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Photo by Bob Pennell Vern Crawford leads an informational hike up Upper Table Rock Saturday morning. The final hike in the spring series sponsored by the Nature Conservancy and the Bureau of Land Management is today. Poison oak can't spoil hike By Bill Varble In 20 years of hiking on Table Rocks, Vern Crawford has never seen a rattlesnake. Too bad he can't say the same for poison oak. The stuff is everywhere here. Crawford points out the shiny green and reddish leaves to fellow hikers. The bush is growing right beside the trail. "Leaves of three, let it be," he says, repeating the old saying. Saturday's hike, led by Crawford, a naturalist, is the next to last in a spring series put on by the Nature Conservancy and the Bureau of Land Management featuring experts in the geology, botany, birds and history of Table Rocks. The last hike is set for 10 a.m. today with Sabrina Rode of the Southern Oregon Historical Society. It's limited to 30 people, and reservations are required. The twin Table Rocks are the only examples of lava mesas between the Umpqua River and the Klamath Basin. The Nature Conservancy owns about 1,900 acres on Lower Table Rock and manages the two Table Rocks jointly with the BLM. The earliest wildflowers here start in February, so it's late in the season now. "We look at anything that's of interest," Crawford says. Buttercups are out, delicate yellow flowers with brown undersides. They're endemic, growing here and pretty much not anywhere else. "What's that?" a hiker asks. Crawford says it's cat's ear, a relative of the Mariposa lily that reminds you of the fur of its namesake. Now is just about peak time for it. Here is wild parsley. Here is camas lily, which was a staple of the American Indians. Here's California white oak. Many of the oaks are covered with moss or lichen, which won't hurt them, unlike the mistletoe that sinks its "roots" deep in their limbs. Here is buckbrush, which blooms in April and May and draws the blue-gray gnatcatcher, a small bird with a long black tail, black wings and a black eyebrow. This is the northern edge of the gnatcatcher's range. Near a large rock formation the view opens out over the valley. "Beautiful," says Norah Roadman, who moved to Jacksonville with her husband Harry from Newport Beach, Calif., in November. There are two theories about the large rocks or monoliths that dot the hillside, Crawford says. One holds that they break off the top of the Table Rocks and slide down. Another is that they're remnants of formations that once had land around them. "Whichever one sounds good to you is OK by me," he says. A new theory about the Rocks' origin is that they are a remnant of a large lava flow that originated near today's Lost Creek Lake about 7 million to 7.5 million years ago and spread as far as the Medford area. The lava on the Table Rocks appears to have come from around Olson Mountain, a large extinct shield volcano just east of the reservoir at Lost Creek (a shield volcano spreads widely instead of forming a cone). Here is bright orange, almost red, Indian paintbrush. Biscuit root, lupines, dogbane. And ponderosa, the only pine around at this altitude unless you're on a serpentine formation, which Table Rocks is not. Here's madrone and its cousin, manzanita. Here are dirt mounds from pocket gophers. Up top is a terrific view. The sun-heated rocks create updrafts hawks and vultures exploit by sailing on them. Anna's and rufous hummingbirds defend their territories with amazing dives on birds they consider potential rivals. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA