Out here, this green earth will swallow anything whole. The desert tells time in dust, water through shape. The forest expresses itself in rot.
On my way to Willow Creek, a marijuana nirvana in the mountains above Arcata, I drive past forgotten properties tucked into the darkness of trees. They’re littered with broken-down cars and RVs, abandoned doublewides and graffitied trailers — the collective detritus of old pot farms slowly sinking into the earth.
These old farms are just the ones I can see from the road. But don’t worry, the rest are being viewed from above, by the ever-present law-enforcement helicopters and drones. They used to pepper these hillsides by the hundreds, these quaint, herbal hamlets. But that was before legalisation in 2016 and its slew of regulations.
This part of Humboldt County, California, is a two-hour drive down the coast from the Oregon border; too north for “California”, too south for the Pacific Northwest, estranged enough to have spiritually seceded, alongside parts of southern Oregon, into its own territory dubbed the State of Jefferson.
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