So, it’s weird to see the place where you grew up on “national tv.” Especially with a title like Murder Mountain.
Liz and I have started watching the show and it is faaaasscinating. I, of course, have HEARD of Murder Mountain. We spoke, in fact, to someone who was a member of the Sheriff’s office about it just about a year or two ago, in fact, and how the impending legality of weed was going to change everything. And it has, and still is…
But I didn’t actually grow up in that particular part of Humboldt; I’ve never even been to Alderpoint, which is the “mountain” that became such a flashpoint for illegal growers and organized crime…and at the same time, even though it really became super bad after I *left* Humboldt, and it isn’t somewhere I ever spent time myself…I know intimately all the side effects and residue of that place and that seedy underside of the illegal pot industry. The vagrants. The crime. The meth and heroin.
Last time we were up in Humboldt, our next door neighbors got raided by the Sheriff’s office and Fish and Game. The guy’s son was wanted for firing at one of the Wardens. Right next door.
It’s crazy. It’s crazy how bad things got out there, but it’s also totally expected. Weed go so valuable, so expensive on the black market, that the entire area of southern Humboldt–and even in Eureka/Arcata; there were grow houses everywhere–all that money floods in, and all the power grabbing, exploitation and desperation that comes with it…and it’s an area that is virtually *impossible* to police. Take it from me, you go for MILES without seeing anyone. Just forest, dirt roads, and mountain.
Anyway…I hadn’t heard about this Garrett Rodriguez/Alderpoint 8 case. So, that’s all new. Seems like a flashpoint, a nutshell of just how bad and crazy it got down there. Terrifying. Sobering.
I do think legalization is going to make things worse before it gets better…but I truly DO think it will get better. Perhaps not for the small growers. No, I think this spells the end for them. But, at least for the murders, the sex trafficking etc.
Anywho…work was solid today. Writing less so…so tomorrow: it’s on like donkey Kong.
Night.