My Journey Into Cannabis - Part I: Jason Meets The Herb
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Do you remember the first time you smoked weed? Where you were, the people you were with, the place and time you were (are) at in your life? For me, it was the summer of 1988. I was heading into my junior year of high school.
I remember two kids in our neighborhood skateboard crew that seemed different from the rest. Both of them smoked weed, and one had access to it from a parent. I was a noob, a rookie, and it was time for my initiation. That decision would significantly impact who I would turn out to be.
After the first few times, I remember feeling like I had found something that I didn't know I was looking for. It didn't take long for me to become a regular participant. I really enjoy weed, marijuana, cannabis, the herb, the dank, the kind, FAT NUGS - whatever name you like to call it by. It's something that moves me and stirs my soul, but then I was (and still am) a restless soul too!
All Photos Courtesy of Jason Bird
I think about the kinds of weed we were getting when I was in high school. Growing up close to places like Boston and New York gave me access to many varieties. I remember the first time I got a bag of weed called by an actual strain name: Rainbow Sinse from South America. Deep green with reds and purples. It looked alien compared to the aged, brownish-green bags of dirt weed that I first saw early on. Really nice smell, too.
Other popular strains around at the time included Colombian Gold, Skunk #1 & #5, Agent Orange, and Northern Lights. Some really nice East Coast outdoor strains were being grown back then, the ‘Pretendica' strains from upstate New York like Mean Green and Purple Kush.
At some point we were able to get Collie Weed, aka Lambs Bread, from some Jamaicans in New York. It was brick weed, and it was really fucking good! They would smash the pounds together in a vice or a press so it would fit into a space about the size of a couple of bricks or a college textbook. Great for smuggling, bad for bud presentation and bag appeal. You had to break apart the layers of bud to smoke it; bags would often just be a single chunk of weed. It didn't look pretty, but damn, it was strong herb. Of course, we started calling it the goat because that's what stoners do. Funny enough, at the time, it really was the GOAT - Greatest Of All Time!
It was pretty common back then to end up with some seeds in the bags of weed we were buying. Being curious kids, we decided to try to grow some of them. I lived in the suburbs, in a place with many open spaces near my house. It was the perfect cover for first-time growing adventures. We would try to see the plants every day, just to visit them and get high and see how much they had grown from the last visit. I don't remember any of the plants we grew making it to the end of the season. Most of them would get eaten by deer eventually; they loved to ingest cannabis. I remember coming back to a flowering plant once only to find a pile of buds on the ground. The deer had eaten all the vegetation but wouldn't touch the flowers.
THC is a defense mechanism for the plant to protect itself (seed production) from predators, with significant side effects for us humans!
In the early 1990s, I noticed the progression of cannabis' evolutionary growth and cultural popularity. Every year I would meet more and more people who were regular consumers of "The Kind." I don't think there's been a year since where I met less and less…
Publications like High Times made it easier to learn about and follow along, documenting the intertwining growth of technology and horticulture techniques (who remembers the Phototron?)
If you had growing questions, you could just Ask Ed (Rosenthal). HT was full of the latest information. Jorge Cervantes was publishing his Growers Bible around that time, refining and perfecting the best growing and breeding techniques. Seed banks were becoming more prevalent. All the sights and smells of an industry on the rise were sprouting up worldwide.
I decided not to go directly to college after high school. I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do, but getting high and listening to music was near the top of my list!
Through friends and connections I had made, I started meeting people from all over who were growing their own herb. The Grateful Dead Jam-Band touring circus took me on journeys across the USA, going to concerts, music festivals, and parties from coast to coast. I met growers and connoisseurs worldwide, and I would eventually leave the place where I grew up in search of my higher purpose.
Read Part II tomorrow as this charming Cannabis journey continues!
