(Continued from December’s Green Room Diaries)
Getting lost in rural Humboldt County is not much different from being on the road in rural Humboldt while knowing exactly where you’re going; regardless of what your map or GPS says, you’re at least a few hours away from a decent gas station, cell reception or non-living food at any given time (notice how I used time as a measurement of distance from civilization, as opposed to mileage—it will come in later).
I headed toward my destination, a town called Willow Creek, made famous by the most "legitimate" (quotes emphasized) evidence for sasquatch. Apparently, "squatching" is a well-respected vocation in the confines of the Emerald Triangle, with local legends, such as Discovery Channel’s Bobo, making millions of dollars off of hunting nonexistent, mythical creatures (further proof that the weed game doesn’t pay that much, when put into perspective). Economies Of Scale 101—you now have four credit hours to apply toward a bullshit liberal arts degree.
Anyhow, I had just gassed up at a convenience store that had no less than a dozen slot machines scattered around, but only one variety of coconut water; this meant that I was on Native American land, which is much different than the typical variety of Humboldt "earth-friendly" culture. As in, it’s real. And reality checks can be both refreshing and terrifying.
As opposed to students living on organic flax seed, Natives in the Northern California area are among the most impoverished, having been dealt worse hands than most other tribes. To put it simply, reservations in Humboldt (each of which locals refer to as "The Res") make urban American ghettos look like gated communities. This is not the fault of the Native population, but rather, a legal system that has forgotten the indigenous peoples who kept Humboldt’s ecosystem in such a pristine state for years—well before the hippies turned it into a reefer refuge. The irony of tourists purchasing "genuine Indian souvenirs" from the Trees Of Mystery gift shop on the way into the county is among the more glaring examples of white privilege (a habit that goes unchecked in uber-left communities).
To be white (or black, Asian...anything non- Native) on a Res is straight up dangerous. You will get jacked, beaten up or worse. Each Res has about one police officer for every few hundred locals and if you think black-white racial tension is serious, imagine how it would be if slavery were currently legal in random enclaves of the woods. I had the option of driving east (rocks and mountains) or west (mountains and rocks), according a map I had purchased (it was geared toward elderly couples on RV road trips, as indicated by the pull-out section that had Denny’s listed as an "attraction"). The only visible difference was about sixty miles of road, so I opted for the shortcut.
Shortcuts are always a bad idea in Humboldt. Thirty miles could mean thirty minutes or thirty hours, depending on the back road.
Once the gravel road got down to a single lane, I noticed that I was only two miles into my fifteen-mile "shortcut," but had experienced about a dozen reminders of my previously- ignored fear of heights (or, possibly, it was the thought of instant death at the hands of a semi-truck-driving sasquatch hunter). After a few miles of driving cliffside, on gravel, with a "check engine" light on (a sign of shitty gasoline—why I never opt for the ten cents more it takes for premium is a mystery to me) and a lit blunt I had obtained from a dispensary that came in a package labeled "Tour Of Humboldt" (which turned out to be comprised of anything that fell out of the dispensary’s grinder over the course of the last week (aka an unsafe blend of sativa, indica, bits of candy and human and/or animal hair), shit got tense.
Turning a corner, my blunt smoke appeared to be turning black. However, as the smoke from around the approaching curve became thicker, I began to assume that it wasn’t my weed that was to blame. Also, gigantic, gaping flames being soaked in water from the world’s shittiest lawn hose. Those were there too.
A handful of volunteer fire people—each of whom appeared to be equipped for battle against anything smaller than a kiddie pool’s worth of danger—stood alongside a fire truck that once doubled as a school bus (which obviously doubled as a mobile home for Rainbow Family alumni). Watching them attempt to battle the forest fire was the equivalent of rooting for the first black character to go lurking around the dark in a horror movie. I mustered up all the stupidity my brain could handle and asked the least-unprofessional-looking of the volunteer fire-observers if the road would be open anytime soon. Their answer was a simple shake of the head, followed by gradual laughter that eventually served as a source of entertainment for the whole crew.
So, there I was, with instant murder on each side of me, enough supplies to last for however long a bag of almonds and two cigarettes buys me (one hour) and nothing but the promise of a few hundred bucks per pound of processed vegetable keeping me from turning around and saying "fuck it."
This is the red pill moment that every weed grower/trimmer/dealer has at some point in their Humboldt County life. Yes, there is some attractiveness to the counterculture and lore that surrounds Mary Jane and her wondrous world. Still, the old argument that it’s just a plant, when taken beyond the courtroom, can be sobering. You could not convince your average weedhead to get into the tomato industry, especially if tomatoes were grown on the side of Death Mountain, CA, so why do we cum ourselves over the idea of getting into the *wink* tomato *wink* industry? It’s fucking legal now (at least in Oregon and Washington, with California on the way). This is manual farm labor, with a much higher payout, but manual farm labor nonetheless.
I decided to opt out of making the trek to Willow Creek, partially out of impatience, but mostly due to a nagging voice in the back of my head that, beyond gravel roads and dangerous gas stations, an entirely different danger was lurking in the shadows behind the redwood curtain. As it turns out, the trim scene I was headed to didn’t end up being the place out-of-town gangbangers decided to target for a robbery; the spot I was headed toward— where I was to meet my buddy—was.
(To be concluded in next month’s Green Room Diaries)
