I am Muddyshoes - Your designated "Webwalker"

Webwalkers...

They are brave, fearless, and they plod on facing enemy after enemy...

"Webwalking" is a term on the trail which applies to those folks who are the first to hit the trail in the morning. Walking through the woods, the webwalker plods down the trail walking into spider web after spider web, carefully laid across the trail by spiders hoping to catch some smaller, more aggreable prey.

For some reason, the spiders always seem to cast their web right at your face level, but of course you can't see them until they are in your eyes, or your mouth or your nose. You stop for a second and spit and wave your arms or pull your hand down your face hoping to get it off, only to walk a couple feet more and catch the next one. Sometimes you may not feel it or the spiders, who are now walking across your hair, walk down onto your face and your eyelids, or they spin another web and slid down to your chin like some climber on Mount Rushmore.

It's pretty creepy, really.

To the spiders, I'm sure it's no less irritating. They crawl up from the ground or from another branch, set their web, then climb all the way to a branch across the trail and wait. Then, a giant, panting, sweaty hiker walks into the web breaking it. The spider has no meal and even if this human did get stuck in the web, it would take weeks to wrap it. No...he must let it go and make another web once this human has passed.

Leaving after all the other hikers cuts down on the web walking experience. But when you sleep alone in a shelter or are the first one on a section of trail in the morning, you are, by default, the webwalker for the day. Just remember to keep your mouth shut!

Ron