Tales From the Sustainable Underground by Stephen Hren

Author:Stephen Hren [Hren, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Popular Culture, Nature, Environmental Conservation & Protection, Political Science, Public Policy, Social Policy, Philosophy, Social
ISBN: 9781550924879
Google: yhw60hM7ZWAC
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Published: 2011-11-15T05:37:52+00:00

Relaxing with a cold beer and some beautiful ladies in Humboldt county.

Apparently, not many residents of the Emerald Triangle were in agreement. I say “apparently” because I was not introduced into the larger reefer community in the area, and received most of these opinions second-hand from my hosts. Pot is very big money in California, around $14 billion annually. The vote represented a very real economic threat to the entrenched growers up here, threatening to wipe out a way of life.

Before you get all misty eyed about eco-minded hippies in the hills losing their small source of income and no longer able to buy farm implements, tofu and solar panels for their geodesic domes, please know that those days are long, long gone. The big boys have moved in, most of the pot is grown in underground grow rooms that burn tons of planet-fouling diesel to power artificial lighting, and they use their millions in easy profits to drive around in Hummers and build garish McMansions tucked back in those same hills where the flower children once roamed. Gun ownership probably approaches 100 percent. I was vociferously warned to obey property boundaries on the few short meanderings I took among the California black oak and dry grass. It didn’t take me long to circle the perimeter of known safe lands and realize I was, to all extents and purposes, trapped on my hosts’ compound in the same way I would be in a minimum security prison. I couldn’t see the men with the guns, but they were there.

Other than that, the area is an idyllic paradise. Winding mountain roads provide amazing views of fog-shrouded valleys where the redwoods grow (or used to) to towering heights. Some of the sunsets up there would make the gods themselves quiver with delight, with the Pacific Ocean a felt but rarely seen presence just beyond the iridescent ridge tops, so vast it’s capable of absorbing the totality of the sun in its waters every dusk. I know, I know, you don’t want to hear me wax poetic about sunsets, you want to hear about the ladies! Well, the ladies were lovely. Fortunately my hosts had the decency to be outdoor growers, definitely old school in their retrofitted solar-powered octagon home, although outdoors actually means in hoop houses or other obscured greenhouses so the helicopters can’t “know” what’s in them. This all goes back to some arcane court ruling that basically says that simply having a greenhouse is not suspicious enough grounds for a search warrant, but the interpretation is constantly in flux based on an almost continuous docket of cases coming through the system, and whether the presiding judge is more friendly towards the growers or the feds. Regardless, any actual law enforcement seems to come in periodic waves and mostly only affects the really big growers. My hosts explained what variety they were growing, although honestly I can’t remember well, something like a hybrid cross of Kush, Bubble-gum, and AK47, or some such nonsense.

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