What I learned and why it matters (re: eight year federal medical cannabis prosecution)

[Fly by night]

Preface: Good morning, all y'all. As many of you know, I have spent the past eight years in a battle with federal drug "worriers" over my freedom and my farm for the crime of growing seven pounds of medical-grade cannabis for myself and four terminally ill neighbors. It has been a long, strange trip -- a trip that may never really end. However, one of the gifts of this trip has been to write about the experience as it was happening and to share those writings with 500+ friends and, occasionally and sporadically, with fellow DUers.

In early December, I sent out a note to my 500+ closest friends, asking whether any of them wanted to challenge me to pull those writings into a book by New Year's Eve. Three dozen+ issued that challenge and, lo and behold, I was able to send them the first draft of the book (373 pages) by the self-imposed deadline. I am now getting valuable feedback from those friends as I move forward to edit the book to submit it for publication. A renowned Nashville-based author (himself the creator of 30 non-fiction books) has agreed to meet with me on Monday to discuss the publishing process. In addition, a New York-based editor (who maintains a second home near me) now has the draft also. I definitely appreciate their interest and support, particularly because this process is virgin territory for me.

Since this community has been both supportive of me through this process and insistent that I pull a book together, I wanted to share with you the draft epilogue that ends "My Hollow Tale: Reflections On A(n Interrupted) Life".

Enjoy. As always, your feedback is most appreciated. Peace out.
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Epilogue: What I learned – and why it matters

It is a little past dawn here in my colder-than-usual, earlier-than-usual deep hollow home. I have been up since 3:30 am, stoking both wood-stoves and making sure that the water spigots are still dripping. Crawled back into bed, for warmth as much as anything. But since 4:20 am, I have been up … thinking of you.

It is extraordinary to me that I can live so deep and so naturally (as is my nature) in this quiet, out-of-the-way place for so very long – 41 years and counting – and yet, at the same time, I can be sitting here writing all y’all, and thankful for the strand of warmth that each of you allows to flow from where you are to where I am as you read these words. I have learned just how real friendship is – that prayers and good thoughts are – by knowing and being known by you. Without the interconnectedness that you provide for me, that you invite me into, my life would just be sensation and solitude. It would not be what you have allowed it to become – a life of sharing in and with you the wonders of my world (of our worlds).

I’ve learned that, and it matters a lot.

The act of pulling this book together for you, combining old written pieces that some of you have seen before with others (the back-story) that none of us (including me) have read was a wondrous gift. Of course, like most gifts, I didn’t react to it that way at first. When my early December angst ended in the rash promise to do this first draft if only some of you wanted to see it done, your responses (two dozen and counting) put more structure in my life than has been there for several minutes. I needed that, and my Garden needed it too. Because my first response to an impossible deadline and another formidable challenge is to … putter in the Garden or the berries.

Instead of locking myself down in front of the computer, I made trip after trip to Nashville, collecting up to one hundred bags of leaves each trip to use as mulch in the blueberries and the Garden. Over the past month, I have made at least twenty round-trips (usually three hours) and the blueberries are shining in their orderliness and well-mulched warmth right now. Hauling leaves and mulching the berries wasn’t enough. I also dragged out the push mower and mowed (to a golf course’s precision) the walkways between the berries, using the mower like a heavy-duty weed-eater to cut weeds and honeysuckle in the rows between the plants. All that work would not have possibly gotten accomplished if delaying the start of this book had not motivated it. Fortunately, working – working out in the air and the breeze and the sunshine, at the end (or the beginning) of one row or another, knowing that some small sense of accomplishment is possible just at the other end – is the best first step toward anything of value. Work frees my thoughts, the labors unbridle me to form some structure, some response, some start of the long row that is this book.

I’ve learned that over forty+ years. With what I’ve been able to accomplish to help realize the potential of this farm over that time, to fulfill a nineteen year old’s dreams, it has mattered.

Even as the whirlwind of farm projects proceeded apace, I knew that the best way to meet this latest challenge was to type one sentence after another to you (and you …), following an outline that prefaced it all. What I wanted to share with you started as a four-page, single-spaced outline. It ends on this page, just a little shy of 400. The difference between that outline and what you’ve just finished reading was simply a matter of time, and what I was able to do with it. As many of you know, much of this book was always just that – using the random moments of inspiration and reflection, the rare minutes of solitude, to toss you another warm strand. Knowing that you were prepared, accustomed, to taking what I had to give and returning it in kind. Trusting that it would mean something to you, as parts of it have meant so much to some of us in the past. It is so comforting to feel that protected, and appreciated, at the same time. It makes an imperfect, incomplete telling of my life’s tale possible. Nothing else would make it so. With you as the audience, I have learned to trust my voice. In so many ways, that matters (at least to me).

The process of trying to condense my back-story (that is, my life before the raid) into some coherent, representative mosaic was clearly the scariest part of this whirlwind process. It was also the most daunting hurdle to overcome. No small handful of incidents (even stretched over 70 pages) can reflect all the pieces of my puzzle, even for me. The conceit that I settled on (limiting the shared memories to no more than a few per decade, even if the number grew as I grew older) finally freed me from needing to tell it “all”. It also opened me up just to write, to fill in the spaces between memories any way I wanted but to try to share with you some elemental moments that helped form me. You must know that some of those moments were so intense in the pain of putting them on paper that I had to take a break and let the computer and me cool down. Completing this self-disclosure exercise allowed me to leave you knowing more about me than just my family and my farm, the recent struggles. I trust that knowing this little bit more about me puts the rest into better perspective. I’ve learned that nothing means much (no matter how precisely detailed) without some perspective. I hope that this new perspective matters to you.

Looking in retrospect at what I chose to share with you, the seeds of my interrupted life were well and thickly sown early on (some deep in my DNA.) I recognize Doc and Dad in parts of me (restless intelligence, boundless energy, bottomless capacity for work … and a complete disregard for laws that make no sense to us.) But both Nana and Mom are close by too, in ways that I am thankful to both of them for. So are the early rays of sunshine, the wives and the lovers, the friends and the neighbors, the challenges and the work accomplished. While I have learned that I am more than the sum of my parts, I have also learned that I need not be much more, because the mortar of my life was all of them – is all of you. It matters that I know that, and am thankful for it.

At the same time, another gift of pulling this book together for you were the daily reminders of the spiritual awakenings that were provided me throughout the last decade whenever I needed them. The gift of uncertainty was always matched by grace. Fear was always overcome by trust, unsettled nights were always followed by chances to be of service to others, always the best antidote for what ailed me. That spiritual awakening continues, is reinforced by being reminded just what prayerful awareness and gratitude for the capacity to endure anything brings. For me today, it brings a reminder that – regardless of how unsettled my life continues to be, regardless of the insecurities and uncertainties that still linger -- I have what it takes to survive. That matters.

The news is not all rosy, however. Some of what I’ve learned over the past eight years is not pleasant to know or to carry with me now. My naïve belief in the trustworthiness of our elections has been shaken to its core. I don’t allow myself to dwell on just how frightening it is to believe that the American people have dropped the reins on our government (or had them cut inside the voting booth in ways that they still can’t comprehend). It is also frustrating to see yet another administration inch up to the edge of meaningful drug policy reform, at least as it applies to cannabis, and then to shy away again. It is clear that the forces of evil remain strong and are becoming more entrenched. I have learned that my choices for responding to this madness and treason have become more limited. The ones that remain had better matter, sooner than later.

It is time to end this tale. I am looking out my window at another six inch snow, the fourth measurable snow so far this winter (and the second of six inches or more.) It would be nice to make that one last trip to Nashville for one more load of leaves, but that would make no sense. Today is the day to wrap up, walk up the ridges and down the valleys of my farm, and to give thanks. Tomorrow is early enough to make that one last trip to south Nashville this year for one last load of leaves, one last gathering of what other men discard. It takes little to entertain me in these under-funded days and I’ve enjoyed the conversations with wealthy Nashvillians as I’ve loaded their curb-side bags for a short ride south for a respectful return to the earth. That little green gesture matters, as do the new connections. It will take many more to matter enough.

Like all of you, I have no idea what tomorrow will bring. Unlike many of you, I know that. I am thankful to have been interviewed for an epidemiologist position with the Navajo Nation before Christmas, the first serious job interview in almost two years. Should that come through, I will once again leave this quiet hollow behind for another chance to make a difference with Indian people whose example and wise counsel helped turn my own life around. I do hope something comes of this opportunity, but – like everything else – the results are not in my hands. Only the effort. Whatever comes next, I will always have another chance to be of service. That is comforting because I know it will be enough. I have learned that’s all that really matters.

In closing, I want to thank all y’all for living lives that matter too. I’ve tried to do that with mine and I’ll let you (and anyone else who is interested) judge how my interrupted life stacks up in that regard. As for me, I continue to be blessed and buoyed by your respect and affection and am thankful for the chance to catch my reflection occasionally in the corners of your smiling eyes.

If I had all of this to do over, I would, for the gifts it has brought me.
The gift of uncertainty. The gift of hope. The gift of making a difference.
The gift of another day in the Garden.
The gift of right now.

You are always welcome in my home, in my holler and in my inbox.

Y’all come.

[snappyturtle]

1. All the best in your endeavors...thanks for sharing!

[Fly by night]

2. Thanks kindly. Much appreciated.

[Fly by night]

3. One self-kick, then back to the Garden

[piratefish08]

4. when your book is ready, please post it for sale in the marketplace forum.

i'd love to read it.

[Fly by night]

5. Thanks. I'll do that.

I didn't know we had a marketplace forum. That's good to know.

[Fly by night]

6. Postscript: Despite a six hour interview with the Navajo that appeared to go well, ...

... it has now been a month and the program I interviewed with has still not called any of my references. Either I was mistaken about the interview or my guilty plea re: medical cannabis was the only thing that mattered. Over the past eight years, I have learned that many times.

[hootinholler]

7. I can only hope that I have lived a life that matters.

I fear the evidence points elsewhere.

-Hoot

[Fly by night]

8. From where I sit, you're doing fine.