A long, long time ago, in a land far, far away, I was young, and dumb, and having a rough go of things. My life had devolved through a series of bad decisions and struggle seemed to be my base line. I was a shitty brunch server at a local cafe—not even in the back of the house where my talents could shine—and feeling directionless, with no way out of the hole I was in.

This month was particularly challenging, as rent was coming up, and I didn’t have two pennies to rub together. Looking for other work had not proved fruitful, and I had exhausted my options for folks I could turn to for short-term loans. So, I reluctantly decided that the time had come to reach out to my Capricorn mother to see if she would be willing to float me some rent money for the month.

That ended up being one of the most painful, humiliating conversations of my life. Instead of offering financial aid, she showed up with two bags full of groceries and the message that I was on my own. I kind of went numb after that. Hopelessness swallowed me. I definitely missed paying on time that month, and knew that the next would prove to hold more of the same.

Around that same time, I fell in with a real douche bag of a human, who of course, I felt was “The One” for me. Since he was already running a small-time illicit substance operation, he suggested that we start growing weed. He spoke my language! It was meant to be! 

I came from multiple generations of pot farmers, have two green thumbs, and very little concern for the rules of the state—this was my magic bullet! Finally, a solution to both my money troubles and my direction in life.

It won’t surprise you to learn that that is not exactly how things panned out. I was a dedicated boutique, indoor dirt farmer, and making that work in any real way takes a considerable amount of effort, vigilance, air conditioned space, and up-front capital. Good weed grown indoors requires almost constant hours of high wattage energy output, which is expensive. 3000 watt metal halides take a lot of juice. Yes, one could rely on timers, but if they fail you run the risk of stressing your crops and triggering hermaphroditic growth(cannabis is a gendered plant). So, one must be tethered to the light cycles. That also produces a grip of heat, which is fine in the winter months, but come summer, you are apt to fry the babies, or at the very least, incur the dreaded stress.

Then, there’s the dirt. That shit is heavy. And, expensive. For the best buds, you want to make your own substrate with organic forest mulch, oyster shells, bone meal, blood meal, bat guano, steer and chicken manure. Plus, you need just the right amounts of grit and vermiculite. Too little, and you cannot get enough fertilizer in the growing window, and run the risk of root rot from too much moisture retention. Too much grit/vermiculite/perlite, and you might as well not have any soil at all.

After that, comes the pests: spider mites, bud worms, aphids, scale, powdery mildew, white flies, and so many more. Constant vigilance is the key to success—vigilance, and ladybugs. We were interested in real medicine(or rather,I was interested), so all forms of disease and pest abatement had to be organic. That meant the employment of ladybugs, praying mantises, pure neem oil, and Dr. Bronners eucalyptus soap.

Once you’ve hit your stride with the lights, the bugs, the soil composition, and the watering/feeding cycles, you need to be on top of repotting. If you jump pots too soon, you can kill or stress the plants, or at the very least, slow their growth substantially. If you wait even two days too long, then you run the risk of root binding(these plants are known for growing so fast that some ninjas used to train by jumping over them day after day to improve the height of their jumps—even faster growing than bamboo, if you do it right), also slowing growth and stressing the plants. The last thing any indoor grower wants is to have even one male flower around their fat mamas and destroy that sensuous sensimilla.

Any missed step results in small buds, the dreaded seeds, or complete crop failure. And, the risks don’t stop once you’ve harvested. Then, you need to be mindful—and vigilant—during the curing process. Those bastard spider mites might have been kept at bay during production, just to emerge at hanging, wrap the whole harvest in their Webs of Satan, and screw your pooch. At the very least, you could easily rot your crop, especially if you achieved the coveted Dense Cola.

This new gig was much harder physical labor than my previous job, and was proving even more limiting for my freedom. Beyond that, the stress was almost unbearable. I was growing these pups at a time when cultivation was highly illegal. If one of my neighbors even caught a whiff of the goodness, one call is all it would take for me to lose my freedom altogether.

As it happens, at the same time that me and The Douche were growing our own operation, my next door neighbor hooked up with a huge grower from out of Oregon. This guy was a real piece of work who spotted the drunk sucker next door for one who could help with more than one of the sticking points listed above. She had space, time, and could be the perfect fall guy if the whole schtick went to pot. How we got involved was through her ineptitude failing the first trip. She had noticed what a thriving venture we had and kept enlisting us for help. Finally, we took it over, not yet knowing that there was a bigger monster lurking under that bed.

Unbeknownst to us, that Oregon grower had the FBI hot on his trail, and since we now had completed a highly successful grow trip in his name, we did, too. Although my little closet sea-of-green produced around five pounds of saleable weed, my partner—as mentioned previously—was a douche, and I personally saw very little of those returns. I could not pay my electricity bill, much less my rent, and now I was in a worse position than I had been before(duh).

That, however, was not the least of it. We were able to head off eviction by putting in our 30 day notice before getting served, and shoved off in the middle of the night near the end of that month. The night we made our final move, I decided to eat an edible that had me literally feeling like I was aboard a ship on stormy seas. Yet, through that haze, I noticed strange men who seemed to be watching us, following us. Neither did it seem to stop once we reached our new abode. Similar to the end scenes of Goodfellas where the paranoia is on blast and you can’t tell if what you are seeing is real or imagined, I would see the same cars driving slowly down the block, and come out in the mornings to our garbage having been ransacked.

Through the grace of whatever angels are looking out for me, our crops failed in the new place, the Oregon grower got busted, and without the money to keep it, we lost our new home and all the possessions inside. This would lead to the decision to head out to Iowa in the summer for my first Sundance, and the rest is history. I think The Feds finally realized that I was small potatoes, and with no crops, there was no crime. All's well that ends well, I suppose—although, it would be another minute or two before things actually “ended”.

A few of the gold nuggets I got out of this long ordeal was, for one, the insight that most humans don’t dig themselves out of a hole on their own. We might be of the ilk who can muscle through, or scrape by, but for most of us, we need support and guidance in order to thrive. I also learned so much about something that brings me pure joy—gardening. I learned how to listen to plants, how to speak with them, how to treat their many ills, how to nurture their specific needs, and how to honor them for the gifts they opt to share. Sacred medicine knows when it is being prostituted, and it acts in kind. 

I connected with my ancestors through this illegal endeavor, as well. It brought a heart connection, and deeper understanding of my grandfather that I certainly wasn’t expecting, not to mention my mother and both of my fathers, and even the history of this country. And, it got me to Sundance. This crazy, vilified, counter-cultural path helped me find some of the biggest spiritual transformation of my life. It led me to retrieve spirit bundles that were literally prophesied. And, it was one of the many steps that got me to where I am now: A very good life.