The Magical Power of Befriending Poison Oak

I grew up with poison ivy & poison sumac.

Every summer from the age of 8 to 18 (my tenure in rural Wisconsin) I spent 2+ weeks scratching oozing welts on my skin, miserable & occasionally feverish.

When I moved to California I got to know poison oak. At a rave in the Sierras, I wandered into the woods in the dark to pee. By the time I was back in Oakland I was itchy & blistery you-know-where. Maybe it was a year later that I managed to ingest poison oak while foraging & woke up in the middle of the night frantically scratching my throat. That time was the worst. It got ‘into my bloodstream’ & everywhere tender (throat, arm pits, groin, back of knees…) was blistered, raw & cracked for weeks. And those were just the 2 most memorable bouts.

I hated poison oak.

I could spot its pernicious visage yards away. I could sense it’s presence even when I couldn’t see it, like it was cat-calling me energetically. My brain felt itchy & alarmed. I didn’t want to think about poison oak much less be near it. My hatred seemed to increase my sensitivity (or something was increasing my sensitivity). Every bout with it was worse than the last.

Apparently this happens to people. Science, via Google, says that urushiol, the toxic compound found in poison oak, ivy & sumac, is a wildly potent chemical that humans become more & more sensitive to once exposed. I had been exposed & poisoned by urushiol so many times that even looking at those shiny leaves made me uncomfortable.

For much of the 20+ years I have lived in the Bay Area I didn’t allow myself to be nourished by the land that surrounds us, thanks in part to poison oak. Luckily the combination of a hike-happy dog & Covid led me to venture out with some seriousness. Daily immersion in the wild, less-well-traveled trails of the East Bay were the medicine that Sniggi and I needed. But it terrified me to see Sniggi plow through thickets of poison oak knowing he would bring urushiol on his coat home to the house & couch & bed. So each time we returned home I painstakingly sponged him off with hot soapy water then took a shower myself. Despite daily sponging I had continual secondary rashes on my calves & forearms through the spring & summer of 2020. The rashes never got terrible; but they were constant. I balanced their effects with liver & blood supportive teas & figured this was a manageable price to pay for mental balance.

I had heard stories of Indigenous people in CA using poison oak as medicine.

I couldn’t imagine how they managed to make baskets, use the sap as a lacquer & glue, even the leaves as an element in cuisine. Baffling. I doubted the theory that people living in these woodlands could have avoided the ubiquitous poison oak. I treated the stories like mythologies of a magical history. They must have known an antidote or have a genetic variance protecting them. The idea that Indigenous people knew how to intentionally develop immunity via tiny regular micro-doses of poison oak was countered by the ‘science’ which claims ever increasing sensitivity to the urushiol. Whatever alchemy the tribes were up to was beyond my pay-grade.

Of course I applied Ayurveda to the problem.

I knew to take bitter & sweet herbs to support liver & skin. I knew I was more sensitive to angry skin irritations because of my own tendencies towards rakta/blood/pitta imbalance. But as far as I could tell there wasn’t much I could do to reduce my sensitivity to the poison. I had never heard of Ayurveda needing to counter plant-based rashes or propensity to be sensitive.

There is however a story in the Ayurvedic study of visha/poisons that my Ayurveda Teachers loved to tell.

Somewhere in distant Vedic history Kisha Kanyas, or poison girls, were raised on small doses of poison from their birth so that by the time they were young women they would be immune to poisons themselves. The story claims that due to this technique the women were not only immune to poison but also themselves poisonous. Any contact with their more tender tissues, even to their breath, would kill. These young women assassins worked for their king, seducing his enemies to their deaths with a kiss or a whisper. Triangulation of the story is found as Aristotle seems to have warned Alexander the Great about these lady assassins from the East. But today no one is sure if this is historical truth or magical myth.

Teachers tell this story to illustrate the adaptability of the body, even to poisons.

The technique is useful to consider: small amounts of poison, taken with care & regularly (& undoubtedly a few casualties), will establish a familiarity (satmya) in the body for substances that others find toxic. This is why Italian Americans can tolerate so much tomato & cheese. According to Ayurveda this stuff catches up with you when you are older in vata time of life.

But that is certainly another article….

Through late summer 2020 the rashes receded, popping up only occasionally. At the time I thought this was due to the dry season making the plants less oily. I started to skip Sniggi’s daily sponge baths (he really resents being cleaned anyway).

Through 2021 I spent more time than ever in the East Bay Hills. But even when the rain finally did come & shiny poison oak leaves emerged everywhere I had no serious rashes. Here or there an itchy bump would appear, but never more irritating than a mosquito bite. I slowly stopped worrying about poison oak. The plants do not yell rude things to me as I pass anymore. Their communication is more cheerful rowdiness than lewd aggression. I have to remind myself not to be callous towards my mortal hiking-mates’ squeamishness.

How did I go from being the most sensitive to the least sensitive?

The only logic-based explanation I have is that 2 years of daily doses of urushiol from Sniggi’s coat desensitized me. I feel safe in saying that I have been immunized to poison oak. I also feel safe in saying that ‘science’ is wrong about poison oak & that indigenous & ayurvedic knowledge better reflect what is possible.

In a not-so-logic-based explanation the lands that I live on have provided me with the medicine I needed to live more deeply in the place I am. There are many deep & metaphorical things that can be taken from this lesson. But the practical teaching is that the first place to look for medicine is where you are. We are creatures of Place & all traditional medicine systems are premised on this, it is so implicit that no one noticed it. The sun that shines on your house & the wind that blows over the water you drink & the plants that grow in your alley are going to be the best medicines for the illnesses that arise in your home. But that is another story…

Befriending poison oak feels like a victory of the subtle, whole & ancient over the reductive nature of science-based body knowledge.

Trusting the process of making this poison satmya has been part of my journey towards feeling ‘of this place’. I certainly feel I have gained a siddhi from my year of dedication to the hillside. Two years of Covid & a dog companion have led me to become a human OF the East Bay Hills with all that that entails.

But that is also another story…

Read this if you are interested in hearing more about the subtle qualities of poison oak.