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[pct-l] Poison Oak



Hello All -

Nice graphic, Brick!

My son and I were concerned about poison oak when we started north from
Campo.  We are from Alabama and were VERY familiar with poison ivy, but
neither of us could tell the difference between poison oak and the ten
million other little scrubby plants that California seems to attract.

We asked around and pretty soon other hikers (Californians!) showed us what
poison oak looks like.  We avoided it like the plague from there on up the
trail.

We came down  a nice hillside through a fish hatchery in the little valley
below and decided that it was lunchtime (seems like it was almost always
lunchtime <g>).   I don't remember exactly where this hatchery was (north
California?), but it was full of the first clump of non-hikers that we had
run into for a while.

We found a nice spot in the sun and chunked our shirts into the pretty
little stream for a good wash.  We rinsed off with our bandannas and then
dangled our feet into the water while we settled down for a really
refreshing stop.

About two tortillas into our meal, a group of middle-school looking kids
came by and wanted to know why we were eating our lunch in a patch of poison
oak.  We informed them that thru-hikers had to eat every two hours no matter
where we were or our feet would fall off...and, besides, we weren't in
poison oak at all...poison oak looks like that green stuff over there.

They thought that was about the funniest thing they had ever heard.  When
they quit laughing, they kept bringing other folks over to see what we were
doing and in a short time we were getting advice from virtually every human
anywhere near the hatchery (hatchery staff included - probably 20-30
people).

I gotta admit that we weren't too concerned (bigger crowds provided bigger
yogi opportunities!) until it became obvious that virtually everybody but us
was confused about what poison oak looked like.  We decided that it really
was a shame that these poor people lived in a state where almost every plant
looked vaguely like an oak leaf and those that didn't poked holes in you.

We never did get any kind of rash.

BTW, Brick, those pictures you sent out look just like the veggie those
well-meaning folks at the hatchery were confused about.  You might want to
ask some hikers in south California what poison  oak really looks like...

- Charlie