If you hike on the east coast you are undoubtably encountering ticks. Here is some additonal reading on tick awareness, prevention and extraction.

How to coexist with ticks?

You need to think about prevention, awareness, and if necessary extraction. Prevention is treating your clothes. Wearing appropriate clothes on a hike and staying on trail. Awareness is tick-checking. Tick check yourself, your partner your animal! What do you do with your clothes when you get off of trail? Do you put them in an airtight container? Do you dry them when you get home? Are you changing at the trailhead? And then if necessary extraction. You need to know how to properly extract a tick if you’ve found yourself with one embedded in you. You need to get a tweezer, get as close to the head as possible and pull directly up. You don’t ever want to smoosh, or twist a tick. This is how you can prevent the diseases from transmitting.