Drifting Up From The Emerald Triangle

Nightfall at Jackson Lake in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area

The coastal borderlands have demanded my attention of late. Sea meets shore along 7,863 miles from California to Washington. Coastal borderwalking is brutal, and both unpredictable (storms, slides, weather) and predictable (tides, wave action, sea cliffs, beach stones driftwood tangles, etc.) obstacles are de rigueur. I have done small stints at different times in my life and while I generally love the coast I generally hate doing serious borderwalking along it.

The area I wanted to visit in particular burned for the second consecutive year in 2008, fulfilling all the dire prophecies for conflagration posted its way. This summer may be the third year in a row that Northern California and Southern Oregon burn through much the same areas.

Quite a few folks might be thinking justly so. Humboldt and Trinity counties on the north and Mendocino county on the south, form what is infamously known as the Emerald Triangle, an area where growing pot is a major industry. In the two northern counties marijuana production by some counts is the base industry. If everybody isn't growing it the ones who aren't are providing all of the ancillary products necessary to sustain the industry, including an accepting or at least passive attitude.

Marijuana has been legal to use in California for medical purposes since 1996. Since then other laws defining the scope and sources of that medical marijuana have passed almost as often as California forests have burned. It is legal to possess up to 28.5 grams of marijuana if you have a doctor's prescription and it is not an arrestable offense if you don't have a note from the doc. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) lists the following additional consequences on its web site:

• The cultivation or processing of any amount of marijuana is punishable by up to sixteen months in state prison. There is an exception to the cultivation prohibition for patients or patients’ caregivers who possess or cultivate for personal use by the patient upon approval of a physician.
• The laws regarding possession and cultivation of marijuana do not apply to patients or patients’ primary caregivers who possess or cultivate marijuana for the personal medical use of the patient, upon the recommendation or approval of a physician.
• Selling marijuana in any amount is punishable by 2 – 4 years in the state prison. Giving away less than 28.5 grams is a misdemeanor and is punishable by a fine of up to $100.
• Sale of marijuana to a minor is punishable by 3 – 5 years in prison.
• For anyone under the age of 21 convicted of any of the above offenses, the state may suspend the offender’s driver’s license for up to one year.
• Possession of paraphernalia is a civil fine of $200-$300 for the first offense and goes up to $5,000-$6,000 for a fifth or subsequent violation within a five-year period.

See NORML: http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?wtm_view=&Group_ID=4525

If you are somewhat confused by this string of laws you are not alone although many connected to using and/or cultivating explain the seeming contradictions with both volume and the sureness of conviction. The bottom line is that there is a lot of pot being grown for so-called medical consumption. The people who sell it even pay taxes on those sales so the government is at least a tax partner of these operations.

More to come...

What's Over Thattaway?

The last rat-assed piece of logic has been filed away in the electronic netherworld. Whether it all hooks together is somebody else's problem now. I've stuffed my head for half a year with arguments about this and opinions about that, some of it written down and all of it running from room to room in my head.

It's time for the great beyond. I've got places to go where nobody knows or cares if I'm wearing pants. That big white moon, the smell of hot dirt and thirsty sagebrush, a dicky hen running like a dinosaur, covered in the brush, making sounds like a damn rattler.

I expect to be hot. Hope to be. Maybe blister up a bit along the neckline, tempt cancer with the naked top of my ears, eat some grit. Then toward sundown when all that heat is still shimmering up off the desert flats but shadows are lying down to bed I'll pull some beer from the galvanized tub wrapped in gunny sacks under the trailer - two, maybe three. The tops pop and the first one goes all the way down without a rest. That pain grows in a knob there between your eyes so you just shut em and breath the rest of the heat of the day up through your nose hairs and you smell night. It ain't arrived yet but it's comin'. And when your head stops throbbing you crack open your eyes with the next beer and think about dinner and through the slits of your eyes you look out where you ain't been yet.


Looking West Near Hickison Pass, Nevada. Toiyabe Range on the Horizon

On Semester's Border

Mostly I love school. But this last slurp at the trough of learning has been a long swallow. It coincided with an ugly rotator cuff tear on my left shoulder which eventually required surgery. Yep, it's as painful as you've heard. And very instructive on how much humans depend on being symmetrical.

I spent the winter in the mistaken belief that I had a small tear that could be overcome by exercise. Exercise,
San Rafael Swell to Wasatch Plateau

though, had the effect of making things worse. Eventually I got the message and opted for surgery. The doc said hey, that was way worse than we thought! Not at all like it looked on the MRI. Just more confirmation that medicine and car mechanics are the same line of work separated only by the color of grease on your fingers.

My classwork is online from the University of Missouri. In some explosion of short-sightedness I decided a Masters degree in Media Management would be just right for me. That was a few years ago when I thought I would always own newspapers and just drift into fewer hours of work for retirement. Hell, I thought, if James Russell Wiggins could do it so can I. But - like I didn't know - there is no forward track less known than your own.

My business partner, who was always healthier and carried a tenth of the body fat I do, gets Lou Gehrig's Disease. And declines. And dies. We barely get our papers sold before his ability to communicate pretty much stops. Unlike many business partners this one was a gem, probably because we seemed to compliment each other's missing pieces. You know, what I lacked he had and vice versa. We weren't alike at all, really. The only thing we shared was an abiding respect for the other guy's strengths and some discretion about weaknesses.

So anyway, I was talking about school. My experience has been to learn about stuff I've been doing all my life with a whole bunch of people who have done it better than I did and who are mostly a hell of a lot younger. It is damn depressing when you think about it. I feel like Max Evans, who wrote The Rounders and a handfull of some of the best books about the real West you can find. I've had some beers with Max and here is what he'll tell you: It's all a con game. The whole thing. Them that learn the con and do it well have a measure of luck more than those who don't. But the con ain't being run by the folks around you, or by people at all. Nope. And even if you figger out what or who IS running the con it won't matter a spit or a lick.

I've got one more paper to trim up to end this semester and two days to do it. After that, by god, I'm not playing for a while.