For What It's Worth...

So it comes down to this: Cannabis is not a drug. 

Oxycodone and Valium and Zanex and Zoloft are drugs. 

Cannabis is addictive. Like power and money and sex and chocolate, Assassin's Creed and Halo and Oprah, the Home Shopping Network and Jersey Shore and NCIS are addictive. Going through rehab is something thousands of juvenile cannabis consumers do each year, earning private rehab centers millions of dollars in the process and guaranteeing healthy bonuses for administrators and equally healthy stock dividends for investors, many of whom are judges and government officials.  

However, checking into a rehab center does NOT prove that anyone is actually "addicted", since the alternative is often to have uninvited conjugal visits from a your fellow inmates and the trustees during your year in state lock-up, the fist inside the glove of judicial compassion dispensed to those who fail to recognize their addiction to the evil weed.  

Ironically, one of the conditions of release is often rehab, so they get you coming or going, in the end.

Cannabis and its cousin hemp have probably been the subject of more government disinformation, more cultural frenzy, more religious hyperbole and more unjust persecution that any other plant in history, bar none.  To paraphrase a statement once made about Appalachia, there is more known about cannabis that is not true than any other plant on earth.

Cannabis is a plant, one with an incredibly long history that winds throughout most of the nations on earth, making it pretty distinctive in that one detail alone. Various parts of the cannabis plant have been used by people the world over, throughout history, to build houses, make paper, weave clothes and make rugs.  It has been smoked and eaten as an intoxicant, prescribed as an analgesic and has been included in hundreds if not thousands of herbal medicines for over seven thousand years- all without a single recorded fatality.

Right now, there are some incredibly important people in my life who could benefit from open, unrestricted, unprejudiced research into the medical properties and applications of this amazing, misunderstood plant. A man who admittedly used it strictly for recreational purposes, a man who still reached the highest office in this land, says that the Federal Government will not persecute the users and possessors of this plant in two out of the fifty United States, Colorado and Washington, as the Federal government waits to see how the will of the people plays out and reels back from grassroots efforts that have resoundingly rejected recent politically-expedient legislation.

But the rest of us are on our own. The former cannabis user on Pennsylvania Avenue refuses to order the DEA to reschedule a drug that is classified as having no medical benefits despite the paradox that the government he heads holds two medical patents on drugs incorporating elements of this plant. 

Despite the fact that even the most conservative polls show that well over 60% of the country wants a change in the dialogue and focus of the Drug War, the man elected to lead our government in interpreting and obeying our collective will instead refuses to shift the focus of the DEA to stopping the flow of methamphetamines and oxy-/hydrocodone along the East Coast and throughout the Southwest.  Between three and fifteen people die each day from each of these drugs, and the associated costs in terms of property destroyed and law enforcement is counted in the millions.  But well over half of the budget of the Drug Enforcement Agency still goes toward the harassment, arrest, and imprisonment of people who simply choose another system of healing, another perspective on life or another vector of recreation. 

Supported by a Congress whose integrity has long since been compromised by large contributions from major pharmaceutical companies and other special interests, former Choom Ganger Barack Obama refuses to restore the right of American farmers to grow hemp, the non-intoxicating cousin of cannabis indica that is a historic cornerstone of American agriculture, having grown on the farms of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln; a crop that turned the tide durring World War Two as farmers were urged to "Grow Hemp for Victory!"  

Hemp actually has as much if not more medical potential than its THC-rich cousin, due the high levels of cannabinoids and cannabidiols, compounds that are opening new doors to natural healing every day, as we recover knowledge long-lost to prejudice and ignorance.  Hemp is an incredibly hardy, versatile crop that could single-handedly reverse the fortunes of hundreds of small farming communities and thousands of small farms and farm families. In this continuing Prohibition, Obama is continuing a tradition established by both Democrat and Republican Presidents before him back to Richard Nixon... promising America freedom and liberty, and leaving her wrapped in chains.

We are less free than the colonists before the revolution, less free than the citizens of this nation before the Civil War.

How long do we watch our loved ones suffer and our nation decline because we cannot get past this one simple point? How long do we turn a blind eye to raids, beatings, and shootings right here on our own soil, while we are distracted with wars decades in the planning, misled from the pulpits and inundated with canned events carefully staged and in some cases even orchestrated by our intelligence communities, the media, the politicians and the puppet masters behind them who pull the strings of stock market and public opinion?

With the economy and public confidence still at an all-time slow, why are we attacking- sorry, "sending in advisers and training freedom fighters"- in yet another Middle Eastern country, setting the stage for incrreasing involvement and another decade or so of killing hundreds if not thousands of our sons and daughters, and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, spedning billions of dollars we don't have to defend rebels who mostly hate us and who admit to using the same weapons from which we are supposedly trying to defend them? 

If defending people from an unjust government is the goal of our military, they have work to do a lot closer to home.  As far as I know, Syria isn't selling meth, running guns and putting 12 year old hookers on the streets of America, unlike some of the people so recently armed by Eric Holder and his boss.  Maybe those are more worthy targets for an application of our military might.  

Wouldn't putting the family heads of the cartels and the officers and thugs of the dictatorships and regimes six feet under strengthen border security and stabilize the region directly attached to the United States?  Wouldn't encouraging democracy and improving economic conditions in Latin and South America increase literacy, reduce birth rates, decrease illegal immigration, reduce federal law and INS budget needs, reduce the flow of guns and drugs in both directions across the border, and encourage tourism and businesses on both sides?  

Why are we attacking old people, veterans, and sick people in this nation, killing seniors who refuse their medications and imprisoning patients who seek their own answers, rather than respecting their choices and giving them the tools to avoid a lifetime of addiction and half-measured treatments?

Why is cannabis the ONLY thing the American Cancer Society won't try to use in its "Fight for the Cure"?

Why allow research labs to try to find a way to CAUSE avian flue to cross over into humans, but deny researchers the right to investigate the properties of cannabis and hemp, and the ways in which THC, CBD, and CBN could be used to improve the quality of life, to heal and cure?

Why must cannabis users die so that corporations and police unions can live?

Living on the Road

This is the video I made shortly before we left the Apache Trail campsite where we were maintenance staff.  It shows just how compact life gets after two years in motion.

Cudmudgeon Protocols

Tired of the backchatter.

Fed up with the endless questioning of my memories, the denial of routes stolen and access lost by the coffee house icons of Seneca Rocks, and sick of the ease with which three decades of travel and hardship, discovery and loss, experience and knowledge across the North American continent are dismissed by the armchair experts and hard persons of NoVA and D.C. who come running to the defense if the faintest whiff of unpleasant truth disturbs the rosewater of their illusions.

Common sense would dictate silence, retreat in the face of overwhelming numbers, perhaps some compromise in a stance that draws a line in the sand without option for negotiation.

I've never had much use for that kind of common sense.  I suppose, after all these years of walking it as I talk it, whenever I can, in every aspect of my life where I have a choice, compromise of that sort sounds too much like a good cover story for surrender.

And who would ever accept sweet reason from me after all of the toes on which I have stomped, all of the egos bruised, all the carefully-polished reputations spat upon and exposed for the thin varnish they truly were?

Besides, what in the world would I do for fun if not toppling brass idols with feet of clay, slaughtering sacred cows, advocating chlorine in the gene pool and cannonballing into the status quo?

But enough sleepless nights, enough angry debates with myself.  Time to step back, to dig deep, to give a little gift to myself and for the small group of people who agree with my perspectives and share something of my vision.

Recent rains have left much of the rest of the Gypsy Wall dripping with run-off from the long band of cliffs angling slowly down the hill to this final panel of rock above a winding back road.  Gypsies and Shaved Scamper, my two moderate bolted lines on this wall, are both streaked with runnels of water trickling down the pocketed, fossil-sewn grey stone to my right.

The left end of the wall overhangsabout eighteen inches in forty feet and is almost entirely dry, despite a short rainshower.  As the sun comes out and breezes shake the budding leaves of spring, driving back the mosquitoes and biting flies if only for a moment, I stack rope and drill gear, paired aiders and a variety of hooks, daisy chains and cams on a massive finger of stone that rests at the base of a steep initial panel of rock, eight feet of stone devoid of the pockets so common in the layer above.

A loose flake or two the size of laptop computers come off with gentle tugs, and one six inches thick and as long as my arm yields to the stronger persuasion of a prybar,  dropping like a guillotine blade to bounce between my madly-dancing feet, followed by a steady rain of 'potato chips'.  Unlike a lot of the folks who have put up routes here recently, I control the rock fall and limit damage to the surrounding environment, building up the base, keeping debris out of the road below. 

Finally, the face is clean and I pause for a sip of water before shouldering the Beast, slipping on sunglasses and bouldering up into the first clip stance.  Raising the Bosch Litheon into position, I call out, "Fire in the hole" and pull the trigger.  Behind me, I hear Cindy acknowledge as the motor growls to life and rock dust flies from the 3/8 inch bit. 

And so it begins, again.

The metamorphic limestone is dense, and it takes almost a minute and a half to drill a full-depth hole, during which I am reminded of my reduced physical activities of late and my unceasing love of my wife's cooking and southern food in general.  Deer flies and gnats take advantage of my lack of free hands to reduce my blood levels, as hopeful buzzards dip and swoop above, eyeing this potential meal.  Cindy laughs and calls out the old refrain, "It's just his feet!"

Pulling the bottomed bit free, still spinning, I release the trigger and step down from the holds.  My lovely assistant Cindy takes the drill and I boulder back up to insert one end of the blow tube into the freshly-drilled hole.  A puff of fine grey powder blasts out of the hole, the shifting breeze ensuring that most of it falls towards my face, but I have already shut my eyes in anticipation of this and feel only the sifting on my eyelids.    A three mile-per-hour breeze negates the effectiveness of safety glasses every time, and will invariably blow in your face only when it will bring dust, rather than respite from biting insects or burning runnels of sweat.

Occupational hazards.

I boulder back down blind, lean over, remove my glasses and carefully brush the dust off my eyelids before opening my eyes again.  Interesting the first few times you try it, it gets annoying after a while, but it's all part of the price for doing things by the protocols, instead of taking the easier route of rap-bolting.

Back up to the hole, the 3/8 inch Hilti bolt with Fixe hanger sitting nicely in the hole as the three pound hammer swings once, twice, three times.  Pause to back the nut off right out to the end of the threads for full depth, another tap, and I swap hammer for wrench; three good turns and the nut comes under tension, guesstimating the torque is second nature after placing well over a thousand such bolts in my careers of carpenter, rigger and climber.

Back down to the belay, a last shot of coffee and a bit of granola, flame to brass and a kiss for the lass as I step into the soon-retiring Black Diamond harness and thread daisies, clip on chalk bag and tie in the rope, thread the free end through the Wall Hauler and tie into the drill for ease of access and drop free gear lifting, add a dozen draws and runners, hooks and some DMM cams to balance my #1, 2, and 3 Camalots, step into my beat-up Evolvs and pull on my battered Petzl helmet.

"Good knot and buckle." I mumble, almost on auto-pilot as I scope out the moves above the first bolt and ledge.

"I have you on a good system, " Cindy answers, "Go get some."

Good call.  When surrounded by jackals and posers and fools, goaded by idiots and has-been with convenient memories and undeserved reputations, then pushed to the point of despair by the sight of the blind leading the deaf, stick with what you know.

Curmudgeon protocols; harsh, but honest, to a fault; self-aware without being self-serving; calling it the way I see it, and holding myself to the strictest standards of all.  Accepting total responsibility for my own words and actions, with the priceless reward of complete freedom.

Like a teetering hook on a great line, not what you might have hoped for, but good enough; you learn to work with what you get.

I guess I can live with that.

No Place Like Home

The sink is leaking.  The tub drain stopper doesn’t work.   The toilet leaks.  The gutter pours more water on our doorstep than the storm does when it rains.  There are no screens and the walls and floor were filthy when we moved in.  

The landlord and his son are a pair of tragic comedians without meaning to be so, displaying more stupidity and ineptitude in one day of “maintenance” than I have witnessed in twenty years on construction sites.

But the floors are hardwood, a mix of local pine and cherry, mismatched, but swirled with gorgeous grain.  Our apartment is actually part of state history, an old classroom in what was one of the first schools for Negro children in Petersburg.  From the back window the Allegheny mountains roll away to the northeast, where blossoms of sarvis, redbud, apple, cherry, peach, and locust have begun to touch the dark grey-blue hills with color.

Another city, another epiphany of beauty in the midst of the rush and confusion, the grinding impatience and frustration, the endless waiting and sheer nonsensical hilarity of this thing called life.

There’s no place like home.

I must be thinking out loud again, because Cindy smiles that incredible smile and says one of those things that take my breath away.

“As long as I’m with you, I am home.”  She looks down at slender, graceful hands, one balancing a book, and nods as Dire Straits swings like sultans in the background of our tiny apartment.

 

“When we were out west, we talked about ‘home’, or-” she smiles and looks up at me over her glasses, “-’back east’ as you started calling it when we were trying to settle in.”  

Twin vertical lines appear between her eyes as those dark windows focus back over the last two years, and clouds drift over that sunny smile. 

“But we’ve gone so many places without finding a ‘home’, no matter how hard we tried.  Then we came home, but it wasn’t home, ever, not in the way we wanted it to be.”  She sighs, pushes hair away from her eyes.  “We’ve met so many people and lost touch with most of them and we kind of made ‘home’ where ever we both were.” 

Another smile, and she looks down at her hands again, my slender brown Madonna, curled like a cat in a rocking chair made in Nicaragua, wrapped in a black cotton khaftan from the opposite side of the world. 

“I like it that way.”

As do I, my love.

Thousands of miles of displacement, to so many places, doing such an assortment of things in a determined effort to make a home, the lessons learned and truths witnessed in a quest that never coalesced into that elusive prize have changed all the rules, perceptions and definitions. 

We’ve lived (as ‘extended houseguests’) in luxury and dwelt in the definition of austerity (a 12 by 24 foot studio apartment in a decaying hotel), fought rush hour traffic and bedbugs and black mold, crack head neighbors and ossified bureaucracy, camped in metropolis and on the edge of the wilderness, on moss and snow and sand and grass.  We’ve pulled cactus spines and lichen and a wide assortment of spiders from our persons, clothing, bedding, and tents, learned to sleep with the sound of trains and freeways and coyotes and bears snuffling through camp, and eaten more rice and beans than some locals in Nogales.  

We’ve memorized the basic street layout, rush hours, public transit, trash services, bad neighborhoods, recreational opportunities, area and zip codes of five major metro areas and a dozen outlying regions in which we routinely traveled, volunteered or camped.

We survived crossing the continent aboard Greyhound Bus Lines, twice, and if I ever find myself aboard another Greyhound, I will know that I have indeed died and gone to the deepest circle of Hell.

We have the run from east coast to west dialed, down to the day and the dollar; miles per gallon (25), miles per hour (65-75), hours per day (8-12), miles to destination (4027.6), power drinks, water, coffee and snacks in the cooler, everything it takes to cook, camp, and conduct the basics of daily life packed into a 4-by-5-by-7-foot space behind the cab and an endless supply of topics to discuss, even after all these miles and what is hard to believe has only been five years since I met this amazing woman and began the process of detachment and surrender that led to this Journey in the first place.

And now we find ourselves home, but without a home.

We have found shelter, and for that I am truly grateful as the storms of spring bring the heat and insects of summer.  I can see that Cindy has blossomed over this past year, making an amazing assortment of jewelry, hiking for miles in some pretty astounding terrain, on full days even I found to be a test, setting and surpassing personal goals in her climbing and keeping a positive energy through so many trials.

But I know she is tired.  As am I; tired, a little road worn, slightly disillusioned, and low on enthusiasm for sacred cows and cliché perspectives.

Well it’s rainin’ out in California

And up north it’s freezin’ cold

And this livin’ on the road

Is getting’ pretty old.

Or is it believin’ in just livin’, that’s such a hard way to go?

We’ve fought with the apathy of bureaucracy, the inner demons of anger and control and depression, battled together against Cindy’s Multiple Sclerosis with natural medicines augmented by lots of love and laughter and adventure, with good music, great food and an assortment of books for the rest days.  Our journey has led through an amazing cornucopia of natural wonders on public lands, stumbling across a vast, lost history that slumbers along the byways, tiny milestones of our heritage unseen in the race to the horizon.

We have shouted in too many deaf ears, listened to too many false promises and danced to the tune of too many repetitive, predictable rationalizations.  Too many people filled with envy for what they see as our 'leisure' (instead of determination and sacrifice) to live a dream the envious would not dare follow.

The perception may exist that we are ‘homeless by choice’, that Cindy could have remained here and stayed in standard treatment and I could have found work in the Valley, at the mill, retrained for employment, et cetera.

That conceit suffers from two fatal flaws: the first; that I could sit idly by and watch the woman I was falling in love with slowly die from the experimental drugs and narcotics that did nothing to treat her disease, only to mask its effects.

The second; that we would long remain free and outside the walls of a federal penitentiary given the zeal with which the war on Americans known as the Drug War was pursued by RUSH Task Forces and other acronym-laden police arms of Prohibition.

We had to leave, quite simply, so that we could remain free long enough for Cindy to heal.  Here in the East, disinformation and prejudice about medical use of cannabis has been deeply ingrained in people that routinely use opioids without a thought, people who are admittedly addicted to their assorted anti-depressants and pain relievers, who regularly vote for harsher penalties on cannabis users.

But the availability of medications for fighting Cindy’s disease and for use as a general sleep aid, performance enhancer (forget Red Bull and Viagra!) and guaranteed effective-every-time analgesic turned out to be just a foot note in the adventure, albeit a welcome one.  Thanks to our friend Sheri Erickson, Cindy was introduced to lion’s mane extract, a natural fungal extract created by Fungi Perfecti, the company owned by Paul Stamets, one of the world’s leading researchers into the uses of mushrooms and fungus in ancient cultures and as modern medical alternatives.

With regular ingestion of cannabis s and lion’s mane extracts, the change in Cindy’s health and functionality was revolutionary.  If this had been a product produced by one of the large medical companies, we would be on every talk show in America and writing the book and screenplay by now.

Instead, we kept track of the changes, as her nerves regenerated and the spasms in her legs and arms stopped.  The burning and tingling under her skin at the slightest pressure faded, as surface sensitivity, long overwhelmed by the static of overload, slowly returned.  She woke up better and faster, functioned more clearly, and showed improved memory, energy and reflexes. With the cannabis, she was able to eat and rest on “bad days” or after extreme exertion, usually recovering in two days instead of the week it had taken when we first met. 

Her Multiple Sclerosis episodes became infrequent, then virtually non-existent, beyond some occasional tiredness, usually on bad weather days when the titanium buried throughout her body ached in time to her arthritic spine and knees.  On those days, it was hot cannabis tea for breakfast, or pancakes with special butter, or the simple expedient of a deep lungful or two of some Indica strain that would level the boom on the pain.  Brownies or Ronin’s Rational Pasta Sauce for lunch, when the chef definitely exposed himself to the dangers of second-hand smoke, and then whatever milady might need til it was time to call it a night.

We went on websites and chat rooms and forums and shared this miraculous transformation on Facebook and Blogger.  No one wanted to know, beyond the people who already knew, who had relocated to cannabis-friendly states to avoid going to prison for being sick.  Our families operated in a frenzy of avoidance, trying at any cost to steer around the topic.  The cure for several of the most devastating diseases on earth, including cancer, had been found, and no one wanted to talk about it.

We gathered in, tightened down, cut away the dead weight and honed our art.  Life assumed a simple rhythm of rest and work, sleeping and eating, reading and sending emails and news, gathering and recycling the tons of aluminum and glass scattered along the highways of this country, tending to assorted chores during irregular forays into town, exploring the incredible array of mountains and canyons, forests and rivers in which we found ourselves traveling and camping.  Packing gear and making snacks, mixing energy drinks, to rise early and drive or hike out after it on some sweet chunk of stone either unknown or just unoccupied, or not, sharing the dawn with whatever other hardy souls have come out to greet the sun, stringing ropes and setting gear, clipping bolts and pulling until your flesh surrenders to the distance between desire and mortality.  Listening to the deep silence as it seeps into the inner spaces of your heart and stills the raging seas.

We have watched with the rest of the country as our elected representatives have lied and stolen, cheated and lost control, destroyed and covered their tracks, justified tyranny with security, wrapping their sins and errors in the flag, as did those in whose shadow they stand, in whose tracks they have walked.  Without the daily distractions of milk for the cat, vet appointments, kids’ plays, house payments, an ailing water heater, road work on the daily commute, office politics as usual, or reality TV, we’ve absorbed more than our share of raw data as our leaders have dismantled the country’s most basic and sacred safe checks and institutions, and as sensible people have supported demagogues whose only interest lay in the mirror.

We cranked out new lines and old, repaired and hiked trails I’d laid a decade ago, ate lots of citrus and local red chili burritos, camped under the stars of Apache Leap and talked about what America was becoming, from where we stood. 

In the west, where there was progress towards ending the pointless war on cannabis, we dealt with shady dispensaries, shifting city ordinances and political games between corrupt law officials and over-zealous supporters of legalization.  Meanwhile, knock-off oxycodone and hydrocodone and high grade methamphetamines were pouring in courtesy of the cartels. 

In the gorgeous desert where we camped and climbed, a huge multinational mining operation was threatening, no, actually, they were promising to destroy or render unusable land of incredible significance to both national and climbing history.  Resolution Copper was looking to save a few pennies on the ton for the vast wealth they were digging out from under the gorgeous plateau of Apache Leap, by using practices that no American mining company could legally employ, and they were (and still are) doing so with the support of Congress members who had sworn to defend this country and its interests and ideals.  Recreational users had fallen to infighting and squabbling over old feuds, and the classic areas had been beaten to dust as the tide of development and involvement simply turned away, leaving Queen Creek and Devils Canyon to their own fates. The advocacy groups which claim to represent climbers had only this year put a field operative in place, after this issue has gone on for most of the last decade.

It made you want to ask people what they were smoking, because cannabis does NOT make you that stupid.

Meanwhile, back in the city, in microcosm of the rest of the nation, pro-cannabis advocates tried to reconcile thug-lovers and trustafarians with Baby Boomers and middle-class grandmas, much the same way a man might attempt to herd cats with a badminton racquet, while the people who made millions waging the war on drugs just kept pushing the same old stereotypes and disinformation we had seen in the east.

It got old.

Damned old.

We had built trail, hosted events, and fed the homeless on a pittance, and we watched organizations and communities with millions in resources and massive PR machines pretend that they had no grasp of how to deal with obvious problems and realistic solutions.  Government and the advocacy groups clearly did not want to find solutions when they make a career out of searching for them, and the puppets who fund both deny the strings that jerk them around. Government officials tasked with providing volunteers with tools and missions are too burned out, under-funded, or unmotivated and clueless to have anticipated the next sunset.  Climbers were too caught up in the next Rendezvous, climbing DVD, pub crawl or gym session to do more than post on Facebook when we tried to share the truth, too focused on ‘the scene’ in exotic locations to find time to explore the wonders right at their doorstep.

We prayed, we meditated, we tried so hard, and in the end we simply stopped giving a damn on a lot of levels.  The price of making this our new ‘home’ seemed too high; crime, bureaucracy, wasted work and money while the real needs went unanswered, and the endless headache of dealing with hundreds and thousands of people going about the business of hating their very existence. 

Far worse were the givers.  Most of the people who seemed interested in our stories or offered any kind of job or help were like bad fairies out of an old Grimm tale; they either stung like scorpions out of sheer kindness, or we could not get rid of them, and/or they were mad as bloody hatters. 

We kept digging for those precious nuggets; loving the adventure and yet dumbfounded as our assorted friends donated to, supported, and promoted the stories of much better funded people who were doing the same thing we were, living on the road, but doing so with a film crew and corporate sponsors, without building trail or replacing hardware or putting up new lines, without the complications of Multiple Sclerosis, an empty bank account, and no fall-back to which one could retreat if things went astray.  Hot chicks in a new truck with a shiny Airstream are apparently more of what ‘soul climbing’ is about than two people in their fifties living out of a 6 x 8 foot tent, nursing a twelve-year-old truck across the country on a wing and a prayer.  

As we traveled, and in the many camps we had set, Cindy made some truly fine jewelry from native stones we found on our hikes, for which I created a webpage which was showered with praise and attention and Facebook ‘Likes’ by people who then turned around and bought their birthday and holiday gifts from strangers with a good sales pitch.

Faith is a gift we receive, if we are blessed, at a young age.  Losing it is a terrible battle, sometimes, or the stroke of a bolt out of the blue.  Trying to recall the exact moment at which you first felt that loss is like trying to catch hold of the retreating tide; it rushes away… it all rushes away.

But I stop, and put out my hand, and Cindy looks up from her book and smiles as I touch her cool skin, putting a finger in her book to close it as she reaches out to cover my hand with hers.

“What?”

And I know, again, how we have made it, so far, through so much, and how there always seems to be something to hold on to. 

Love.

Love levels all preconceptions of  your own heart, or what it can take, how many times it can break, and heal, and rise up to beat on. Love lifts the glory of the morning mountains and rolling clouds out of the rain, finds the tiny flowers that thrive along the shore of the flood, silences all of your laments against the song of a billion billion stars in a desert sky. 

Love fills an empty belly better than food, holds back the chill of night better than the warmest wrap, casts light into depths no lantern can plumb.  Love finds courage when the battle is long since lost, strength when there is no further to go, laughter to greet the arrogant advance of despair, and hope, to rise up, each one of us, all broken anew and remade, to try, once again, to forge dreams into days. 

Love is hearth and home in the midst of the wastelands.  Love is the unique note, echoing forever between two people, struck at the right time and in the right way to resonate, just so, a harmonic only they can taste, but which fills the world and souls around them with light and laughter.  Love connects families across the miles and beyond this veil of tears.  Love is the unspoken knowledge that true friends remain friends, even through the silence of years.

The bittersweet truth is that you cannot go home again, for ‘home’ is a shadow on the grass, a moving shape in the clouds, a whisper on the winds.

Home is not where the heart is.  Home is what the heart is.

We traveled thousands of miles to return to the place where it all began, only to find that the place we sought was gone with the winds that had first taken us away.

The sink is dripping.  The tub drain stopper doesn’t work.   The toilet leaks.  The gutter pours more water on our doorstep than the storm does when it rains, and it looks like rain. 

No worries.

We have enough love to weather any storm.

With love, there is no place like home.

Superstitions Christmas

Ravens dancing in the wind above the fisted red volcanic stone, frosted in verdant green, saguaros stretching green arms towards a sky full of wind-torn clouds, Cindy laughing at my stupid jokes as the massive sentinel of the Superstition Mountain casts long shadows across the timeless, ever-changing landscape. Snow highlights the distant bastion of Four Peaks, a lenticular cloud stretching to the horizon, with flakes drifting to the barren, grateful desert denizens below.

We bump down a dusty road of trailers and adobe and cinderblock which will, with the coming of dusk, be transformed into an avenue of flashing, glittering holiday color and lights, saguaros and palo verde, acacia and palm trees standing in for their evergreen cousins in most, with the occasional traditionalist displaying their proud Scotch Pine or hilariously scraggly high-plains cedar. The madness of inflatables does not translate well into cactus country, so we are spared the more garish displays of holiday overkill, but the department stores and radio stations make up for any lack.

Driving times and nights around the camp table, talk inevitably drifts East and we reminisce about the Blue Ridge, the deep forests and green hills, the snow and the cold and the storms; our first hike, through 7 inches of fresh snow, with temps in the 20s and winds topping out at 45 mph, laughing in the lee of a fallen tree while sharing a smoke and a cup of hot coffee from the thermos; camping on the North Fork the Christmas my love decided to become Cindy Gray, proposing over a four course meal and drinks in the midst of a driving snowstorm; sipping Irish cream and hot chocolate beside the woodstove, while Prairie Home Companion took us through another two hours of music and comedy and the snow piled up past three feet for 28 days in a row, from December 18 through the first weeks of the new year. 

Comparisons are made, between this year's camp, living out of a 8 x 10 tent tucked in the folds of the Apache Lakes and Superstitions, to last year's crime-surrounded, bedbug-infested apartment in Flagstaff, and we have spent more than a few hours finding hilarious similarities and striking differences between operations at the non-profit Flagstaff Family Food Center and the fairly upscale Canyon Lake Restaurant and Cantina where Cindy is charming the community as a hostess and I am currently slinging burgers and Philly cheese steaks as a line cook.
  
Hearing reports of weather to the north, I think of the long hours spent in the tiny cab of a Bobcat, pushing snow all night through some of Flag's worst storms to earn a buck, piloting the little blue truck through conditions that were immobilizing huge 4x4s and returning saddlesore and exhausted to the warm hugs and hot food that always greeted me at the door to our little nest.  Cindy tells me stories of the weeks of holiday preparations and celebrations among the Mennonite families she grew up in and knew as a child, and of the Christmases spent in South America. 

Mostly, this time of year, we think of and pray for our far-flung families, and our amazing friends, and thank God for our incredible blessings and continuing fortune, the greatest proof of which is those very precious souls who grace us with their wit and charm, their foibles and sorrows, small talk and big doings and pet peeves.

If the world should end tomorrow (and I very much doubt that it will), no man or woman was ever given more grace and bounty in the way of wondrous, informative, generous spirits to light our way along the Path.

May the holidays and the coming year bring you laughter for every day you shake your head in bewilderment, sunshine to follow your every cloud, a hug for every hour you walk in doubt, and the priceless gift of love, shared among yourselves, filling every cup to overflowing. 

May we all find it within ourselves to give back more than we are given, to live IN THE NOW, true to our highest selves and beliefs in the face of adversity and change.

No value

A recent Kentucky Drug Task Force raid netted 250 cannabis plants.  High-potency marijuana, according to the Sheriff's Department.  Estimate of value was 1.9 million dollars.

Almost 2 million dollars for 250 plants.  Plants that will grow in the ditch, and do in more than a few places in America.  Plants the Federal government has denied have any medicinal value or practical application.  What makes this plant so valuable... so valuable that the government that has classified this herb as a dangerous drug and of no use to medical science, that same government holds patents on the medical applications of cannabis extracts.

What  could make this plant so valuable?

Is it that addictive?

The government doesn't think so.  Not one government study of the effects of cannabis has ever proven that it is addictive or has any negative long term health effects.  The results that have been reported by the government were skewed to fit administration policy, every time.

So why this war on drugs?  Let's go back to that raid, the one that seized 250 cannabis plants worth 1.9 million.

First, that's a ridiculous sum, pricing each plant at almost $8,000 dollars.  Cannabis, on the black market, sells for $400-560 per ounce. Pounds generally go for $2,400-3200, so the estimate was based on the premium ounce price  and the expectation that each plant would produce about 2.5 pounds.

Most plants produce between one and three pounds, usually closer to one.

Black market cannabis may have been soaked in perfumes to hide the scent, shipped cross-country inside spare tires, dusted with powdered rubber and industrial solvents and lubricants, or recovered from a law-enforcement burn, rinsed but still laced with kerosene and petrochemicals. On the black market, inferior cannabis can be treated with the same substances that make "spice" so potent and potentially dangerous.

Under Prohibition, there is no competition.  Under Prohibition, there is no incentive to produce a superior product, just one that will get you more stoned.

Under Prohibition, sick people and people in pain must risk their lives in order to use the best quality of herb they can find, depending on their location.  Often, many of the medicinal properties of the cannabis have so degraded from heat, oxygen and sunlight that it is worth next to nothing for actual medical use.

Prohibition has failed for the last 40 years.  Its only claim for success is to have made otherwise law-abiding citizens into felons for a victimless crime, and to have put billins of dollars into the pockets of private prison contractors, police unions, rehabilitation programs, and an army of DEA agents, INS agents, as well as providing meaninless high-profile headlines for state, county and local law enforcement.  Yet murder, rape, theft, child pornography, narcotics, and a host of new "designer drugs" are still sweeping the nation.

But I digress...

One thousand pounds at $3,200/lb is $3,200,000 on the black market. Because of prohibition, that money creates zero taxes, no by-products, zero economic growth.  Because of Prohibition, that money can go toward buying guns to funnel into South America to the cartels, and leads to turf wars between rival dealers, rarely upstanding pillars of the community, who sell cocaine, crack, oxycodone, ecstacy, weapons and prostitutes to "round out" their portfolio, so to speak.  Because of Prohibition, bud from the west coast makes it to Florida where it is often traded for cocaine that then spreads out across America.

Now, let's look at the medical marijuana market.

Here, an ounce of carefully trimmed and scientifically-bred cannabis costs $280-480.  Very high quality, no fertilizers, clearly labelled for specific complaints like stress, pain, nerve spasm, etc.

Dispensaries are legitimate businesses, licensed by the state and subject to a number of conditions.  Dispensary owners pay business taxes, and if they own the building, property taxes.  The owners make every effort to operate within the law, and do not dispense any other substance than cannabis. 

Dispensaries create jobs for growers, trimmers, counterpeople, clothing, poster and paraphenalia manufacturers, delivery drivers, glass blowers, and cooks to bake the brownies and make the butter.  Each one of those jobs creates tax revenue.  Dispensaries charge taxes on clothing, paraphenalia, posters, edibles, and premium bud cannabis. 

So in a legalized market, 1,000 pounds of cannabis is worth an average of $3,200,000 if sold in ounces. That is another difference in markets.  on the black market, you can buy as much cannabis as you can afford, setting the stage for distribution.  In a regulated system, patients can only possess 2 ounces of cannabis at any time.  So that's 8,000 patients who could have benefitted from that amount of cannabis, which was instead destroyed.

In a regulated system, that 1,000 pounds will generate $4800 or more, just in sales taxes.  

It will generate zero in law enforcement costs.  

It can provide employment and supplemental income for seniors, veterans and the disabled; growing, trimming, rolling into cigarettes.  

It can be woven into cloth much more durable than cotton.

It can be mixed into concrete as as a superstrong fibrous mesh, and used in the place of old-growth forests that take a hundred years or more to mature (as opposed to 9 MONTHS for hemp) to make the finest paper.  

It can be used to make fuel for America and the world's growing energy needs, without the hazard of poisoning the entire Gulf of Mexico or turning Japan into a radioactive wasteland.  

It absorbs greenhouse gases and gives off oxygen.

More importantly, and much more relevant to this inquiry, 1,000 pounds of cannabis can replace $36,000 worth of prescription meds each year for each one of 1,000 patients with chronic pain or diseases like MS and cancer.

$36,000 x 1000 = $36,000,000 in potential reduced costs for every thousand people on Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security Disability.  There are over 61,000 people living on a fixed income from Social Security Disability Insurance, most of them also on Medicaid and Medicare.

$36,000,000 x 61 = $2,196,000,000 in savings for the American taxpayer and the Federal Government.

In the current economy, why wouldn't the Federal Government want to save almost 2.2 trillion dollars annually?  The current Drug Enforcement Agency budget is $2,130,100 which is spent on 8,399 positions; 4,146 of which are actually agents.


Approximately 75-80% of that budget is for the interdiction of cannabis.  That's over $1,600,000,000 spent on destroying a harmless herb with numerous medical applications proven in peer-reviewed studies around the globe and not a single fatality from use in the recorded history of mankind.

Why wouldn't our government want almost $3,600,000,000 in additional budget revenues every year?

Perhaps the answer is one of perspective, and a focus on profits, rather than the good of all mankind.

Because viewed another way, that 1,000 pounds of cannabis represents a potential $2 Million loss for the pharmaceutical companies, every year.

Pharmaceutical companies that routinely churn out drugs with side effects such as addiction, psychosis, hallucinations, thoughts of murder or suicide, blisters on your eyeballs, mouth, tongue, or throat, red or peeling skin, deadly viral infections, arrhythmic heartbeat, unstoppable bleeding, tumors, stomach cancer, and the list goes on and on.

And yet these substances are considered to be medicines and are accepted as such by a public that will flock to accept all those side effects even while decrying the "gateway drug", cannabis. How have these poisons become medicine while cannabis is classified as a drug?

 Because companies like Pfizer and Lilly-Squibb  pour millions of dollars into sustaining the War on Cannabis, all while selling their panaceas with images of bright, happy families, running playful dogs and hard-working Americans who NEED these blessed powders and potions to truly enjoy the American Dream.  Cannabis is demonized, as it ever has been, as the province of seedy characters and loose women in smoky dives and crack houses.  It is portrayed as the domain of criminals and societal failures, a gateway drug with no redeeming medical applications, no value.

Pharmaceutical companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions.  For which, they get a return of hundreds of thousands of dollars on each and every dollar of those contributions by keeping cannabis illegal and forcing seniors, soldiers, and sick people to continue consuming narcotics that destroy their organs, drain their happiness, and fail to address the underlying causes of the symptoms they are made to treat.

Isn't it odd, then, that those same companies that deny the rest of the world the free, regulated use of cannabis have a medicine derived from cannabis?  Odder yet, the DEA website acts as a salesite to pitch the product.  Below is a quote from the DEA website concerning Marinol, the "synthetic" THC derivative.

"A pharmaceutical product, Marinol, is widely available through prescription. It comes in the form of a pill and is also being studied by researchers for suitability via other delivery methods, such as an inhaler or patch. The active ingredient of Marinol is synthetic THC, which has been found to relieve the nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy for cancer patients and to assist with loss of appetite with AIDS patients."

So THC has been found to help with nausea and vomiting and loss of appetite?  But, only if it has been packaged and processed by a giant corporation.  Forget about that THC you could grow in your closet for a few dollars a month, that stuff is bad for you, the report goes on to explain;

"Unlike smoked marijuana--which contains more than 400 different chemicals, including most of the hazardous chemicals found in tobacco smoke-Marinol has been studied and approved by the medical community and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the nation's watchdog over unsafe and harmful food and drug products. Since the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, any drug that is marketed in the United States must undergo rigorous scientific testing. The approval process mandated by this act ensures that claims of safety and therapeutic value are supported by clinical evidence and keeps unsafe, ineffective and dangerous drugs off the market."

Now, let's back up to the beginning of that quote.  One, Marinol is unlike smoked cannabis in that it does not deliver 400 different chemicals to users. 

Of course not.  Most of those chemicals are also potential medicines for development.  Why would they let you have them all at once, in the same way Nature did?  Nature doesn't have a bottom line to consider.  It's not about a cure... it's about developing a market and keeping a share.

Next the DEA rather breathlessly contends that cannabis, when smoked, is ALMOST as dangerous as tobacco.

No government finding has ever said so.  No independent study has ever supported that claim.  And every single study has shown nicotine to be the most powerful, addictive central nervous stimulant on the planet.

So why is it that you can buy this incredibly destructive drug at any convenience store, but possessing cannabis will get you 15 years in prison in some states... predominantly those in which tobacco is a major cash crop.

Because Tobacco also pours millions into the campaign coffers and Drug War rallies of those who stand to profit from the continued use of cotton, trees, petroleum, and pharmaceuticals. 


But surely good Christians could not believe that the Almightly, in His Wisdom, made a mistake?  Sadly pastors and preachers and politico-religious tyrants still blast this herb from the pulpit, weaned on 75 years of lies and terrified of the closeness to the spiritual that so many attain with a single puff, after years of searching in vain through the churches and synagogues for that link to the Eternal.

We have lost the will to Question Authority, to think critically about the information we are offered, to act on our convictions, to stand for what is Right even if it means inconvenience, loss of standing in the community or even jail. 

We are a nation of people who want change... as long as someone else makes it happen, preferably before the next reality TV show comes on and we are forced to miss an episode of The Biggest Loser. 

We cannot see that, in today's corporate government machine, it is We, the People, who are The Biggest Losers of all.

That is why cannabis is still illegal.

.