Poison ivy is nothing to be trifled with. Years ago, I wrote a column for this magazine called “In Praise of Poison Ivy” – about how its berries keep birds alive in winters when there is little else for them to eat. Praise isn’t something I’ve been much inclined to heap on poison ivy recently. It’s been giving me a time since sometime in late May, when I must have made serious contact with the vine. That’s easy to do, because it’s rampant here, carpeting forest floors, wreathing tree trunks, infiltrating my clearing from the perimeters. For a long time, I was very wary of it, having had a case bad enough
20 or 30 years ago to need a shot and steroids. Recently, I’ve become more careless. Every once in a while I’ve had to apply calamine to a spot on my forearms or hands, but in a few days it’s always cleared up.
I recently tried RVing for the first time. My little tent is sure going to get lonely during future forays into the Blue Ridge Mountains. As a long-time tent camper and fan of Blue Ridge Parkway road trips, the idea of trying an RV for the first time...
