and dense stands of shoulder-high Aster family wildflowers. My wheel-pushing left arm quickly became crosshatched with bleeding scratches. Sweat rolled over the scratch lines, producing an impressive patina of diluted pink blood down my left forearm from elbow to knuckles.
Around mile 4.6 one of the forest's silent keep-out signs, probably a hornet, popped me with a single sizzling shot of red hot pain on the underside of my right forearm. At precisely mile 5.16, I spotted a gray nest on the ground along the right edge of the path. The papier mâché stop sign -- about 12 inches long, 7 inches wide, and shaped like a lumpy football -- was partially screened by a low mountain laurel branch. So I did what I had done many times before. I advanced to within 10 feet of the fort, scuffed a line in the tread, wrote down the five-digit distance figure (27,253 feet), and waited to see what sort of congenitally ill-tempered insect flew out of the hole. Yellowjackets.
I would half-circle into the woods out and around their above-ground incubator and back to the trail, making sure I held the measuring wheel so it wouldn't click. Once I regained the track, I would carefully work my way downhill until I spotted the nest, then estimate the distance, spin the feet onto the counter, and continue walking. No big deal.
I took the frequently bending line of least resistance through the beech-sapling thicket and angled back to the footpath higher than I would have liked. No problem, all I had to do was walk the trail until I noticed the nest again. I stepped slowly down Haoe Lead, scanning all the while, until I was sure I was within 15 feet of the battery of stinger missiles. I looked again, took a few more short steps. Nothing, no pale gray football. Maybe I had come out of the beech higher up than I thought.
I focused with more intensity, moved forward a couple of even shorter and slower steps. Again nothing, no nest or female commandos flying reconnaissance in sight. My spatial sense was now in open rebellion. I excluded the foreground again, then edged forward, leaning to the left as I strained to see what I knew was there. My body was on full alert, stood ready to release a sopping dose of adrenaline. But the eyes are the final arbiters, and they had always worked just fine before. I took a few more tentative steps -- lead foot scuffling forward 6 inches, trailing foot coming up even -- spatial alarms now wailing through my command and control centers, calling my eyes liars with each baby step.
I felt needle-point fire and saw the nest geysering enemy combatants at the toe end of my left boot at the same instant. Lighter fluid squirted on lit coals. I spun around with adrenaline's explosive fury, tore out low and fast, but lost my footing and began a forward stumble. I felt fresh stabs on my upper back. I dog paddled my hands against the treadway while my legs kept pumping. I popped up and ran with fear's insistent prod all the way to the top of the mountain, which, as I learned a little later, was only 70 yards away.
As soon as I stopped at the Haoe's small loafing spot and backrest rock, I grabbed at my neck and wriggled out of my heavy daypack. I took a series of deep inhalations to calm adrenaline's charge and catch my breath. I drank Gatorade from my canteen and cooled down a minute while taking inventory of my still smarting stings.
From the waist down I wore loose long shorts, neoprene knee braces, heavy socks and leather boots. One of the little buggers had punctured both my thin, moisture-wicking T-shirt and skin to deliver a shot to the lower right side of my stomach. My upper left calf had been hit by a pair of stinger-tipped guards, their defense mechanisms close together on the bare flesh below the bottom of the brace. I felt two welts also close together on the back right side of my neck just above the collar and more discomfort on my upper right back a few inches in from my armpit. (I really couldn't tell if two close-together pain-prods were the result of two workers releasing a single shot apiece, or one worker stinging me twice in the same location.)
I didn't spend much time atop the 5,249-foot peak because I still had to retrieve my gear before backtracking the 5 mostly downhill miles to trailhead and long ride home. I retraced my steps until I saw the industrial shine of my bright orange measuring wheel. I stepped into the dense growth of root-sucker beech saplings and quarter-circled around until I thought I was even with the wheel. I took off my pack and put on my gaiters and olive drab rain jacket for protection. As I yanked the jacket's zipper up it caught in the flap of fabric running alongside. I couldn't budge the fabric or zipper either up or down. Pissed, punctured, and becoming hotter by the second, I cut the fabric with my pocket knife. I raised the hood, tightened the toggle at my neck, and overlapped the Velcro strips so they were snug at my wrists.
Finally ready, I slowly crept close to the yellowjackets on my hands and knees. The low-tech tools of my trade were in less problematic positions than I had imagined. My hiking stick, the very thing I needed first, was in the best location for pain-free extraction. My stick had landed a couple of feet further down the footpath from the wheel and nest. It lay slanted like a back slash and extended nearly 2 feet into my side of the woods. The notebook had hit the ground on my side of the tread a few inches to the right of the closest rim of the wheel. The wheel's furthest rim and spokes rested atop the mountain laurel branch and slightly indented nest. The wheel's handle lay to my left, angled away so that its black rubber grips were a half-foot off the track on the far, uphill side of the trail. Fighters still on full alert flew laps around their home, their onboard, ass-end munitions locked and loaded.
I crept closer and closer, sweating and swelling inside my rain jacket. I slowly reached for my hiking stick, grabbed it, then whirled around and thrashed back through the beech thicket to my daypack, where I remained to let the little black-and-yellow brawlers calm down for a minute or two. Nearly a decade earlier, I had screwed a three-quarter-loop metal hook into the top of my basswood hiking stick to help with the chore of hanging the bear bag while canoe-camping in the Northcountry. I crept in again, caught one of my spiral notebook's metal rings, and weaved through the lattice work of saplings to pack and safety.
Two down, the hardest one to go. I put on my daypack, crawled to the uphill side of the nest before ever so slowly extending my hiking stick out to the higher of the twin bars running from handle to wheel. No go. The bar was too thick to fit through the hook's gap. Plan B. I retreated back into the beech and wormed my way to the downridge side of the wheel. I reached out and fished for a spoke. On my third attempt I hooked one, jerked the wheel up as I came out of my crouch, grabbed it, fled down the trail and hurdled over a deadfall -- adrenaline's leaping athlete again.
I stopped for a break to cool down. I took off my pack and rain jacket before starting back uphill with just notebook, hiking stick, and wheel. Five feet from the scuff mark, I did what I had done many times before when faced with the impenetrable tangle of a blowdown. I walked perpendicularly away from the trail into the woods to the left. I wheel-measured through the woods parallel to the trail, frequently having to pick up the wheel and move it a few feet straight right or left to avoid the densest huddles of beech saplings. When I was well past the threat, I carried the wheel back to the trail and finished measuring the short remainder up to the Haoe's highpoint.
On the way back down I saw that the nest had been better hidden coming from the uphill side. But I still should have seen it. That night at home I discovered that my eyes were no longer the final arbiters in certain situations. The view out of the bottom of my brand new bifocals, especially when heavily sweat smeared, was quite fuzzy beyond the up-close focal length of reading and writing. When I thought I was excluding the immediate foreground, I really wasn't.
Note
The name yellowjacket is used in the generic sense to refer to the various species of small wasps with black and yellow markings, especially those in the Vespula genus. This suite of stinging insects usually nests in the ground or at ground level.
Worker yellowjackets are all female, and each worker has the ability to sting multiple times. Yellowjackets utilize two different pheromones, known as alarm and marker, in defense of their home and queen. They sound the alarm with a silent but scented trumpet, a chemical call to arms -- attack, attack, attack.
The second pheromone allows the yellowjackets to light up the target with scent, scent that orders the incoming warrior-sisters to sting in a tight shot pattern to maximize the growing pain, to maximize the deterrence. The workers accomplish this sophisticated feat by depositing the marker scent directly onto intruders or nest predators -- mostly skunks and bears, sometimes bumbling humans -- while they are stinging them. This chemical directs fire as if the multi-tasking females had forward spotters calling in tight, sting-pattern attacks while sitting on a bear's face. The ultimate aim of this two-pronged attack is to cause multiplying pain as quickly as possible, to overwhelm the intruder with pain to its most vulnerable body parts before it can damage or devour the nest's contents. As they home in on the scented enemy, the warrior-workers are the tiny but effective short-distance equivalent of a GPS-guided stinger missile.
*The Haoe Lead Trail (pronounced Hay-oh) is a 6.8-mile upper-slope and ridgeline route in the Joyce Kilmer area of the Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness (North Carolina, Nantahala National Forest, Graham County). The Tennessee Wilderness Act of 2018 added approximately 1,836 acres to the two-state wilderness, enlarging the wild area to approximately19,246 acres (Cherokee National Forest, Monroe County).
During the late summer of 2006, while I was finishing the trails in the combined Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock and Citico Creek Wildernesses (for a 3rd edition of that hiking guide), flying thumbtacks fired me up at least once on four of my final five hikes. I was lucky the weekend the little kamikazes cut me some slack. I was filter-pumping water from Slickrock Creek while Page and two hiking buddies looked for a suitable branch to hang the bear bag. Page inadvertently scuffed over the entrance to a hidden underground garrison during the search. The pheromone-activated fighters immediately dispatched a steering committee. The completely partisan committee promptly steered Page, Roger, and Nelson away with a single, highly persuasive injection to each of them.
My next to last weekend was by far the worst, seven self-inflicted stings at once, eight total and the most ever during a single dayhike. All those stings occurred during a work trip up Haoe Lead Trail*, the next to last hike to complete my forest work. It was early September, the nights cooling off, a time when yellowjacket numbers are high and their pheromone fuses are notoriously short. Since I already knew the route was obstructed with at least three summers of sun-gap growth, I opted to roll my measuring wheel solo and spare my usual companions the aggravation. In the toughest tangles, it felt more like wading than walking through blackberry briers and dense stands of shoulder-high Aster family wildflowers. My wheel-pushing left arm quickly became crosshatched with bleeding scratches. Sweat rolled over the scratch lines, producing an impressive patina of diluted pink blood down my left forearm from elbow to knuckles.
Around mile 4.6 one of the forest's silent keep-out signs, probably a hornet, popped me with a single sizzling shot of red hot pain on the underside of my right forearm. At precisely mile 5.16, I spotted a gray nest on the ground along the right edge of the path. The papier mâché stop sign -- about 12 inches long, 7 inches wide, and shaped like a lumpy football -- was partially screened by a low mountain laurel branch. So I did what I had done many times before. I advanced to within 10 feet of the fort, scuffed a line in the tread, wrote down the five-digit distance figure (27,253 feet), and waited to see what sort of congenitally ill-tempered insect flew out of the hole. Yellowjackets.
I would half-circle into the woods out and around their above-ground incubator and back to the trail, making sure I held the measuring wheel so it wouldn't click. Once I regained the track, I would carefully work my way downhill until I spotted the nest, then estimate the distance, spin the feet onto the counter, and continue walking. No big deal.
I took the frequently bending line of least resistance through the beech-sapling thicket and angled back to the footpath higher than I would have liked. No problem, all I had to do was walk the trail until I noticed the nest again. I stepped slowly down Haoe Lead, scanning all the while, until I was sure I was within 15 feet of the battery of stinger missiles. I looked again, took a few more short steps. Nothing, no pale gray football. Maybe I had come out of the beech higher up than I thought.
I focused with more intensity, moved forward a couple of even shorter and slower steps. Again nothing, no nest or female commandos flying reconnaissance in sight. My spatial sense was now in open rebellion. I excluded the foreground again, then edged forward, leaning to the left as I strained to see what I knew was there. My body was on full alert, stood ready to release a sopping dose of adrenaline. But the eyes are the final arbiters, and they had always worked just fine before. I took a few more tentative steps -- lead foot scuffling forward 6 inches, trailing foot coming up even -- spatial alarms now wailing through my command and control centers, calling my eyes liars with each baby step.
I felt needle-point fire and saw the nest geysering enemy combatants at the toe end of my left boot at the same instant. Lighter fluid squirted on lit coals. I spun around with adrenaline's explosive fury, tore out low and fast, but lost my footing and began a forward stumble. I felt fresh stabs on my upper back. I dog paddled my hands against the treadway while my legs kept pumping. I popped up and ran with fear's insistent prod all the way to the top of the mountain, which, as I learned a little later, was only 70 yards away.
As soon as I stopped at the Haoe's small loafing spot and backrest rock, I grabbed at my neck and wriggled out of my heavy daypack. I took a series of deep inhalations to calm adrenaline's charge and catch my breath. I drank Gatorade from my canteen and cooled down a minute while taking inventory of my still smarting stings.
From the waist down I wore loose long shorts, neoprene knee braces, heavy socks and leather boots. One of the little buggers had punctured both my thin, moisture-wicking T-shirt and skin to deliver a shot to the lower right side of my stomach. My upper left calf had been hit by a pair of stinger-tipped guards, their defense mechanisms close together on the bare flesh below the bottom of the brace. I felt two welts also close together on the back right side of my neck just above the collar and more discomfort on my upper right back a few inches in from my armpit. (I really couldn't tell if two close-together pain-prods were the result of two workers releasing a single shot apiece, or one worker stinging me twice in the same location.)
I didn't spend much time atop the 5,249-foot peak because I still had to retrieve my gear before backtracking the 5 mostly downhill miles to trailhead and long ride home. I retraced my steps until I saw the industrial shine of my bright orange measuring wheel. I stepped into the dense growth of root-sucker beech saplings and quarter-circled around until I thought I was even with the wheel. I took off my pack and put on my gaiters and olive drab rain jacket for protection. As I yanked the jacket's zipper up it caught in the flap of fabric running alongside. I couldn't budge the fabric or zipper either up or down. Pissed, punctured, and becoming hotter by the second, I cut the fabric with my pocket knife. I raised the hood, tightened the toggle at my neck, and overlapped the Velcro strips so they were snug at my wrists.
Finally ready, I slowly crept close to the yellowjackets on my hands and knees. The low-tech tools of my trade were in less problematic positions than I had imagined. My hiking stick, the very thing I needed first, was in the best location for pain-free extraction. My stick had landed a couple of feet further down the footpath from the wheel and nest. It lay slanted like a back slash and extended nearly 2 feet into my side of the woods. The notebook had hit the ground on my side of the tread a few inches to the right of the closest rim of the wheel. The wheel's furthest rim and spokes rested atop the mountain laurel branch and slightly indented nest. The wheel's handle lay to my left, angled away so that its black rubber grips were a half-foot off the track on the far, uphill side of the trail. Fighters still on full alert flew laps around their home, their onboard, ass-end munitions locked and loaded.
I crept closer and closer, sweating and swelling inside my rain jacket. I slowly reached for my hiking stick, grabbed it, then whirled around and thrashed back through the beech thicket to my daypack, where I remained to let the little black-and-yellow brawlers calm down for a minute or two. Nearly a decade earlier, I had screwed a three-quarter-loop metal hook into the top of my basswood hiking stick to help with the chore of hanging the bear bag while canoe-camping in the Northcountry. I crept in again, caught one of my spiral notebook's metal rings, and weaved through the lattice work of saplings to pack and safety.
Two down, the hardest one to go. I put on my daypack, crawled to the uphill side of the nest before ever so slowly extending my hiking stick out to the higher of the twin bars running from handle to wheel. No go. The bar was too thick to fit through the hook's gap. Plan B. I retreated back into the beech and wormed my way to the downridge side of the wheel. I reached out and fished for a spoke. On my third attempt I hooked one, jerked the wheel up as I came out of my crouch, grabbed it, fled down the trail and hurdled over a deadfall -- adrenaline's leaping athlete again.
I stopped for a break to cool down. I took off my pack and rain jacket before starting back uphill with just notebook, hiking stick, and wheel. Five feet from the scuff mark, I did what I had done many times before when faced with the impenetrable tangle of a blowdown. I walked perpendicularly away from the trail into the woods to the left. I wheel-measured through the woods parallel to the trail, frequently having to pick up the wheel and move it a few feet straight right or left to avoid the densest huddles of beech saplings. When I was well past the threat, I carried the wheel back to the trail and finished measuring the short remainder up to the Haoe's highpoint.
On the way back down I saw that the nest had been better hidden coming from the uphill side. But I still should have seen it. That night at home I discovered that my eyes were no longer the final arbiters in certain situations. The view out of the bottom of my brand new bifocals, especially when heavily sweat smeared, was quite fuzzy beyond the up-close focal length of reading and writing. When I thought I was excluding the immediate foreground, I really wasn't.
Note
The name yellowjacket is used in the generic sense to refer to the various species of small wasps with black and yellow markings, especially those in the Vespula genus. This suite of stinging insects usually nests in the ground or at ground level.
Worker yellowjackets are all female, and each worker has the ability to sting multiple times. Yellowjackets utilize two different pheromones, known as alarm and marker, in defense of their home and queen. They sound the alarm with a silent but scented trumpet, a chemical call to arms -- attack, attack, attack.
The second pheromone allows the yellowjackets to light up the target with scent, scent that orders the incoming warrior-sisters to sting in a tight shot pattern to maximize the growing pain, to maximize the deterrence. The workers accomplish this sophisticated feat by depositing the marker scent directly onto intruders or nest predators -- mostly skunks and bears, sometimes bumbling humans -- while they are stinging them. This chemical directs fire as if the multi-tasking females had forward spotters calling in tight, sting-pattern attacks while sitting on a bear's face. The ultimate aim of this two-pronged attack is to cause multiplying pain as quickly as possible, to overwhelm the intruder with pain to its most vulnerable body parts before it can damage or devour the nest's contents. As they home in on the scented enemy, the warrior-workers are the tiny but effective short-distance equivalent of a GPS-guided stinger missile.
*The Haoe Lead Trail (pronounced Hay-oh) is a 6.8-mile upper-slope and ridgeline route in the Joyce Kilmer area of the Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness (North Carolina, Nantahala National Forest, Graham County). The Tennessee Wilderness Act of 2018 added approximately 1,836 acres to the two-state wilderness, enlarging the wild area to approximately19,246 acres (Cherokee National Forest, Monroe County).
