I dressed for the weather rather than the month when I put together this outfit, however while I was practical in that regard it slipped my mind that temperate weather meant the bane of summer evenings (mosquitoes) were also lingering past their usual season. Short story: I got eaten alive while taking these pictures and walked home with more than a dozen fresh bug bites. When I bemoaned my situation to a friend with confusion over all the bugs this late in the season they quipped, "evil never sleeps." Everything has its price I suppose. Picture-taking this past summer didn't feel completely rife with adventure but in the past few months I have stumbled over an enormous black snake, gotten poison ivy, received a brief warning from the police, and routinely encountered the startled hiker and dog walker that seemed bemused to find another person in the woods, not to mention the occasional twisted ankle over a root or frequent batting away of flies, spiders, and other insects. Whenever someone expresses envy over the places I wander in the back of my head I ask "would you really like to visit this spot if you knew the rest of the day you'd have the sensation of things crawling up your legs and a handful of bug bites..?" Mostly rhetorical, because at the end of the day these are small annoyances and anyone who has enjoyed an evening stroll in a wooded area is familiar with its pitfalls. Anyway, it's the first day of October and I'm still in little white dresses with summer-scarred legs...
CONVERSATION