This is a Humboldt County pot grower’s account of rescuing a friend’s pot patch from a lightning fire. For obvious reasons, we cannot verify all aspects of the story or identify the writer. However, we have verified some aspects of the story and are satisfied that the story is reasonably accurate… — Kym Kemp)
* * *
So it’s 7am, I still haven’t slept yet, but as I sit here reflecting on what might have been the craziest night of my weed career in Humboldt, I can’t help but smile. I made it. What that means will become more clear as this story evolves. You may find yourself in disbelief, but I promise the events that unfolded are 100% true.
Yesterday started out as most of my days do, I hopped into my diesel truck and headed out to “The Hill,” like all dopers do, to check on a few properties. Currently all my light dep [light deprivation grows] is down at the moment so I’m knee deep in trimmers. My main purpose for the day was to shuffle a few trimmers from one property to another. So I stopped somewhere off the 36, picked up my crew of smelly trimsters, and headed out towards Hyampom [a small town in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest about 20 miles east of Hayfork, a little more than half-way between Redding and Eureka on the South Fork of the Trinity River]. When the term BFE was first coined I’m pretty sure Hyampom was what they had in mind. It’s a small town in a secluded valley nestled right in between the 36 and 299. From the 36 the easiest way to get there is to take Route 1 north, and then a dirt road for about 20 miles until you pop into Hyampom.
So as I headed up Route 1 I noticed all these ominous dark clouds and thought to myself FUUUUUUUUUCK, those are thunderheads and it’s about to get really real out here. That’s when the Lightning started, the catalyst to my craziest day ever. I don’t know if you read the news much, but there’s a drought, and the forest is a matchbox right now.
Lightning was going off everywhere and as I got to the top of Route 1, I could see in the distance about 15 different fires of varying sizes. Somehow by the grace of God none of these fires were near me. While I was not happy by any means because I understand fires put people’s lives in danger, I felt relief knowing I was in the clear. The closest fire to me was a small brush fire right on Route 1. Not a big deal, or so I thought.
I get to my property about 7ish pm and I’m hanging out with my buddy and we decide to go for a drive back to Route 1 where all the mountains in the distance are visible to see how these fires are progressing.
At this point it’s about 9pm, I took a picture and you can see all the different little fires going on. They are way off in the distance which is why I felt relatively safe.
This is where it starts to get sideways on me. I get a call from my friend Bear and he tells me that lightning struck an hour ago, about a 1000 yards from his place, and he was in serious danger of losing all his Pot that was currently hang drying and he asked me if I could help him out. Never to let a friend in need down, I looked at my buddy to the right of me and said, “Let’s go save this poor guy.” My buddy was in.
As the crow flies, Bear is only like 6 miles away, but by the time we get through all the gates and traverse the windy roads, it’s like 11:30 at night before we get to the road to his property. Now as we arrive 3 big Calif. Dept. of Forestry trucks come a rumbling down the road and wave us down.
This burly guy looks at me and says, “What the hell are you doing.” So I told him, “My buddy’s place is about to burn down but we need to get his ‘valuables’ out before he abandons ship.” This guy looks at me and says, “The LEO’s [law enforcement officers] will be here in the morning so if you’re gonna move a bunch of weed around you better do it now or you might be looking at some trouble in the morning. But I gotta be honest with you, the fire is only 75 yards from the road. I wouldn’t risk it.”
So I said thanks for the heads up, looked at my buddy to the right of me, and said, “Fuck it, we’ll be fine.” So, of course, we jam up this mountain road and upon arrival I can tell my buddy is flipped. You probably would be too if you worked your ass off for the last six months just to end up losing everything to a fire. So he’s running around trying to grab everything valuable and throw it in the back of his truck. He has two workers in a carport that is full of hanging weed taking all of that down and throwing it into two big tarps.
…I brought my trailer with me so we wrap all that weed up into two giant tarped weed burritos and stuff my trailer with it. Unfortunately, there is one more carport full of hanging weed and no place to put it, so we brainstorm for a minute. We came up with a pretty good idea. He had a 2500 gallon water tank that he wasn’t using so we literally, (and maybe you had to be there because it seemed absurd to me,) are stuffing this water tank with dried pot plants and are able to fit it all in there. It was stuffed to the brim.
We strap that to a quad trailer he has on the property and start to head out. Now if you can imagine this, there is a jeep with a quad trailer behind it with this giant water tank strapped to it full of weed. A trailer behind my truck stuffed full of weed. One of the workers is driving a Polaris with goggles on and my buddy in his truck. Quite the dirty convoy headed out.
Now, to be honest, I wasn’t that worried about law enforcement because the plan was to back road it to my place and put his stuff in my barn to sort out later. I’m an idiot, what was I thinking? This is where it gets crazier.
At the bottom of the road is a truck with two federal game wardens waiting for us to come down because they were told by some California Department of Forestry guys that we might need rescuing and they wanted to make sure we made it out ok. So they stop us and ask us about the fire which really wasn’t getting any closer to the road but was definitely climbing the mountain so we answered their questions about the fire.
After the small talk one of the officers kind of bluntly says, “Is that trailer full of weed because it smells terrible.”
I said “You know what, sir? It is, but it’s all medical.”
Then he says, “And that water tank, that’s full of weed too?”
I said “Yup, but that weed is medical too.”
So he starts laughing and I’m laughing and he grabs his phone and is like “I gotta get a picture of this.” So he takes his picture and then says, “So you’re the guys at the top of the hill.”
We say, “Yah.”
He’s like “Well, normally I would arrest all of you right now, but I have to do more of these evacuations,” and then he looks at my buddy and says, “You are probably gonna lose your cabin and whatever you didn’t get out of there so get the fuck out of here and maybe you can make some money off your stuff to rebuild.”
I shit you not, this guy was fucking dialed. So we jam down the mountain back to my place and it’s like 3am when we get back. I have a panic attack for about 30 minutes because in my mind I was about to be arrested for doing a stupid favor. Eventually I calm down and I realize I’m not going to jail but also I’m not that tired and decide to go home. I had enough of the “hill” at this point.
Well, that small fire I mentioned to you in the beginning of this story turned into a big one.
So I drove through hell and decided to text my friend Kym about my crazy day and she asked me to please tell this story. So right now it’s 8:14am. I just finished writing this, I need a nap, and I hope y’all get a good laugh:)
And that’s my craziest Humboldt day ever.
(Courtesy Kym Kemp's blog, kymkemp.com)
Be First to Comment