Poison Oak

My grandmother, Bridget O'Brien Joyce, came down with a severe case of poison oak in the spring and in the fall, whether she left her house or not. She lived right in the middle of an old residential neighborhood of two-story frame houses in Portland, Ore. No one else got poison oak in the middle of town. Not my father or either of my two aunts. And not Uncle Dennis, Grandma's brother, although they all lived in the same tall house.

I still remember the moment in my childhood in which I lost all faith in the innocent purity of plants. One day, I was a carefree adolescent at summer camp, exploring the leafy woods with my fellow campers. A couple of days later, I was an illustration for a medical textbook. "The worst case of poison ivy I've ever seen!" the camp nurse told the other staffers as she trotted me and my dime-sized blisters around for inspection. OK, I kind of enjoyed the attention. The slightly awestruck reaction.

They're kicking off the Poison Oak Festival here along the Russian River this weekend, complete with an itchy queen and "guideless tours of select patches of poison oak." "What we really want to do is pay tribute from a respectable distance," Forestville Chamber of Commerce spokeswoman Nancy Wallace said Friday. "We want to find people itching to find good bargains (at a community sidewalk sale) without coming up with a lot of scratch."

My first reaction to this assignment was (to sanitize the expression) "Drat! What have I gotten myself into?" Biking is my main outdoors activity, but grinding 13 miles straight up a mountain? I'm really just a mountain bike dabbler. I can't dazzle you with tales of handlebar flips or skin-shredding tumbles off rocky drop-offs. Yet I've long been drawn to the chaparral, mesmerized by its strange mix of rattlers and butterflies, scratchy branches and lacy wildflowers. Nothing captures this better than the ride to Little Pine Mountain, which local trail expert Ray Ford describes as "the premier ride in the Santa Ynez Valley.

It's going to be a good year for poison oak, which is bad news for anybody who is contemplating tripping through the woods. The wet winter has produced a bumper crop of the nefarious plant. Poison oak is just beginning to leaf, and is abundant and omnipresent in L.A.-area mountains and forests, particularly on cooler north-facing slopes. "This year will be worse than normal," state Ranger Frank Padilla said. Contact with poison oak can cause a severe rash that lasts about 10 days.

The showers that brought May flowers also brought a bumper crop of poison oak to the San Francisco East Bay hills and regions of Marin County. Steve Fiala, trails coordinator for the East Bay Regional Park District, said poison oak is exceptionally hardy and will crowd out other plants when it has the opportunity. "This is one of the worst years I've seen in 12 years," he said.

Ranger Terry Austin has a warning for hikers, campers and anyone else who ventures into the woods these days: Life's an itch. The record winter rains have produced a bumper crop of poison oak from the Simi Hills to the Topatopa Mountains to city parks and barrancas. Enveloping hillsides, creeping onto trails, the noxious native plant "is everywhere," Austin said. All over Ventura County, dermatologists are seeing an increase in poison oak cases compared with this time last year.

On the heels of a walk on the wild side comes the itchy surprise: poison oak. The options and costs for relief: * Scratching, free but not recommended. * Long shower, cheap but not foolproof to rinse away toxins. * Itch Nix herbal mixture spray, four ounces, $4.98 and up. * Calamine lotion, six ounces, $6.29.

In a freak side effect of the Laguna Canyon mudslides, many slide victims are suffering from poison oak. Canyon residents, rescue workers and others who volunteered after the slide have been plagued with rashes from poison oak sap that washed down in the mud from the hillsides above. "It's all over my body," said Tangerine Bolen, who lost her home and most of her belongings in the Feb. 23 slide.

Dr. William Epstein has devoted 30 years--half of his life--to finding a way to protect humans from poison oak. Finally, Epstein and his fellow crusaders against the weed seem to have come up with a solution: mud. A professor of dermatology at the UC San Francisco School of Medicine, Epstein admits he once scoffed at the suggestion that a substance might be found that would effectively block urushiol, the toxic ingredient in poison oak, poison ivy and poison sumac.

It was shortly before lunchtime Sunday when the wind shifted and the full bouquet of a truck emptying a portable toilet at the Station fire base camp wafted by Wally Grogan. "I don't care how long I do this job, I never get used to that smell," said Grogan, moving quickly. For nearly three weeks, firefighters have battled the Station fire. The blaze, the largest in Los Angeles County history, killed two firefighters, spread over 160,000 acres and has cost at least $90 million to fight.

I'M running late. Adan Ortega Jr. and his three punctual friends -- Leo, Randall and Ron -- are waiting at the foot of the Puente Hills with their Leki hiking sticks when I pull into the trail head parking lot at the crack of dawn with no poles in my hand or caffeine in my head. But what am I really lacking? Faith -- that a long hike near the City of Industry and right next door to one of the nation's largest landfills can be worth getting up for in the dark on a Sunday morning.

Regarding "The Big Bloom" [March 1]: Nice story on wildflowers. But keep in mind that there are a lot of places closer to Los Angeles to view them. In a good year, the hills surrounding Gorman off Interstate 5 will explode with California poppies and other flowers. You can get off the freeway at Gorman and drive north or south on the frontage road for a closer look or photographs. Richard Varenchik Valencia I just returned from the Colorado River. A highlight was the wildflowers.

Re "Swallowed by Urban Sprawl," Oct. 18: Riverside County Supervisor Tom Mullen says the solution to the sprawl problems in Riverside and San Bernardino is to spend $13 billion on four new highways. This is his "innovative way to deal with" the problem. His solution is like suggesting a heavy wire brush is the solution to poison oak. More highways lower the time and cost of travel. Demand increases as costs are reduced. When people can travel farther in the same amount of time, they will live farther away.

Regarding "Mission Trails Park Offers Up the Wilder Side of San Diego" (Hiking, Aug. 18): Hikers really must be alert to the poison oak in Oak Canyon. I cannot tell you how many people emerged from those trails with a rash. HILARY CEJKA Rolling Hills

This small beach community on the Central Coast has been captivated by a knotty mystery--replete with shadowy suspects in a leafy upscale neighborhood, nighttime poisonings and an outraged citizenry. The victim? Twenty-one oak trees. "This has turned into a real whodunit," said a baffled and slightly chagrined Art Trinidad, supervisor of the county's code enforcement office. "It's getting a lot like a TV movie."

It lies there innocently, not making a sound, not moving, just waiting in some shady location--maybe along a stream bed or beneath an oak tree. If you're not careful, you'll miss it, maybe even walk right through it. That's when the trouble begins. Of course, you won't know it for a while. Give it a day or so. Then the rash will appear. And the itching will start. At least that's the case for the estimated 85% of the population who suffer allergic reactions to the dreaded poison oak.

Cathy Philipp has an unusual method of keeping kids away from poison oak. "That's the M.C. Hammer plant," she told a group of curious 7- and 8-year-olds who got too close to some poison oak Friday morning in Point Mugu State Park. "Why do you call it the M.C. Hammer plant?" one of the would-be outdoorsmen asked the naturalist, while his fellow students crowded around the clump of green and red vines just off the trail. "Because you can't touch this!"

At the least, Times columnists are at last recognizing that there is a fall in Southern California whether it be spider webs slapping them in the face (Robert Jones, Sept. 6) or puffy eyes and flat hair in the morning (Shawn Hubler, Oct. 12). The weather page recognizes fall, too. The long, hot days of summer are gone; we can now sleep at night. We water our gardens less and enjoy the balmy afternoons more. The biting and annoying insects are gone. In their place we have sunsets with crimson and golden streaks, we have mountains silhouetted against twilight skies and lights sparkling in the valleys, and we have large, luminous full moons rising softly through the dusk.

In a freak side effect of the Laguna Canyon mudslides, many slide victims are suffering from poison oak. Canyon residents, rescue workers and others who volunteered after the slide have been plagued with rashes from poison oak sap that washed down in the mud from the hillsides above. "It's all over my body," said Tangerine Bolen, who lost her home and most of her belongings in the Feb. 23 slide.