Outlaw Baseball Fan in Paradise
Outlaw Baseball Fan in Paradise
By Ron Halvorson
Baseball: the only sport that’s always good on the radio. America’s game broadcasting in Gaia, deep in Northern California’s Emerald Forest, interwoven with my job as a cannabis farmer. The Giants play-by-play voices of Kuiper, Krukow, Fleming, and Greenwald became my welcome company. I lived like a hermit then, often going for two weeks at a time without seeing another human.
It was early October and getting cold at my primitive campsite. My radio was blaring a tense playoff game as the night turned black. A hopeful moon had not yet risen. The San Francisco Giants were in trouble. You could hear the desperation in Duane Kuiper’s voice describing the moment—behind 2-0 in a best of five series against the Reds. Two outs, top of the ninth. Panik was down to his last strike and I was starting to shiver.
It can’t end like this, I thought to myself. What will I do out here without the ball games to listen to?
Then the pitcher was suddenly wild. Somehow Panik had coaxed a walk. Sandoval lashed a double down the leftfield line and Posey drove him in with the tying run. I heard an otherworldly hissing. Something big was crashing through the brush behind my trailer.
Pointing a trembling flashlight toward the disturbance revealed the iridescent eyes of a mountain lion. The hungry cat must have smelled the sausage I boiled for dinner on my cookstove, and now it could smell my fear. Adrenalin flowed hot. I screamed, made myself big with my hands in the air, flung rocks and water bottles in the general direction of the creeping large cat. It leaped, stopped for another snarl, and was gone into the night.
I turned my radio to full volume to keep the huntress away and slammed the rickety door shut on my trailer. I could hear the postgame radio show as I slithered into my down sleeping bag and curled into fetal position. The Giants had come back to win that playoff game in the 10th inning. They were still alive. So was I.
I woke at dawn, surprised that the batteries had not run out on the radio. Tuning into the local public station, the DJ had a report. There was a CAMP (Campaign Against Marijuana Planting) sighting of surveillance helicopters that morning. They’re on the move. Not only that, a convoy of police vehicles was spotted, heading to my watershed location. There was an unrelenting heatwave going on, so I knew I had to hike down into the canyon to water my plants before they wilted.
Bushwhacking to the lookout, I gazed in reverie at my last outlaw garden: forty buckets of Blue Dream clones, blooming in a hidden matrix of buckbrush along the steep incline of a lovely stream that was still home to Steelhead. The buds were swaying rhythmically in the hot breeze—heavy with sticky resin.
Two green Vietnam vintage Huey Helicopters were cruising for illegal weed gardens on the timberlands across from me, dipping in and out of sight, like icons in a video game. I ignored them, as I often did, and proceeded to water my plants. Before long, the helicopters were right over me with net loads of confiscated marijuana buds. I could clearly see the pilots and their M-16’s. What the hell? I was so far down in my camouflaged garden, these federal agents didn’t even know I was there. They were eradicating gardens of my new neighbors—the Green Rushers. These BigPot out-of-town growers were erecting giant greenhouses full of cannabis plants, clearcutting the forest, and dewatering the river. Now they were paying the price for their avarice.
Another day’s work was done and my plants were looking good. I hobbled back to my trailer and listened to San Francisco Giant pitcher Tim Lincecum finish off the Reds in Game 4. The Big Red Machine was mystified by the gyroscopic, exploding delivery. Timmy was smoking that day—his reefer and his fastball. It was time to burn one of my own.
I looked across the river at the blazing alpenglow sky. The sunset purple in the distant mountains. In the shallows, dogwood tree blossoms and rooting willows caught the last light of day. The cottonwoods dropped their crinkled, gently floating blossoms. At dark, the frogs began to croak and the crickets chirped into a rising crescendo. Soon a bright Luna rose above the horizon. The animals and human rabbits on the run would rule this realm until sunrise. Thank God Ma was driving up to rendezvous. I sensed it was finally harvest time.
Ma was dead tired by the time she arrived, but even so, she wanted to check out a nearby garden for reassurance. Pot pirates of the Emerald Triangle often roamed when the woods were lit up—this fall harvest moon was low and bright, so we walked our familiar riverside trails without a flashlight. The green buds were illuminated in soft moonlight. Woodland sounds made us jump, but soon we settled into the friendly chorus of crickets. No wandering zombies in sight.
Ma squeezed and smelled the buds with her practiced fingers and nose. “Pretty developed, Pa, but will they get bigger?”
She was never sure. When was the perfect time to cut?
I squeezed and sniffed the colas. My fingers were sticky, oily, delicious. “Something’s gotta be done. We can listen to the game tomorrow, while we harvest.”
A joyful scream was heard in the Green Idyll the next day when Buster Posey hit a Grand Slam and put a dagger into the Reds. “Tell it goodbye!” said the Giants radio announcer. Mom and Pop were harvesting, stoned, and happy fans for another year.
Ron Halvorson is a lifelong San Francisco Giants fan who grew up a stone’s throw from Candlestick Park, when Willie Mays still roamed centerfield. He continues to live and garden on the West Coast. Ron has had essays previously published in Mother Jones online, and “Earth Island Journal” magazine.