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Old School Arizona
- Thread starter mofeta
- Start date
O
OlibanumBreath
Love the captivating story!
Frankincense v.s. Olibanum
Frankincense v.s. Olibanum
If you haven't yet seen this resin website, you might find this article interesting:
Frankincense v.s. Olibanum:
http://www.somaluna.com/cat/category_frankincense.asp
Frankincense v.s. Olibanum
If you haven't yet seen this resin website, you might find this article interesting:
Frankincense v.s. Olibanum:
http://www.somaluna.com/cat/category_frankincense.asp
nice to read.
as an outsider i was lucky to get a quarter ounce seedy brick most of the time. a tiny ball of resin scraped out of a pipe was like a diamond. last time i got brick in az was c. 2009.. not bad at all, still all stems and seeds, grew out with nice thin leaves but lost it before i could try it.
thank god seedbanks don't judge people by their culture (i can't blame people.. i'm from a culture that people generally consider oppressive, so they naturally assume i'm some kind of judgemental asshole because i have a judgemental asshole accent).
as an outsider i was lucky to get a quarter ounce seedy brick most of the time. a tiny ball of resin scraped out of a pipe was like a diamond. last time i got brick in az was c. 2009.. not bad at all, still all stems and seeds, grew out with nice thin leaves but lost it before i could try it.
thank god seedbanks don't judge people by their culture (i can't blame people.. i'm from a culture that people generally consider oppressive, so they naturally assume i'm some kind of judgemental asshole because i have a judgemental asshole accent).
scuse me for coopting this thread.. i thought there was another one somewhere but can't find it.
AZ outdoors spring 2012
someone posted in february that you can flower in the spring before may. i check day lengths and the 'official' 12/12 from sunrise to sunset was somewhere around march 15th, so i'm estimating you would want to have started flowering around march 1st in order to bud outdoors this spring.
i have a plant in my cab from mislabeled freebie seed. it's supposed to be a moroccan indica but has grown out like a pure sativa. smells a bit like haze, and about the thinnest leaves i've seen from dutch breeders on anything.
she's not handling my microcab well. had a bad start, then grew like a rocket up to the lights and got her tip fried.
she should be around 4 weeks into flowering, but given her predicament she's not much more than a stick with a few bracts of calyxes here and there.
do you think i can stick her outside and get her a fair flower period, or are the lengthening days going to revert her to veg? days are nice and warm here now, so only concerned about the photoperiod.
AZ outdoors spring 2012
someone posted in february that you can flower in the spring before may. i check day lengths and the 'official' 12/12 from sunrise to sunset was somewhere around march 15th, so i'm estimating you would want to have started flowering around march 1st in order to bud outdoors this spring.
i have a plant in my cab from mislabeled freebie seed. it's supposed to be a moroccan indica but has grown out like a pure sativa. smells a bit like haze, and about the thinnest leaves i've seen from dutch breeders on anything.
she's not handling my microcab well. had a bad start, then grew like a rocket up to the lights and got her tip fried.
she should be around 4 weeks into flowering, but given her predicament she's not much more than a stick with a few bracts of calyxes here and there.
do you think i can stick her outside and get her a fair flower period, or are the lengthening days going to revert her to veg? days are nice and warm here now, so only concerned about the photoperiod.
not sure waveguide, you might as well find out with the wimpy one. no big loss if it reveges.
When Skunk Hit Brooklyn
When Skunk Hit Brooklyn
In 1978 I made friends with a few Rastas from Gold Street in Kingston. Most of the time that I spent in Jamaica back then was on the beach side at Ozzie’s Shack in Negril, up in the hills above Lucea, or backwoods in Gold Hill between Sav La Mar and Negril. Somehow one of my contacts in Negril hooked me up with Kingston friends who in turn told me about their relative in Brooklyn. The NY guy was a mid-level Ganjaman who had been in that area since the early 1970’s.
I had always wanted to expand to the Big Apple because the higher prices for higher quality back East would make it worth the trouble of getting it across the US…and then some. This concept held true for awhile until a few years later when the highway checkpoints set up in New Mexico and the increased profiling by Arizona Highway Patrol proved otherwise. We finally had a reliable Tucson connection for high-end Mexican sinsemilla who also liked the sound of going East and was willing to front decent-sized loads in the 150-250 pound range. Our Arizona homegrown under the Madjag label was in limited supply and sold out quickly right here at home shortly after harvest. It wasn’t greed as much as it was necessity that lead us to fine sensi from south of our border and we soon branched into Mexican imports carefully once this crazy Tucson connection fell into our laps via a close, close friend.
The Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn is home to a large Caribbean immigrant culture that includes Trinidadians, Haitians, Bahamians, and especially Jamaicans. It was once a quaint Dutch ethnic neighborhood full of fine Brownstone apartments and flats that over decades, like many other the traditional borough neighborhoods, mutated into something entirely different. In1980 the bustling NY herb business was king and the looming epidemic of crack cocaine for commoners was still on the horizon, left to Manhattanites and high-end borough boys in the know.
After a fairly long getting-to-know-you period, my new Bed Stuy friends started buying up every bud of Mexican Sinse we could get their hands on. This smoke was as good if not better than their legendary Lamb’s Bread that never quite lived up to its name, at least the commercial quantities that hit NY streets. A nice load of spicy Oaxacan or some potent Guerrero Gold held them captive and put them at the top of their marketplace. People beat down their doors for more. We were modest in our goals and kept small and reasonable in our deliveries. Let’s just say we had cross-country shipping for our modest business level down to a fine science. Our cover never failed even when challenged closely a few times by the man. No method is bulletproof, they only seem that way until the first failure, yet we never hit that failure and our Rasta pipeline continued for 4 or 5 years.
An interesting aspect of working in Bed Stuy was that white boys stuck out like a sore thumb. Even more obvious was seeing a tall Dreadlock walking together with a white guy. Can you say “Business”? We worked at night as much as possible, connecting at a little basement flat that served as the shop for small deals up to ½ pound. It was in this stash flat not far from Nostrand Boulevard that I spent a lot of time watching customers come and go, mumbling that beautiful Jamaican patois through a crack in the door and then stepping in when cleared for action. My Rasta friends didn’t do business with American blacks who they called Yankee Boys. Some barrier there just kept the two apart. I believe it was concerned with ethnic loyalty and the concept that if a man went down and he was a Jamaican he wouldn’t spill on the rest of the JA crew. Just as well I suppose. In all the moments I witnessed of buyers coming and going I saw only Caribbean men spending dollars with my Rasta crew. The meetings were brief, quiet, and peaceful. Shots rang out on rare occasions some nights, however they were always from down the street. Packing heavy hardware was essential for working in the shop, but using it onsite was never an option unless it was in response to an all out attack or rip-off attempt. Would that be likely with a dreadie opening the door with a Mac 9 in his hand?
It was a warm evening when I stopped by Satta’s flat. The shop near Nostrand was extra busy and Mr. S wanted me to stop a different flat with Ricky to discuss the homegrown I had been telling him about. He was aware of the reputation of domestic super herb, however he personally had never tested any. Curiosity was flying high this night after my repeated mentions of homegrown and Mr. S just had to find out. Even his Lieutenant Ricky laughed when I pulled out a skinny pin joint made from a paper torn lengthwise…a ½ paper filled with tiny broken bud pieces lined up and crammed into a straight line. I, too, was laughing for a different reason knowing full well what laid ahead. I was sure he would be devastated like so many other experienced smoke fiends had been before upon trying this new and truly powerful herb from the expanded genetics of Haze, Skunk, and Afghani strains.
Mr. S took the second long pull after my startup toke. He saw how long and intensely I was pulling on the pinner and did the same perfectly. I reached for the joint before he could finish laughing and take his second hit. I wanted him to truly take the tour and evaluate firsthand what one toke could do. It was probably only seconds, but it seemed like a minute or two later that he got a bit strange and was mumbling to Ricky in that enchanting Kingston patois. Suddenly we were going. I barely grabbed my coat and boomed out the door with Rick. We had been banished.
The next day Mr. S called and made it known that we had to come over immediately. Right now, seen. Once inside his tidy, St. James Place brownstone flat with plastic-covered furniture and Jamaican wood art, I began an uncomfortable exchange with him about how and why I had spiked him. He knew that the pin needle had LSD in it and that he had been tripping. After he had quickly sent us out and locked the doors, he had to run in place for 20 minutes, maybe longer, merely to regain his equilibrium and focus. Everything had gone wacky and he just didn’t see a way back. Luckily his body took over and saved the day (night).
I can speak very plainly and neutrally when needed. I adopt a “science guy” persona and can peacefully describe a situation in a way that will reach most people, I just have to be patient and methodical: say the truth in metered chunks that make sense. I did this for Mr. S and he knew that I was right on. I felt him release as I continued my explanation. He was a real devil when it came to testing people. For instance, he once paid us an extra 2 grand for a load and did so intentionally just to see if we’d report his “mistake”. Slowly his brain cramps came down enough for him to smile, laugh, and start jabbering a mile a minute about how fucking incredible this weed was and how nobody, nobody! in his posse had any idea how powerful it was gonna be. Customers would be in his hand and at his command, yes I. Oh what a wonderful land Brooklyn was. And praise be to the Arizona guys for, in this case, the venerable Sam S and RCC Afghani #1. That good herb was Jah Mighty.
The most top shelf we would bring along with our primary Mexi Sensi load was perhaps 3-5 pounds of local stash weed. Mr. S would have bought 50 pounds on the spot each time we visited had his customers been experienced with this level of quality herb. They needed some time to adjust and eventually lust for it because they had never toked anything like it. OK, maybe a few close calls with some Colombo, but otherwise this herb wiped everyone out on their first smoke or two unlike any other smoke. Fortunately it became a speedy journey as friends turned on friends and the whole scene was Irey within a few months. He had created a loyal market, a hungry market. When our stock of Afghani#1 or Skunk#1 was exhausted we switched to a friend’s friend’s Arivaca brand. Even buying another grower’s yield our AZ cost was quite reasonable actually and we could double our money back east with no complaints. We had dreamed this dream into existence and loved every minute. I’m sure you who have been in a similar situation remember the satisfaction. Not big ego, but righteous rewards.
We were growers at heart who had reached out and found a new audience. Nothing like being well-paid for your risks and still being able to remember what mattered most in your heart. Money came and went just like the seasons. We’d grow beneath the hot cliffs and under the intense sun of our canyon. Looking up now and then we’d realize that eventually even the years rolled by. Still, money or not, we had the life and it shared a special rhythm and beauty with us. We learned and never forgot.
When Skunk Hit Brooklyn
In 1978 I made friends with a few Rastas from Gold Street in Kingston. Most of the time that I spent in Jamaica back then was on the beach side at Ozzie’s Shack in Negril, up in the hills above Lucea, or backwoods in Gold Hill between Sav La Mar and Negril. Somehow one of my contacts in Negril hooked me up with Kingston friends who in turn told me about their relative in Brooklyn. The NY guy was a mid-level Ganjaman who had been in that area since the early 1970’s.
I had always wanted to expand to the Big Apple because the higher prices for higher quality back East would make it worth the trouble of getting it across the US…and then some. This concept held true for awhile until a few years later when the highway checkpoints set up in New Mexico and the increased profiling by Arizona Highway Patrol proved otherwise. We finally had a reliable Tucson connection for high-end Mexican sinsemilla who also liked the sound of going East and was willing to front decent-sized loads in the 150-250 pound range. Our Arizona homegrown under the Madjag label was in limited supply and sold out quickly right here at home shortly after harvest. It wasn’t greed as much as it was necessity that lead us to fine sensi from south of our border and we soon branched into Mexican imports carefully once this crazy Tucson connection fell into our laps via a close, close friend.
The Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn is home to a large Caribbean immigrant culture that includes Trinidadians, Haitians, Bahamians, and especially Jamaicans. It was once a quaint Dutch ethnic neighborhood full of fine Brownstone apartments and flats that over decades, like many other the traditional borough neighborhoods, mutated into something entirely different. In1980 the bustling NY herb business was king and the looming epidemic of crack cocaine for commoners was still on the horizon, left to Manhattanites and high-end borough boys in the know.
After a fairly long getting-to-know-you period, my new Bed Stuy friends started buying up every bud of Mexican Sinse we could get their hands on. This smoke was as good if not better than their legendary Lamb’s Bread that never quite lived up to its name, at least the commercial quantities that hit NY streets. A nice load of spicy Oaxacan or some potent Guerrero Gold held them captive and put them at the top of their marketplace. People beat down their doors for more. We were modest in our goals and kept small and reasonable in our deliveries. Let’s just say we had cross-country shipping for our modest business level down to a fine science. Our cover never failed even when challenged closely a few times by the man. No method is bulletproof, they only seem that way until the first failure, yet we never hit that failure and our Rasta pipeline continued for 4 or 5 years.
An interesting aspect of working in Bed Stuy was that white boys stuck out like a sore thumb. Even more obvious was seeing a tall Dreadlock walking together with a white guy. Can you say “Business”? We worked at night as much as possible, connecting at a little basement flat that served as the shop for small deals up to ½ pound. It was in this stash flat not far from Nostrand Boulevard that I spent a lot of time watching customers come and go, mumbling that beautiful Jamaican patois through a crack in the door and then stepping in when cleared for action. My Rasta friends didn’t do business with American blacks who they called Yankee Boys. Some barrier there just kept the two apart. I believe it was concerned with ethnic loyalty and the concept that if a man went down and he was a Jamaican he wouldn’t spill on the rest of the JA crew. Just as well I suppose. In all the moments I witnessed of buyers coming and going I saw only Caribbean men spending dollars with my Rasta crew. The meetings were brief, quiet, and peaceful. Shots rang out on rare occasions some nights, however they were always from down the street. Packing heavy hardware was essential for working in the shop, but using it onsite was never an option unless it was in response to an all out attack or rip-off attempt. Would that be likely with a dreadie opening the door with a Mac 9 in his hand?
It was a warm evening when I stopped by Satta’s flat. The shop near Nostrand was extra busy and Mr. S wanted me to stop a different flat with Ricky to discuss the homegrown I had been telling him about. He was aware of the reputation of domestic super herb, however he personally had never tested any. Curiosity was flying high this night after my repeated mentions of homegrown and Mr. S just had to find out. Even his Lieutenant Ricky laughed when I pulled out a skinny pin joint made from a paper torn lengthwise…a ½ paper filled with tiny broken bud pieces lined up and crammed into a straight line. I, too, was laughing for a different reason knowing full well what laid ahead. I was sure he would be devastated like so many other experienced smoke fiends had been before upon trying this new and truly powerful herb from the expanded genetics of Haze, Skunk, and Afghani strains.
Mr. S took the second long pull after my startup toke. He saw how long and intensely I was pulling on the pinner and did the same perfectly. I reached for the joint before he could finish laughing and take his second hit. I wanted him to truly take the tour and evaluate firsthand what one toke could do. It was probably only seconds, but it seemed like a minute or two later that he got a bit strange and was mumbling to Ricky in that enchanting Kingston patois. Suddenly we were going. I barely grabbed my coat and boomed out the door with Rick. We had been banished.
The next day Mr. S called and made it known that we had to come over immediately. Right now, seen. Once inside his tidy, St. James Place brownstone flat with plastic-covered furniture and Jamaican wood art, I began an uncomfortable exchange with him about how and why I had spiked him. He knew that the pin needle had LSD in it and that he had been tripping. After he had quickly sent us out and locked the doors, he had to run in place for 20 minutes, maybe longer, merely to regain his equilibrium and focus. Everything had gone wacky and he just didn’t see a way back. Luckily his body took over and saved the day (night).
I can speak very plainly and neutrally when needed. I adopt a “science guy” persona and can peacefully describe a situation in a way that will reach most people, I just have to be patient and methodical: say the truth in metered chunks that make sense. I did this for Mr. S and he knew that I was right on. I felt him release as I continued my explanation. He was a real devil when it came to testing people. For instance, he once paid us an extra 2 grand for a load and did so intentionally just to see if we’d report his “mistake”. Slowly his brain cramps came down enough for him to smile, laugh, and start jabbering a mile a minute about how fucking incredible this weed was and how nobody, nobody! in his posse had any idea how powerful it was gonna be. Customers would be in his hand and at his command, yes I. Oh what a wonderful land Brooklyn was. And praise be to the Arizona guys for, in this case, the venerable Sam S and RCC Afghani #1. That good herb was Jah Mighty.
The most top shelf we would bring along with our primary Mexi Sensi load was perhaps 3-5 pounds of local stash weed. Mr. S would have bought 50 pounds on the spot each time we visited had his customers been experienced with this level of quality herb. They needed some time to adjust and eventually lust for it because they had never toked anything like it. OK, maybe a few close calls with some Colombo, but otherwise this herb wiped everyone out on their first smoke or two unlike any other smoke. Fortunately it became a speedy journey as friends turned on friends and the whole scene was Irey within a few months. He had created a loyal market, a hungry market. When our stock of Afghani#1 or Skunk#1 was exhausted we switched to a friend’s friend’s Arivaca brand. Even buying another grower’s yield our AZ cost was quite reasonable actually and we could double our money back east with no complaints. We had dreamed this dream into existence and loved every minute. I’m sure you who have been in a similar situation remember the satisfaction. Not big ego, but righteous rewards.
We were growers at heart who had reached out and found a new audience. Nothing like being well-paid for your risks and still being able to remember what mattered most in your heart. Money came and went just like the seasons. We’d grow beneath the hot cliffs and under the intense sun of our canyon. Looking up now and then we’d realize that eventually even the years rolled by. Still, money or not, we had the life and it shared a special rhythm and beauty with us. We learned and never forgot.
Madjag in High Times 1979
Madjag in High Times 1979
Hey Motaco,
Well the High Times connection came about because we wanted to be famous yet invisible. Somehow in our youthful enthusiasm we decided to create a name brand, print labels, and develop a mysterious story about who we were. Movie concepts abounded and t-shirts and a clothing line were considered. What dreamers we were!
We did create our brand and printed a few 1,000 labels in those first years. This was before we had met the Santa Cruz Cali crew with their beautiful artwork and labels for the Skunk, Afghani, and Kerala Indian seeds. We were inspired by the artwork and design that we had seen in High Times over the years and had a special graphic artist friend who needed a mission. I actually sent to High Times some of the photos that I have in my albums on IC Mag. We submitted price info on our product as well as prices for Mexican weed varieties, hash, and peyote in order to establish ourselves as experts from Arizona. It worked and one day their were our listings along with the other prices we sent in on all the other local specialties available in our neck of the woods. Somewhere one of my photos exists in another HT issue as well as another mention for our brand, Madjag.
The big excitement came a few years later when the phone rang and a close friend of mine was yelling into the phone, "Go down to Circle K and buy the latest issue of Newsweek! Go now and call me back!" The October 25, 1982 Newsweek homegrowing issue, "Guns, Grass, and Money - America's Billion-Dollar Marijuana Crop" had just been released and the first part of the article our Madjag weed was mentioned. We were a bit paranoid yet totally excited that we had accomplished our goal. We kept to ourselves and only a handful of close friends knew about it....for many, many years.
Madjag in High Times 1979
Hey Motaco,
Well the High Times connection came about because we wanted to be famous yet invisible. Somehow in our youthful enthusiasm we decided to create a name brand, print labels, and develop a mysterious story about who we were. Movie concepts abounded and t-shirts and a clothing line were considered. What dreamers we were!
We did create our brand and printed a few 1,000 labels in those first years. This was before we had met the Santa Cruz Cali crew with their beautiful artwork and labels for the Skunk, Afghani, and Kerala Indian seeds. We were inspired by the artwork and design that we had seen in High Times over the years and had a special graphic artist friend who needed a mission. I actually sent to High Times some of the photos that I have in my albums on IC Mag. We submitted price info on our product as well as prices for Mexican weed varieties, hash, and peyote in order to establish ourselves as experts from Arizona. It worked and one day their were our listings along with the other prices we sent in on all the other local specialties available in our neck of the woods. Somewhere one of my photos exists in another HT issue as well as another mention for our brand, Madjag.
The big excitement came a few years later when the phone rang and a close friend of mine was yelling into the phone, "Go down to Circle K and buy the latest issue of Newsweek! Go now and call me back!" The October 25, 1982 Newsweek homegrowing issue, "Guns, Grass, and Money - America's Billion-Dollar Marijuana Crop" had just been released and the first part of the article our Madjag weed was mentioned. We were a bit paranoid yet totally excited that we had accomplished our goal. We kept to ourselves and only a handful of close friends knew about it....for many, many years.
Love That Jaguar Thing
Love That Jaguar Thing
Love the Jaguar thing....
Saw Sugar Minott tear up Reggae Sunsplash many years ago in Mo Bay. Dynamic Sounds produced this 45 and it was a top hit in JA in the early 1980's. And boy howdy did the herbmen hustle back then. No Amsterdam genetics getting in the way either at that time, just landrace.
Some of my Rasta friends who visited me in Arizona could not grasp the desert. Most of them had never been outside of the New York city area and their memories of their Jamaican home were deep green and lush. Landing in Phoenix at Sky Harbor and stepping out into the 112 degree dry desert air was a mind-blowing experience.
I took my good friend Ricky to Jerome and gave him an insider’s tour. A 6'5'' Rasta with thumb-thick dreads down to his butt was quite the hit amongst the local hippies. Even some of the locals at The Spirit Room took a few double-takes. I remember how some little kids hid crouched between two cars and took his picture as we walked by. Rick stopped and said something nice to them in his Jamaican patois, laughing as he spoke. The kids ran off giggling. Rick has a soft heart.
Ricky was the Brooklyn Rasta ambassador who brought two uniquely different worlds together. Like myself, he felt comfortable the white and the black worlds and could make things happen peacefully. On this trip he began to blend the inner city and the desert worlds. When I took him out to Box Canyon on the Verde River near Sycamore Canyon on a hot summer day and we went swimming with my kids, Rick told us that he couldn't that believe such places existed in America. He had seen photos and scenes in movies, however that day changed him in a way he still speaks of today. He went back to the natural world for the first time since he was a boy in JA.
The Jaguar is coming back to the natural world of Arizona, too. Some believe it never truly left. More than 60 recorded Jaguar kills took place in the state from the 1870’s to the 1970’s. After the 1970’s verified sitings were rare until Warner Glenn, a second generation rancher and lion hunter, came upon one in March of 1996 while on a lion hunt. On that day he became the first person to photograph a living wild jaguar in the United States. His book, Eyes of Fire, chronicles the event with a dozen photos. I highly recommend it. In 2006, in the Animas Mountains of southwestern New Mexico, he had the great fortune to see a second Jag. Lightning strikes twice….can you believe it.
Warner describes the difference between a lion’s response to being cornered by dogs in contrast to a jaguar’s response in his interview on the “Southwest Jaguar” blog:
http://swjags.wordpress.com/2007/08/17/warner-glenn-qa/
SWJ: How does a jaguar at bay react differently from a mountain lion in the same situation?
WHEN BAYED AT CLOSE RANGE:
A mountain lion will growl, spit and hiss at the dogs, facing them in a threatening manner and at times reaching out with a quick thrust of a paw trying to sink its claws into the dog pulling it into biting range. To avoid being caught, the dog has to jump back quickly, then resumes its barking. The dogs can remain in fairly close range to the lion, who is usually in a half crouch or lying on his belly with its head up and threatening, with mouth open and snarling.
A jaguar seems to remain in a standing position and with head lowered, uttering a low coughing type growl until a dog gets too close. At this point the jaguar makes a quick, fast charge for 15 or 20 feet, attempting to catch the dog, who has to be extremely quick to escape this charge. With the charge, the jaguar lets out a loud roar, ending with a couple of low coughing noises and if he missed catching the dog, he then returns to his bayed position. If he catches the dog, the dog is going to get hurt bad. The jaguar means business, he is not bluffing.
See the IC Mag “Growing In cougar country” thread for more fun and joy:
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=235024&page=5
When I began my search for the perfect growing site I explored a half-dozen canyons along the Mogollon Rim that held promise. A couple of canyons I examined were being used even at that moment by growers from Jerome that I knew only obliquely and thus were not seriously under consideration, but those canyons were so long and deep combined with difficult access that I thought that perhaps there could have been a safe spot that others didn’t find on their earlier recon missions. It was only later that I discovered that what I thought then was remote and difficult access was actually just the opposite. Luckily I didn’t follow suit by sharing a canyon with those guys. They lost it all at harvest.
Another canyon under consideration I had used once before and it still held promise. It was being saved as a last backup because it was a little too easy to access and had much more dirt road traffic nearby. The final few I that hoped would make the grade were virgin canyons that required much more work to explore and if chosen would entail a lengthy access drive and rough hike each time any one of them was visited on a growing schedule. Their remoteness safeguarded against easy discovery and virtually eliminated “tourist”, casual hiker, or hunter exposure, however it would mean a whole lot more logistical work in advance followed by a year of three-day visits weekly. At that point in my life I knew in my heart that I wanted an intense, new adventure as much as I wanted to pursue guerilla growing, so a strange, remote canyon experience fit the bill no matter how strenuous it could be.
I was about 3 miles up an exceptionally narrow and hidden canyon when I ran out of daylight and had to make camp. It was actually the long tributary of another canyon and I realized then that my exploration hike was going to take 2-3 days to fully explore just the bottom half of it. It had year-round water, the absolute primary criteria necessary for growing a crop. I had chosen to explore in June, the driest month of the year, all of the candidate canyons just for this reason. What good is remote and bulletproof if your water source disappears in the driest part of the hot season? In Arizona, unlike the conditions for my friends in Jamaica, you can’t count on rainfall alone for watering your plants.
My camp was simple – my sleeping bag on the sand with my pack for a headrest. I hit the sack early because I was so tired and the rich darkness that followed the advancing sunset in this canyon came so quick and hard. Unless you plan to light a fire (in June?) and hang out by firelight, bedtime comes really early. It was too hot to get in my bag so I got under its protective cover, a slip-on cover of waterproof nylon that acted like a thin sheet if you slept between it and on top of the sleeping bag under your body. It came as an option on all Holubar Mountaineering (in Boulder, Colorado…bought later by The North Face) sleeping bags and kept the bag clean and rip-free even when you tossed down on gravel, lumpy dirt, or sand. It should be an option for all bags today but I think most people sleep in tents nowadays and never throw down on the raw earth. Back then mosquitoes were rare in these Arizona back canyons because there were no stagnant ponds, just flowing streams, and no city refuges nearby for the skeeters to breed. You just didn’t need a tent.
As I drifted into sweet weed dreams I was startled into full throttle adrenaline consciousness by the high-pitched sound of a large cat screeching at me. If you’ve ever heard a mountain lion’s cry, usually a female’s male-attraction call when it’s in heat, it sounds like a woman shrieking. The name for this sound is caterwauling; house cats do it too, and it will freak you out for sure if you’re lying naked in your bag with only a machete nearby for defense and it’s a lion going at it and not your kitty.
I sat up instantly and starting yelling back. I put on my shoes and grabbed my machete. Being naked in the night heat was oddly discomforting because I felt so vulnerable. If I had to fight or run in the dark I would be like a defenseless, blind animal being hunted down by a superior carnivore, a big hungry predator with excellent night vision and built-in weapons. Back then we used little, flat plastic flashlights that we could hold between our teeth while we handled hoses and were watering our garden at night. Headlamps were big and bulky and LEDs were not yet a reality. Those bulky C or D batteries left a lot to be desired, too. I didn’t have one anyway and my flashlight was still in my pack. I learned that night to always have a weapon at hand and to have a headlamp within reach at all times. Since then I have even slept with my headlamp loosely strung around my neck, ready for quick mounting and efficient use in total darkness. Carpe Diem (or nightum).
I finally fell back to sleep after an uneasy 30 minute wait in total darkness, waiting for the lion’s next move. The cat had shrieked only for 10 or 20 seconds even though I swear it was for a minute or two. Once asleep I dreamt of raw energy, ovals of light energy like Castaneda described and that can be seen in every living being. The cat energy was deep red. Mine was blue.
Just about when my dream was heading deeper I was jolted out of unconsciousness by the same damn shrieking, only this time twice as close to me. The first round of sound lead me to believe that the cat was 50 or so feet away in the dense mesquite Bosque that I chose to sleep near. This round seemed like El Gato was literally just beyond my touch, in the thick shrubs and bush, say 20 feet away. It was truly loud and scary. My sandy gravel bedsite bordered dense brush that when combined with the black of night left no visibility at all so I could only guess at the cat’s location. I was somewhat better prepared this time, though, because I had fallen asleep with my flashlight in hand and I quickly blasted it toward the sound. I could see nothing at all, there was no movement….only the shrieking that continued this time for a much longer time.
I did loud, loud Tarzan calls, you know, like Johnny Weismuller. I have a knack for vocal imitation and I didn’t hesitate no matter how goofy it might have sounded. Besides, it worked fucking well. The cat gave up rather suddenly and left. As I listened for its departing movement I heard nothing but the canyon breeze. They sure are stealthy. Shit man.
Months later, sitting around a campfire, my partner Don Wand and I kicked around names for our upcoming brand. The cat incident stuck out and somehow the mountain lion mutated into a jaguar, a much more fierce creature of the Sonoran desert. That cat had seemed crazy and angry, too, so it was definitely “mad”.
Mad Jag was born and that canyon was chosen for its wild and difficult character.
The recent interview of rancher and lion hunter Warner Glenn that I linked to above explains the different sounds that jaguars and cougars make when under attack or disturbed. As much as we had hallucinated that maybe it actually had been a jaguar that I had endured, once we had heard the news that jaguars were truly back in Arizona based upon Warner’s 1996 experience, followed by this latest interview in 2006, we knew that it all pretty much erased that possibility. My cat had shrieked and didn’t cough. Still, it was a wild ride indeed and a good time was had by all.
Madjag Canyon turned out to be a winner that served faithfully for 5 great seasons. On either side of us in adjacent canyons busts took out friends and acquaintances who didn’t follow strict growing methods and rules of stealth. Our best year saw us tending two gardens a mile apart with 275 healthy Skunk #1 and Afghani #1 girls smiling in the hot high desert sun.
It’s almost hard to believe that we had the heart to make it happen, but we did. Ah youth....
Love That Jaguar Thing
Love the Jaguar thing....
Saw Sugar Minott tear up Reggae Sunsplash many years ago in Mo Bay. Dynamic Sounds produced this 45 and it was a top hit in JA in the early 1980's. And boy howdy did the herbmen hustle back then. No Amsterdam genetics getting in the way either at that time, just landrace.
Some of my Rasta friends who visited me in Arizona could not grasp the desert. Most of them had never been outside of the New York city area and their memories of their Jamaican home were deep green and lush. Landing in Phoenix at Sky Harbor and stepping out into the 112 degree dry desert air was a mind-blowing experience.
I took my good friend Ricky to Jerome and gave him an insider’s tour. A 6'5'' Rasta with thumb-thick dreads down to his butt was quite the hit amongst the local hippies. Even some of the locals at The Spirit Room took a few double-takes. I remember how some little kids hid crouched between two cars and took his picture as we walked by. Rick stopped and said something nice to them in his Jamaican patois, laughing as he spoke. The kids ran off giggling. Rick has a soft heart.
Ricky was the Brooklyn Rasta ambassador who brought two uniquely different worlds together. Like myself, he felt comfortable the white and the black worlds and could make things happen peacefully. On this trip he began to blend the inner city and the desert worlds. When I took him out to Box Canyon on the Verde River near Sycamore Canyon on a hot summer day and we went swimming with my kids, Rick told us that he couldn't that believe such places existed in America. He had seen photos and scenes in movies, however that day changed him in a way he still speaks of today. He went back to the natural world for the first time since he was a boy in JA.
The Jaguar is coming back to the natural world of Arizona, too. Some believe it never truly left. More than 60 recorded Jaguar kills took place in the state from the 1870’s to the 1970’s. After the 1970’s verified sitings were rare until Warner Glenn, a second generation rancher and lion hunter, came upon one in March of 1996 while on a lion hunt. On that day he became the first person to photograph a living wild jaguar in the United States. His book, Eyes of Fire, chronicles the event with a dozen photos. I highly recommend it. In 2006, in the Animas Mountains of southwestern New Mexico, he had the great fortune to see a second Jag. Lightning strikes twice….can you believe it.
Warner describes the difference between a lion’s response to being cornered by dogs in contrast to a jaguar’s response in his interview on the “Southwest Jaguar” blog:
http://swjags.wordpress.com/2007/08/17/warner-glenn-qa/
SWJ: How does a jaguar at bay react differently from a mountain lion in the same situation?
WHEN BAYED AT CLOSE RANGE:
A mountain lion will growl, spit and hiss at the dogs, facing them in a threatening manner and at times reaching out with a quick thrust of a paw trying to sink its claws into the dog pulling it into biting range. To avoid being caught, the dog has to jump back quickly, then resumes its barking. The dogs can remain in fairly close range to the lion, who is usually in a half crouch or lying on his belly with its head up and threatening, with mouth open and snarling.
A jaguar seems to remain in a standing position and with head lowered, uttering a low coughing type growl until a dog gets too close. At this point the jaguar makes a quick, fast charge for 15 or 20 feet, attempting to catch the dog, who has to be extremely quick to escape this charge. With the charge, the jaguar lets out a loud roar, ending with a couple of low coughing noises and if he missed catching the dog, he then returns to his bayed position. If he catches the dog, the dog is going to get hurt bad. The jaguar means business, he is not bluffing.
See the IC Mag “Growing In cougar country” thread for more fun and joy:
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=235024&page=5
When I began my search for the perfect growing site I explored a half-dozen canyons along the Mogollon Rim that held promise. A couple of canyons I examined were being used even at that moment by growers from Jerome that I knew only obliquely and thus were not seriously under consideration, but those canyons were so long and deep combined with difficult access that I thought that perhaps there could have been a safe spot that others didn’t find on their earlier recon missions. It was only later that I discovered that what I thought then was remote and difficult access was actually just the opposite. Luckily I didn’t follow suit by sharing a canyon with those guys. They lost it all at harvest.
Another canyon under consideration I had used once before and it still held promise. It was being saved as a last backup because it was a little too easy to access and had much more dirt road traffic nearby. The final few I that hoped would make the grade were virgin canyons that required much more work to explore and if chosen would entail a lengthy access drive and rough hike each time any one of them was visited on a growing schedule. Their remoteness safeguarded against easy discovery and virtually eliminated “tourist”, casual hiker, or hunter exposure, however it would mean a whole lot more logistical work in advance followed by a year of three-day visits weekly. At that point in my life I knew in my heart that I wanted an intense, new adventure as much as I wanted to pursue guerilla growing, so a strange, remote canyon experience fit the bill no matter how strenuous it could be.
I was about 3 miles up an exceptionally narrow and hidden canyon when I ran out of daylight and had to make camp. It was actually the long tributary of another canyon and I realized then that my exploration hike was going to take 2-3 days to fully explore just the bottom half of it. It had year-round water, the absolute primary criteria necessary for growing a crop. I had chosen to explore in June, the driest month of the year, all of the candidate canyons just for this reason. What good is remote and bulletproof if your water source disappears in the driest part of the hot season? In Arizona, unlike the conditions for my friends in Jamaica, you can’t count on rainfall alone for watering your plants.
My camp was simple – my sleeping bag on the sand with my pack for a headrest. I hit the sack early because I was so tired and the rich darkness that followed the advancing sunset in this canyon came so quick and hard. Unless you plan to light a fire (in June?) and hang out by firelight, bedtime comes really early. It was too hot to get in my bag so I got under its protective cover, a slip-on cover of waterproof nylon that acted like a thin sheet if you slept between it and on top of the sleeping bag under your body. It came as an option on all Holubar Mountaineering (in Boulder, Colorado…bought later by The North Face) sleeping bags and kept the bag clean and rip-free even when you tossed down on gravel, lumpy dirt, or sand. It should be an option for all bags today but I think most people sleep in tents nowadays and never throw down on the raw earth. Back then mosquitoes were rare in these Arizona back canyons because there were no stagnant ponds, just flowing streams, and no city refuges nearby for the skeeters to breed. You just didn’t need a tent.
As I drifted into sweet weed dreams I was startled into full throttle adrenaline consciousness by the high-pitched sound of a large cat screeching at me. If you’ve ever heard a mountain lion’s cry, usually a female’s male-attraction call when it’s in heat, it sounds like a woman shrieking. The name for this sound is caterwauling; house cats do it too, and it will freak you out for sure if you’re lying naked in your bag with only a machete nearby for defense and it’s a lion going at it and not your kitty.
I sat up instantly and starting yelling back. I put on my shoes and grabbed my machete. Being naked in the night heat was oddly discomforting because I felt so vulnerable. If I had to fight or run in the dark I would be like a defenseless, blind animal being hunted down by a superior carnivore, a big hungry predator with excellent night vision and built-in weapons. Back then we used little, flat plastic flashlights that we could hold between our teeth while we handled hoses and were watering our garden at night. Headlamps were big and bulky and LEDs were not yet a reality. Those bulky C or D batteries left a lot to be desired, too. I didn’t have one anyway and my flashlight was still in my pack. I learned that night to always have a weapon at hand and to have a headlamp within reach at all times. Since then I have even slept with my headlamp loosely strung around my neck, ready for quick mounting and efficient use in total darkness. Carpe Diem (or nightum).
I finally fell back to sleep after an uneasy 30 minute wait in total darkness, waiting for the lion’s next move. The cat had shrieked only for 10 or 20 seconds even though I swear it was for a minute or two. Once asleep I dreamt of raw energy, ovals of light energy like Castaneda described and that can be seen in every living being. The cat energy was deep red. Mine was blue.
Just about when my dream was heading deeper I was jolted out of unconsciousness by the same damn shrieking, only this time twice as close to me. The first round of sound lead me to believe that the cat was 50 or so feet away in the dense mesquite Bosque that I chose to sleep near. This round seemed like El Gato was literally just beyond my touch, in the thick shrubs and bush, say 20 feet away. It was truly loud and scary. My sandy gravel bedsite bordered dense brush that when combined with the black of night left no visibility at all so I could only guess at the cat’s location. I was somewhat better prepared this time, though, because I had fallen asleep with my flashlight in hand and I quickly blasted it toward the sound. I could see nothing at all, there was no movement….only the shrieking that continued this time for a much longer time.
I did loud, loud Tarzan calls, you know, like Johnny Weismuller. I have a knack for vocal imitation and I didn’t hesitate no matter how goofy it might have sounded. Besides, it worked fucking well. The cat gave up rather suddenly and left. As I listened for its departing movement I heard nothing but the canyon breeze. They sure are stealthy. Shit man.
Months later, sitting around a campfire, my partner Don Wand and I kicked around names for our upcoming brand. The cat incident stuck out and somehow the mountain lion mutated into a jaguar, a much more fierce creature of the Sonoran desert. That cat had seemed crazy and angry, too, so it was definitely “mad”.
Mad Jag was born and that canyon was chosen for its wild and difficult character.
The recent interview of rancher and lion hunter Warner Glenn that I linked to above explains the different sounds that jaguars and cougars make when under attack or disturbed. As much as we had hallucinated that maybe it actually had been a jaguar that I had endured, once we had heard the news that jaguars were truly back in Arizona based upon Warner’s 1996 experience, followed by this latest interview in 2006, we knew that it all pretty much erased that possibility. My cat had shrieked and didn’t cough. Still, it was a wild ride indeed and a good time was had by all.
Madjag Canyon turned out to be a winner that served faithfully for 5 great seasons. On either side of us in adjacent canyons busts took out friends and acquaintances who didn’t follow strict growing methods and rules of stealth. Our best year saw us tending two gardens a mile apart with 275 healthy Skunk #1 and Afghani #1 girls smiling in the hot high desert sun.
It’s almost hard to believe that we had the heart to make it happen, but we did. Ah youth....
bump
please more old stories from you growers out there these old-school threads are some of the best on icmag or any forum
please more old stories from you growers out there these old-school threads are some of the best on icmag or any forum
delete wrong thread
Reduviidae species
Reduviidae species
http://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?guide=Reduviidae
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triatoma
Ah yes....the good, old Hualapai Tiger or Kissing Bug. One of these days I'll include those stories in my Madjag series. They've been around liberally since at least 1976 because I woke up one fine morning while camping out in ****** Canyon to see my friend in his sleeping bag just 5 feet away totally chewed up on the face. It looked like he had the mumps, swollen reddish bites all over his face. I was unaffected.
The reduviidae have a unique chemical that they put on your skin before they puncture it. It de-sensitizes the nerves so you don't feel them puncturing your skin and sucking your blood. They have learned to stay off of your skin and body and will stand next to you, on sheets or bed clothes, in order to be even more stealthy in their attack.
Literally, they suck.
They live on rodents when they do not have a human host and thus can carry Chaga's disease. No reported cases of this wasting-away disease (that they believe Charles Darwin contracted in the Galpagos Islands and died from it) have been reported in the US except some possible cases in Texas. Chaga's is endemic, though, in Mexico and all of Central America. They love to live in cracks in the walls and come out at night to feed....on you.
Two Peace Corps hippies that I know were assigned a few years ago to live in Guatemala while on a mission there. They actually set up their tent inside of their hotel room and slept in it to avoid Reduvid beetle bites and disease. Their compatriots laughed at them, but they were science geeks and knew that they would be safe.
Within one month, all of their companion Peaceniks were sick with Chaga's and had to go back to the USA for antibiotic treatment and repair. It's not as bad as Lyme disease in the sense that there currently actually are effective methods for healing from Chaga's, but it can still spoil your year.
Reduviidae species
http://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?guide=Reduviidae
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triatoma
Ah yes....the good, old Hualapai Tiger or Kissing Bug. One of these days I'll include those stories in my Madjag series. They've been around liberally since at least 1976 because I woke up one fine morning while camping out in ****** Canyon to see my friend in his sleeping bag just 5 feet away totally chewed up on the face. It looked like he had the mumps, swollen reddish bites all over his face. I was unaffected.
The reduviidae have a unique chemical that they put on your skin before they puncture it. It de-sensitizes the nerves so you don't feel them puncturing your skin and sucking your blood. They have learned to stay off of your skin and body and will stand next to you, on sheets or bed clothes, in order to be even more stealthy in their attack.
Literally, they suck.
They live on rodents when they do not have a human host and thus can carry Chaga's disease. No reported cases of this wasting-away disease (that they believe Charles Darwin contracted in the Galpagos Islands and died from it) have been reported in the US except some possible cases in Texas. Chaga's is endemic, though, in Mexico and all of Central America. They love to live in cracks in the walls and come out at night to feed....on you.
Two Peace Corps hippies that I know were assigned a few years ago to live in Guatemala while on a mission there. They actually set up their tent inside of their hotel room and slept in it to avoid Reduvid beetle bites and disease. Their compatriots laughed at them, but they were science geeks and knew that they would be safe.
Within one month, all of their companion Peaceniks were sick with Chaga's and had to go back to the USA for antibiotic treatment and repair. It's not as bad as Lyme disease in the sense that there currently actually are effective methods for healing from Chaga's, but it can still spoil your year.
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often if you wake up with a tiger bite, you can lift up your mattress and find the bugger sitting right there. if you don't look for them, there's a good chance they'll be waiting for you the next night.
on one occasion we saw one sneaking up on someone who was just stoned and immobile..
i've never heard of someone getting chagas from them in az (living at arcosanti bites were a common occurence) more like a mosquito bite that swells to the size of a golf ball. forgotten in a week. inconvenient and annoying, but not a reason to not do something.
on one occasion we saw one sneaking up on someone who was just stoned and immobile..
i've never heard of someone getting chagas from them in az (living at arcosanti bites were a common occurence) more like a mosquito bite that swells to the size of a golf ball. forgotten in a week. inconvenient and annoying, but not a reason to not do something.
Something About Johnnie
Something About Johnnie
Disclaimer: All persons mentioned herein are actual people and are either dead or have served time for their purported crimes and are no longer liable for any further criminal association or conspiracy to commit a crime. Selah.
__________________________ __ _________________________
Back in 1971 I was enticed into meeting my AZ friends at a tiny bar in the miniscule hamlet of Redway, northern California. Steve, a high school buddy of my friend George, owned the bar, The Country Tavern, and had a knack for attracting an unusual clientele. For some reason George insisted that it would be worth my time to attend. More on Steve later and you’ll know why.
Redway is deep in the heart of the Redwoods and just above Shelter Cove, an abandoned subdivision on an isolated portion of the Cali coastline. The area was well within the boundaries of California’s legendary Emerald Triangle (Mendicino, Humbolt, and Trinity counties) and had its share of dedicated growers stashed in the hills and valleys of this densely wooded region. It was there that I first saw cannabis plants growing outdoors in nature. It hooked me more than I realized at the time.
My friends crammed into an old 67 VW bus and drove from Phoenix to Redway over the course of several days. I hitchhiked because I was traveling already and would be in San Francisco shortly before they arrived, checking out the possibility of moving there. By the time I had hitched up to Garberville and entered the shady redwood realm near Redway, my friends were still far away. Since I had no way to know their approximate time of arrival, I decided to carry on and find Steve and his secluded bar. It turned out to be pretty easy, though, since Redway was merely a series of spread-out residences along a two lane forest road with only one small food store, a post office, and a bar.
I stepped into a topsy-turvy world that day when I walked across the Redway Bar’s threshold and asked for Steve. He stepped out of the shadows at the edge of the bar’s long counter and marched forward to meet me. “Where the hell is George and Mark anyway?” he barked as he handed me a beer with a joint on the side. I laughed and told him that I only could say that they were supposed to roll in tonight. Steve laughed too and said, “Why don’t you hang out with Peter in the meantime”. Since I had to wait anyway, why not?
A lot of laughing was going on in there, maybe a bit more than your typical bar downtown. In fact, maybe a bit more than almost any bar I had ever been in except those in college towns and near schools of “higher learning”, you know, the bars where young men make idiots out of themselves on their journey to understanding the power of alcohol!
“Could it be the smoke being consumed discreetly”, I thought, since I had been told in advance by my friends that northern Cali was like nowhere else in the US when it came to weed being everywhere and being consumed fairly openly. Whatever the reason, I was starting to feel jolly myself as I walked behind Steve and out the back door.
Outside it was dark, not only from the daylight waning but from the constant shadows of the redwoods. I found the daytime darkness a bit weird having come from sun-blasted northern Arizona and slowly adjusted my eyes. Just ten feet from the back steps the redwood forest jumped up and there, at the base of a decent redwood giant, stood a strong looking, brown-skinned guy smoking a tiny pin joint. Yep, this was Peter, a real, live Colombian and my future compadre in dozens of escapades. Man, oh man, I had no idea how he was going to affect my life and propel me into new ways of learning.
Time froze as I exhaled from a long, difficult pull on a skinny pinner, later to be known to me as a New York Needle. I had never seen a joint so small and I marveled when I finally saw Peter create one. I say “create” because it sure wasn’t “rolling at dube”. He used Blanco Y Negro rolling papers, a very thin and easy-to-tear variety, and he would cut one of these lengthwise into a 2/3 paper at that. He didn’t want any overlap from extra paper when he sealed it because to do so would make it run and possibly fall apart. Crumbling gooey weed into a sticky dust and loading it onto a flimsy setup like this was truly an art, one that I have never mastered. I discovered later that he did so partly to impress (and set up) those who scoffed at smoking such a anorexic joint and partly because the weed he used was so potent that he wanted to conserve it. Combining both intentions lead to a guaranteed good time, one that never failed to impress once a person sucked mightily on the skinny pin joint and finally realized that it wasn’t so much the amount inhaled as it was the tsunami on the way. And many were swept away by this black, compressed Colombo called Candybar. It was private grower stash from an old man in Neiva, Colombia, and all that Peter ever smoked when he had the option.
I had two hyperventilated tokes. Before I could sit, fall down, or express any sort of coherent response, Peter said in perfect, virtually unaccented English, “Let’s go listen”. With that he turned and I followed. We hiked around the side of Steve’s bar and onto the narrow paved road that snaked downward for several miles to Shelter Cove. We hiked along the road edge for a mile or so until there were no audible sounds but nature - the forest, animals, insects, and wind. The bar with its human frivolity and any extraneous mechanical sounds were long gone. At this point Peter detoured quickly into the thick, spongy undergrowth of the forest. Humus and old, dead wood had formed an amazing layer over the forest floor here and as we walked I felt the springiness as a weightless, bouncy gait. In Arizona it was all tough sand and rock, no padding at all, unless you headed into Flagstaff or other high-altitude forests that had their own springiness from layers of pine duff with fresh needles on top. This redwood forest was just fantastic.
A few hundred feet from the road we stopped and sat on some old-growth stumps. Peter had said nothing during our entire hike and when we reached this spot he continued that obvious silence. I went with the quiet too because I had had few similar experiences under my belt and knew it was primo to hang out without talking and just be in the moment and absorb nature’s voice. I learned later that this was characteristic of Peter and was an integral part of his presence whether it be in a group of people or a group of trees. Not that I talked all the time or jabbered on aimlessly like most of people I knew, but I was still mesmerized by the lack of any verbal communication between us, a quiet that was about to continue for several more hours as well. The continued silence had tremendous power. It pushed me into a new world of awareness. Could Peter actually be Castaneda and my friends were pulling a fast one on me like Don Juan did consistently to Carlos?
We sat for several hours in total silence, listening to that early evening’s shadow world. The lively daytime redwood forest gave way to measured sounds punctuated by unmeasured bursts. I was enjoying some sort of syncopated sound track that could carry me far off and suddenly pull me back just as easily, like the ebb and flow of the ocean on the beach just a few miles below us. I was totally blasted and far from fucking normal. “What is normal”, I wondered….hahaha.
When we took off, silently of course in response to Peter just standing up and moving quickly over the springy forest floor, it was a new world of almost complete darkness, not just shadows. Once we started up the road it was a bit easier to see because the ambient light of sunset could at least glow through the narrow opening above and down onto the pavement. We didn’t stumble much because the hike uphill made us slow down and breathe deeply. It was like participating in some stoned Kundalini yoga that intensified as you sped up and mellowed if you slowed down, like that hyper-intense breathing practice the Golden Temple folks loved to do. We stopped for one more quick draw of the Candybar and then really stepped up the pace, our air intake and exhalation even more measured. It was like a conscious breathing technique that translated into movement rather than just unconscious breathing. Does that make sense?
Back at the bar George and Mark had arrived and were partying hardy. I recognized Mark’s VW bus outside the bar and gave it a once over as I slipped past it and into the chaos that was the bar. Again, so much laughing, just too loud and exaggerated for a hippy place. It seemed odd to me but what I didn’t know was that Steve was a major LSD manufacturer and supplier for, who knows, several states? He even had his own chemist and lab tucked away not far from this house of laughter and George wasn’t just stopping in to say hi. He was there to pick up the high and take it back to Boulder.
Peter disappeared so I joined my Arizona-Colorado friends for a zesty reunion. We had all met originally at the University of Denver and though I had dropped out after 2 years, George and Mark were still there. As his part-time job as a drug dealer grew into a major full-time employment opportunity, George had become a regular feature on The Hill in Boulder, selling jumbo bags of pharmaceutical grade acid and making big bucks in the process. His life was changing rapidly and it looked pretty likely that he, too, would drop out soon, which he did. At this time and place in earth and space it was turn on, tune in, and drop out time, wasn’t it?
Hours flew by and I itched to hit the road. Peter had already departed for New York, his homebase, and I was working on moving to San Francisco to study Aikido at the San Francisco Aiki-Kai. Our initial intro moment had ended almost as quickly as it began and until we met again I wouldn’t truly know much about who Peter really was. George and Mark knew even less than I did having only heard about him from Steve. I had all sorts of ideas and hallucinations about him of course, but until the multi-ton loads of Colombo moving into the Aspen area on DC-3s tied into the equation, Peter was still a mystery waiting to be solved.
The middle-aged Colombo woman every DEA and customs officer wanted to capture more than God himself would also remain anonymous in relation to Peter until I discovered much later that he was working for her and her minions based in New York. His travels all over the west would turn out to be more interesting than any weed connect that I had ever known (or ever would know). Peter was her ambassador and spent days and days at times counting the millions of cash dollars that paid for the loads filling a few farmhouses along the highway to Aspen from Basalt and Carbondale. Since electronic counting machines weren’t available yet on the open market and all counts were by hand, his fingers were green and his hands grew numb. What a life. I had never bumped into such a fantastic world though I had read about it for years. Peter, AKA Johnnie, actually had a job.
Only two friends in Arizona and a Rasta I knew could smoke like Peter. One dear friend would roll 10 pure Hash (no tobacco) pin joints for the day and then go out and drive his tractor in 100 degree sun all day. It was his motivator and kept him going. Like Peter all three friends were motivated by the sacred plant and without it were like Superman exposed to Green Kryptonite: no energy. Since Colombo was the new order of the day and most of us were used to Mexican sativas it took a little getting used to. I was and still am the lightweight of the group. Two tokes in 100 degree heat and I was looking for a siesta in the shade. It was literally paralyzing for me to smoke any weed in the heat of the day if I was out in it doing any sort of hiking or work. I preferred it for night, for indoor activities (wink), or during the cold temps of fall, winter, and spring. Still, I enjoyed many a great time watching these profound puffers blasting other supposed heavyweight smokers into groundlock. Peter still wins the Gold Cup, though, for being a virtual high-end herb chainsmoker. He started at age 9 in Colombia, what can you say? Once I saw him devour an ounce by himself in less than two days. It wasn’t Candybar grade by any means, but come on. I know some of you out there reading this can relate and would feel right at home with these Deviatos. What’s that you say, who were the Deviatos?
Soon come.
Something About Johnnie
Disclaimer: All persons mentioned herein are actual people and are either dead or have served time for their purported crimes and are no longer liable for any further criminal association or conspiracy to commit a crime. Selah.
__________________________ __ _________________________
Back in 1971 I was enticed into meeting my AZ friends at a tiny bar in the miniscule hamlet of Redway, northern California. Steve, a high school buddy of my friend George, owned the bar, The Country Tavern, and had a knack for attracting an unusual clientele. For some reason George insisted that it would be worth my time to attend. More on Steve later and you’ll know why.
Redway is deep in the heart of the Redwoods and just above Shelter Cove, an abandoned subdivision on an isolated portion of the Cali coastline. The area was well within the boundaries of California’s legendary Emerald Triangle (Mendicino, Humbolt, and Trinity counties) and had its share of dedicated growers stashed in the hills and valleys of this densely wooded region. It was there that I first saw cannabis plants growing outdoors in nature. It hooked me more than I realized at the time.
My friends crammed into an old 67 VW bus and drove from Phoenix to Redway over the course of several days. I hitchhiked because I was traveling already and would be in San Francisco shortly before they arrived, checking out the possibility of moving there. By the time I had hitched up to Garberville and entered the shady redwood realm near Redway, my friends were still far away. Since I had no way to know their approximate time of arrival, I decided to carry on and find Steve and his secluded bar. It turned out to be pretty easy, though, since Redway was merely a series of spread-out residences along a two lane forest road with only one small food store, a post office, and a bar.
I stepped into a topsy-turvy world that day when I walked across the Redway Bar’s threshold and asked for Steve. He stepped out of the shadows at the edge of the bar’s long counter and marched forward to meet me. “Where the hell is George and Mark anyway?” he barked as he handed me a beer with a joint on the side. I laughed and told him that I only could say that they were supposed to roll in tonight. Steve laughed too and said, “Why don’t you hang out with Peter in the meantime”. Since I had to wait anyway, why not?
A lot of laughing was going on in there, maybe a bit more than your typical bar downtown. In fact, maybe a bit more than almost any bar I had ever been in except those in college towns and near schools of “higher learning”, you know, the bars where young men make idiots out of themselves on their journey to understanding the power of alcohol!
“Could it be the smoke being consumed discreetly”, I thought, since I had been told in advance by my friends that northern Cali was like nowhere else in the US when it came to weed being everywhere and being consumed fairly openly. Whatever the reason, I was starting to feel jolly myself as I walked behind Steve and out the back door.
Outside it was dark, not only from the daylight waning but from the constant shadows of the redwoods. I found the daytime darkness a bit weird having come from sun-blasted northern Arizona and slowly adjusted my eyes. Just ten feet from the back steps the redwood forest jumped up and there, at the base of a decent redwood giant, stood a strong looking, brown-skinned guy smoking a tiny pin joint. Yep, this was Peter, a real, live Colombian and my future compadre in dozens of escapades. Man, oh man, I had no idea how he was going to affect my life and propel me into new ways of learning.
Time froze as I exhaled from a long, difficult pull on a skinny pinner, later to be known to me as a New York Needle. I had never seen a joint so small and I marveled when I finally saw Peter create one. I say “create” because it sure wasn’t “rolling at dube”. He used Blanco Y Negro rolling papers, a very thin and easy-to-tear variety, and he would cut one of these lengthwise into a 2/3 paper at that. He didn’t want any overlap from extra paper when he sealed it because to do so would make it run and possibly fall apart. Crumbling gooey weed into a sticky dust and loading it onto a flimsy setup like this was truly an art, one that I have never mastered. I discovered later that he did so partly to impress (and set up) those who scoffed at smoking such a anorexic joint and partly because the weed he used was so potent that he wanted to conserve it. Combining both intentions lead to a guaranteed good time, one that never failed to impress once a person sucked mightily on the skinny pin joint and finally realized that it wasn’t so much the amount inhaled as it was the tsunami on the way. And many were swept away by this black, compressed Colombo called Candybar. It was private grower stash from an old man in Neiva, Colombia, and all that Peter ever smoked when he had the option.
I had two hyperventilated tokes. Before I could sit, fall down, or express any sort of coherent response, Peter said in perfect, virtually unaccented English, “Let’s go listen”. With that he turned and I followed. We hiked around the side of Steve’s bar and onto the narrow paved road that snaked downward for several miles to Shelter Cove. We hiked along the road edge for a mile or so until there were no audible sounds but nature - the forest, animals, insects, and wind. The bar with its human frivolity and any extraneous mechanical sounds were long gone. At this point Peter detoured quickly into the thick, spongy undergrowth of the forest. Humus and old, dead wood had formed an amazing layer over the forest floor here and as we walked I felt the springiness as a weightless, bouncy gait. In Arizona it was all tough sand and rock, no padding at all, unless you headed into Flagstaff or other high-altitude forests that had their own springiness from layers of pine duff with fresh needles on top. This redwood forest was just fantastic.
A few hundred feet from the road we stopped and sat on some old-growth stumps. Peter had said nothing during our entire hike and when we reached this spot he continued that obvious silence. I went with the quiet too because I had had few similar experiences under my belt and knew it was primo to hang out without talking and just be in the moment and absorb nature’s voice. I learned later that this was characteristic of Peter and was an integral part of his presence whether it be in a group of people or a group of trees. Not that I talked all the time or jabbered on aimlessly like most of people I knew, but I was still mesmerized by the lack of any verbal communication between us, a quiet that was about to continue for several more hours as well. The continued silence had tremendous power. It pushed me into a new world of awareness. Could Peter actually be Castaneda and my friends were pulling a fast one on me like Don Juan did consistently to Carlos?
When we took off, silently of course in response to Peter just standing up and moving quickly over the springy forest floor, it was a new world of almost complete darkness, not just shadows. Once we started up the road it was a bit easier to see because the ambient light of sunset could at least glow through the narrow opening above and down onto the pavement. We didn’t stumble much because the hike uphill made us slow down and breathe deeply. It was like participating in some stoned Kundalini yoga that intensified as you sped up and mellowed if you slowed down, like that hyper-intense breathing practice the Golden Temple folks loved to do. We stopped for one more quick draw of the Candybar and then really stepped up the pace, our air intake and exhalation even more measured. It was like a conscious breathing technique that translated into movement rather than just unconscious breathing. Does that make sense?
Back at the bar George and Mark had arrived and were partying hardy. I recognized Mark’s VW bus outside the bar and gave it a once over as I slipped past it and into the chaos that was the bar. Again, so much laughing, just too loud and exaggerated for a hippy place. It seemed odd to me but what I didn’t know was that Steve was a major LSD manufacturer and supplier for, who knows, several states? He even had his own chemist and lab tucked away not far from this house of laughter and George wasn’t just stopping in to say hi. He was there to pick up the high and take it back to Boulder.
Peter disappeared so I joined my Arizona-Colorado friends for a zesty reunion. We had all met originally at the University of Denver and though I had dropped out after 2 years, George and Mark were still there. As his part-time job as a drug dealer grew into a major full-time employment opportunity, George had become a regular feature on The Hill in Boulder, selling jumbo bags of pharmaceutical grade acid and making big bucks in the process. His life was changing rapidly and it looked pretty likely that he, too, would drop out soon, which he did. At this time and place in earth and space it was turn on, tune in, and drop out time, wasn’t it?
Hours flew by and I itched to hit the road. Peter had already departed for New York, his homebase, and I was working on moving to San Francisco to study Aikido at the San Francisco Aiki-Kai. Our initial intro moment had ended almost as quickly as it began and until we met again I wouldn’t truly know much about who Peter really was. George and Mark knew even less than I did having only heard about him from Steve. I had all sorts of ideas and hallucinations about him of course, but until the multi-ton loads of Colombo moving into the Aspen area on DC-3s tied into the equation, Peter was still a mystery waiting to be solved.
The middle-aged Colombo woman every DEA and customs officer wanted to capture more than God himself would also remain anonymous in relation to Peter until I discovered much later that he was working for her and her minions based in New York. His travels all over the west would turn out to be more interesting than any weed connect that I had ever known (or ever would know). Peter was her ambassador and spent days and days at times counting the millions of cash dollars that paid for the loads filling a few farmhouses along the highway to Aspen from Basalt and Carbondale. Since electronic counting machines weren’t available yet on the open market and all counts were by hand, his fingers were green and his hands grew numb. What a life. I had never bumped into such a fantastic world though I had read about it for years. Peter, AKA Johnnie, actually had a job.
Only two friends in Arizona and a Rasta I knew could smoke like Peter. One dear friend would roll 10 pure Hash (no tobacco) pin joints for the day and then go out and drive his tractor in 100 degree sun all day. It was his motivator and kept him going. Like Peter all three friends were motivated by the sacred plant and without it were like Superman exposed to Green Kryptonite: no energy. Since Colombo was the new order of the day and most of us were used to Mexican sativas it took a little getting used to. I was and still am the lightweight of the group. Two tokes in 100 degree heat and I was looking for a siesta in the shade. It was literally paralyzing for me to smoke any weed in the heat of the day if I was out in it doing any sort of hiking or work. I preferred it for night, for indoor activities (wink), or during the cold temps of fall, winter, and spring. Still, I enjoyed many a great time watching these profound puffers blasting other supposed heavyweight smokers into groundlock. Peter still wins the Gold Cup, though, for being a virtual high-end herb chainsmoker. He started at age 9 in Colombia, what can you say? Once I saw him devour an ounce by himself in less than two days. It wasn’t Candybar grade by any means, but come on. I know some of you out there reading this can relate and would feel right at home with these Deviatos. What’s that you say, who were the Deviatos?
Soon come.
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spiralofeyes
Member
Awesome,awaiting more impatiently...
navajo friend of mine, "white people talk too much so you can't think".
imo the cultural acclimatisation to constant noise (disruption/influence) got a big boost out of ww2. the reports i found of women factory workers in the u.k. and u.s. all corroborate that the factory radios were loud enough to make conversation difficult.
after a few years of constant unidirectional feed, war ends, voila, radios are affordable for every household.. mommy brings it home and institutes it for the family and children. and that's how you sell a culture on control.
4 pack short range missiles burst in chaff, introducing cutty the laserboat. fryfryfry
imo the cultural acclimatisation to constant noise (disruption/influence) got a big boost out of ww2. the reports i found of women factory workers in the u.k. and u.s. all corroborate that the factory radios were loud enough to make conversation difficult.
after a few years of constant unidirectional feed, war ends, voila, radios are affordable for every household.. mommy brings it home and institutes it for the family and children. and that's how you sell a culture on control.
4 pack short range missiles burst in chaff, introducing cutty the laserboat. fryfryfry
