Nettled

 This time of year has a lot to recommend it.

Even apart from a summer long weekend

The lilacs and phlox of spring may be gone, but the lindens and clover are in full bloom and fill the air with scent.

You might almost mistake the heavy, sultry fragrance of linden for lilac, but is there any fresher, more wholesome smell than that of a sun-drenched field of clover?

It's also that incredible time when the trail provides a bounty for the taking, if you know where and how to look.

SNACKS

Unfortunately, flowers and berries aren't the only things growing like crazy. Several sections of local trails - particularly near water, and many of my favourite trails are in river valleys - look like this.

You can just see a sliver of the Speed River at top right

I haven't been able to positively identify this plant, but I've seen a ton of it in recent years.

..and am all too familiar with its effects.

My best guess is some sort of nettle, as these thing have hairy stems that cause nasty welts on exposed skin as you brush past them. I call them the itchy-stingies, and the effects last for days even if you jump directly in the shower for a good scrub-up after getting off the trail.

They also get rather tall

If that wasn't bad enough, other nasty species have taken hold of other sections.

Those yellow flowers? Wild parsnip, which causes rashes and blisters when combined with sunlight 

Then, of course, there are the plants that do less harm to skin..

..but more to clothes and gear

This seems to be a form of Galium aparine, known by many names like catchweed bedstraw, grip grass, and stickywilly. It clings so tightly to other plants that it has made some sections of a local trail completely impassable without some kind of cutting implement.

I briefly considered bringing a machete trailrunning.
Then I thought about my luck, and the odds of needing medical attention for a machete improvidently embedded in my own leg, and decided against it.

I had to nope out on that bit of singletrack and cut along another stretch to the main, groomed trail.

Through this.
Fortunately I know from long experience there is a trail here, and it's only about 100 metres out to the crushed gravel path

Once there, I was able to find my way to some other, less complicated bits of singletrack that were delightful to run.

Even the groomed trail is pretty nice, really

..but the damage was done. The whole of the overgrown sections probably totaled less than 1km out of the 14k I ran that day, but left my poor legs looking like this:

Plus a few itchy blisters on my elbows

So it looks like my options are either to wear long sleeves and tights when I hit these trails..

..which is a bit of a trial with as hot as it's been lately..

..or to just forego them entirely.

..which is a shame, as they're so lovely and so close to home.

Or, I just deal with the itching, stinging welts and blisters as the price of getting to enjoy such beauty on a gorgeous summer day.