It's not the woods, it's the animals. Deer ticks have a life cycle that's dependent on several different critters at several different times-- usually mice and deer. If you have wooded areas without white-tailed deer populations, or with very low mouse populations, you won't have deer ticks, and you probably won't have lyme. Actually I'm not sure about this for the west coast ticks, I know that's a different species and I don't know if they follow the same lifecycle as the ones we have on the east coast.
They get into cities mostly on the mice and they get into suburbs mostly on mice or occasionally dogs (although most of the ticks you see on dogs are dog ticks, which don't USUALLY carry lyme).
I spend all summer in a dead fear of ticks, because more than half the people I work with have had lyme at some point or other. This summer was a bad one for ticks, and every time I found one on me (on my CLOTHES, thank cats), I freaked out. Even if it was obviously a dog tick. I hate handling birds that have ticks, even though the tick is usually attached to the bird and not goin' after you... we're still bare-handed. I really don't know how I haven't been bitten yet. Or, hell, maybe I have been and just don't know it.
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They get into cities mostly on the mice and they get into suburbs mostly on mice or occasionally dogs (although most of the ticks you see on dogs are dog ticks, which don't USUALLY carry lyme).
I spend all summer in a dead fear of ticks, because more than half the people I work with have had lyme at some point or other. This summer was a bad one for ticks, and every time I found one on me (on my CLOTHES, thank cats), I freaked out. Even if it was obviously a dog tick. I hate handling birds that have ticks, even though the tick is usually attached to the bird and not goin' after you... we're still bare-handed. I really don't know how I haven't been bitten yet. Or, hell, maybe I have been and just don't know it.
In short: EEK.