Adventures in The Growing Trade

The Christening
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It was 1993. The location: an hour north of Kamloops in a semi-arid land known as Barrier. A wonderful place to grow dope.

Our projected take that year was a million plus. But big dreams die hard in the de facto realm of the grower. A stark truth that was about to bonk me straight on the head and leave me dazed - for the rest of my career.



The official name for the place was "The River Patch" because it sat nestled in a clearing a few meters from a snaking bend in the mighty Columbia River, miles from nowhere. Off an inactive logging road, on foot over kilometers of punishing terrain, impenetrable bug and leach infested swamps, treacherous portages, and thicket that left you gnashing your teeth in stinging pain and indignation over not being able to make a damned bit of headway. The newly initiated were rendered almost useless getting to the River Patch. When they finally arrived on site and plunked down to catch their breath, feet bleeding and blistered, forlorn was written all over their faces as they realized the excruciating work had not yet even begun.



It was absolute hell getting there. Preparing yourself for it required a full game face and the acceptance you would be scraped, bruised, soaking wet and certainly ready for a nap by the time you arrived. I had my own name for this place, and would mutter it from time to time en route: The Hell Patch.

You could get to the Hell Patch by motorboat despite the pull of the river, but that risky mode of transportation was only used to bring in huge amounts of payload for growing. With illegal pot farming, hardship is your best insurance policy. The spot was super remote, but every spot has its Achilles heel, and this was no exception. The river was dotted with cabins every couple of kilometers. One cabin in particular was nestled at the top of the gorge around the river bend, just up from where we were growing. Even though it was out of sight, we suspected the water-filled gorge acted like a megaphone and any loud sounds we made would be funneled up and down the river.



Being heard by someone visiting the cabin was always a concern when we went in by boat. Consequently, we used the boat entry only during the week, late in the day, when there was less likelihood of anyone visiting.

The plot was only supposed to have one hundred holes. All plots should have no more than one hundred holes (to diversify) but we went in late, and, with illegal outdoor growing, things always get compromised in unsuspecting ways when you get behind the eight ball.



So the spot ended up with four hundred holes, one hundred of which I dug myself in one day as the crew looked on in stunned amazement. I tore up thick roots and dug huge 3x3 holes all day long without a break. By the end of that first day, my forearms had seized from swinging the pickaxe, and my fingers were so stiff and cramped up I could no longer grip. They hadn’t yet devised the name Brown Dirt Warrior, but they would.



And with every hole I dug, every shovel full of hard won dirt, that Achilles’ heel cabin gnawed on my mind like flesh-eating disease.

That year, many growers came and went on Hell Patch; in fact, we used it as a litmus test to see if the help had "the right stuff". If you got to Hell Patch and did an honest day’s work, you gained instant respect and were welcomed into the "brotherhood of the guerrilla".



By mid-summer, the plants on Hell Patch had grown to six feet tall. Our conservative estimate on this strain was a thousand bucks per plant if they reached maturity, which added up to four hundred thousand bucks.

The anticipation was palpable as we approached the opening to the Patch after two weeks away, bristling with excitement over how big the plants might have grown. When we broke into the opening and saw them, still there and much bigger, a self-satisfied euphoria swept over us. The mood elevated instantly; smiling eyes and glistening faces roamed the patch for the initial inspection, the fun time we got to observe and enjoy. Then we got to work, pumped and enthused, the promise of a bumper crop coursing through our veins, feeding the adrenalin rush.



After all that punishing work throughout the seasons, it was indeed a thing of beauty to arrive at the Patch and see what amounted to a Christmas tree farm of maturing, high-grade marijuana, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.



Fall snuck up on us like a caravan of nomadic thieves and, before we knew it, leaves were crunching underfoot and breaths were steamy. The promise of harvest lingered in the back of our minds in a place we dared not linger, lest the fates intervene and snatch it all away with cold indifference. I’d always been told not to count my chickens before they hatched, but a glistening black Heritage Soft Tail all covered in chrome danced across my mind to mask the pain about to be endured on Hell Patch.

It was our last day in before harvest and we had to go in to inspect and gather supplies. The river, low from a dry summer, had formed lots of mud holes to negotiate off the banks where the woods were just too thick to hike. My feet were covered in muck from my boots being sucked off again and again, and my legs ached from the heavy trudging. By the time we got on patch, I was sticky with dried sweat, soaked from head to toe with swamp water, covered in blood-sucking leaches, bug-bitten - and spent.



The first signature plant signals you are on patch. Entering the plot, it didn’t immediately register in my mind that it wasn‘t there. Then I noticed the empty hole. I checked my bearings to ensure I was in the right place. Stunned, I went to the next empty hole. Scurrying into the patch, I stopped dead. All that was visible was a huge, open swath where the marijuana had been.

One of the crew yelled out what no one else wanted to hear - a blood-curdling "IT’S FUCKIN’ GONE!" One of the tougher guys in the crew began to whimper, and I looked over to see him shaking his head and beating his fist into a rotted stump. Slowly and stiffly, I planted myself and exhaled, too stunned to swat away the giant mosquitoes gorging on my face. I looked around at this now violated space, which once had held such sanctity, and thought about my punishing year here. "Why was I doing this," I pondered, "subjecting myself to such a ridiculous crapshoot?"



There would be some serious soul-searching done before the year was out. Everything had changed. But it would be getting dark soon. No point staying in this godforsaken place.

 

Reading this I really wanted to 'feel' how hard it was for you out there and unfortuantly I don't think you managed to convey it too me, I think it would help if you went over it and thought about what bits you could really exploit further to show how difficult it was for you and what a nightmare it was so by the end of it the reader is as disapointed as you that you lost this crop.
also some of your sentances appear quite clumsy, including opening sentances that are important to set the scene, examples I would say are

with the use of 'bonk', slag term in the UK for sex, it makes the line seem amusing

the use of 'gnashing' here seems quite childish with the context its in.

the above really stuck out for me, you have used 'linger' twice and the chicken phrase is so over used, it shouldn't really be used in a story like this.

I would advise you sit down and think about what you want to achieve from this, what mood and then go over it and think about how you can achieve it
Sorry if what I have said here is a bit harsh, its not ment to be
S

 

I had no problems with the things Samhain mentioned. For example, 'bonk' is not widely used in western Canada for the sex act. It isn't clear whether this is fiction or nonfiction, but it sounds like nonfiction.

Also, it isn't clear why this sizable cash crop was not under guard. I don't know much about the marijuana cultivation scene, but rumour is that the farmers do go in for Dobermans, German Shepherds, shotguns and the like.

The digging of holes for planting is also not made clear. Just why do you do this, especially since it's such heavy work? Is it for irrigation, for hiding the plant from cops, or some other reason?

 

I dunno man, I dig the idea... but I think you tried to hard to write it. It seems forced a lot of awkward diction and choice of images...

I think Samhain had a good point, maybe go back and figure out exactly what it is you're trying to say and don't try so hard to get it out.

 

I think it was good but the end was predictable - I could imagine the place, didn't notice the linger thing and i live in the uk but bonk or gnash wasn't a problem

 

COME HELL ON HIGH WATER​

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When the Squamish River unleashes a torrent from angry glaciers awakened too abruptly from their winter slumber, it commands the kind of respect you had better heed, lest it swallow you in a watery grave. Thus was the lesson for my partner and I, as we hit the water on the way to our river spot, top-heavy with a 10-bale load of Pro-mix and 50 clones in four-inch pots in wax tree planter boxes propped on top.

Now the last thing you want to hear when you are overheated, overloaded and at the mercy of a raging river is the sound of a chopper coming up the valley on your trajectory. But that’s just what we heard, as we bucked the surf, whooping with exhilaration, trying to maneuver the boat through the defiant current. I was on the bow, my partner in the stern, frantically plunging the paddle into the water to try and slow our momentum, desperately trying to commandeer the boat back from the clutches of the river.

By the time I heard the chopper over the foaming torrent, it was almost on top of us, coming right at us, about a quarter-mile away. "Chopper!" I shouted, hearing the faint clack of rotors as we came up swiftly on a hairpin bend in the river. My partner responded by cranking our tail perpendicular to the bank with one deep thrust so we could paddle with all we had to the cover of shore.

It was too late! We were sucked into the vortex of the river bend. Instead of hitting shore, we came up wide on the portside, heading straight for a huge deadfall snag jammed in the bend. With barely time to brace, we hit it broadside with a sickening thud and were pinned there, the boat unstable and taking on water - fast. The iciness of the glacial runoff took my breath away as it over-spilled the sides and soaked my legs on the boat floor. I went into flight/fright overdrive, my heart pounding out of my chest, and grabbed the slim log trapping us there. There were lots of branches, thank god, so I was able to balance and support myself.

Water thundered past us in foamy torrents. Over the roar, I barked at my partner to grab the machete. He frantically did and I ferociously chopped branches on the down-stream side of the log. We pulled the boat over the snag and set ourselves free, before the river could sentence us to a hideous death.

Judiciously, my partner pulled the boxes of clones out of the boat and balanced them precariously on the log. He managed to get all the bales and clones up onto the snag. I stuck the machete into the log to help him grab the filling dinghy and pull it out of the water, but the damned boat was so heavy with water we could hardly budge it. Our lifeline being snatched away in a tug of war with the mighty river, we yanked and pulled, balanced on that log, death almost a certainty on either side.. Using our bodies as counter- balance, we finally got the dinghy up onto the log and turned it over to empty out the water.

A menacing branch just below the surface was obstructing our launch point, so I went for the machete, kicked it lose by accident and watched it plop into a frothy eddy, gone forever.

No time to waste. We flipped the boat to the other side of the snag and into the water, then proceeded to load it again from the downstream side of the log. The current was diminished here because the log was acting as a dam.
With the goods aboard, my partner got on board the bow. I jumped aboard the stern and struggled frantically to shove us off with the paddle. With no time to worry about puncturing the hull, we broke loose and were sucked back into the river, almost instantly hitting white water and forced to shoot the raging rapids. As white water sprayed our faces and flung us about violently, we whooped and yelped during our little rodeo ride about our near-death experience. Finally drifting into the still, black waters, we paddled to shore right in front of the patch. And all this before morning coffee!

After working the patch, at the end of the day we returned to the boat only to find it deflated. The hull had, in fact, been punctured and had a slow leak. I looked out at the river, now swelled even more and realized that the once placid setting had again become a cauldron. Because of a single act of nature, our lives had hung in the balance.

We patched the boat with our emergency kit, pumped it up, and took to the water again to reach our vehicle before nightfall.

the movie:

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=brwndirtwarrior

 

Well, it definitely stands out for actually having something to say. It's pretty rare that we get a story here that's actually about something interesting.

You write well and coherently, sure there are a few redundant sentences but overall it's a good read. I didn't get the forced thing at all-- you seem to write the way you probably speak, which is definitely fine by me.

The fact that it's true makes it easy to get through-- no need to attempt any creative wordings. So yeah, I wouldn't change a thing... but I would like to know what happened to the crop. All that hard work and nothing to show-- it gives you sympathy for the 'criminal' protagonists.

Some of the criticism here seems only a lot of closed-minded and/or petty nitpicking... but then again, I suspect that none of it will exactly discourage you from telling your very real and very engaging story. Good. This is a story that I, among others, would definitely like to hear.

 

I thank you for that. Please check out my movie. And I will post more stories -- if not just for you.

 

Your tale would improve with a little more who/what/where/when/why. You are assuming your reader knows these things. For example, it sounds like you and your partner are importing required fertilizer and seedlings for your marijuana crop, down this mean river, the Squamish, and that you figure the helicopter is carrying RCMP out to stop you and jail you. What's self-evident to you may not be self-evident to most of your readers.

You might provide the background information in a lead paragraph so that the rest of the narrative keeps its dramatic pace. For example, in your second piece you're talking Squamish River, but in your first piece you're talking the Columbia, which is nowhere near the Squamish. You've changed location and no doubt dates without telling the reader.

That said, you do provide good drama. One of the harder things to convey to a reader meaningfully is fear. See my piece on this thread, "Rolling the Dice on Assiniboine".

***
Actually folks, I suspect, but don't know for a fact, that brown dirt warrior's tale is true and that that helicopter was sent by RCMP looking for marijuana cultivators. I don't have the cost per hour figure, but flying helicopters up and down the Squamish River isn't cheap. Now do you wonder why you hate paying taxes?