Mark asked the Gren, “Tell us about the first time you smoked a joint. Or, smoked part of a joint.”
I knew I was opening myself up to this sort of situation. In an open forum where readership includes high school and college friends as well as parents, grandparents, and in-laws; where members of my in-law’s church regularly swing by and where Norah herself may eventually read what I write here, I have been asked, straight out of the gate for my new “Ask the Gren” feature, to discuss my first experience with marijuana. What a fun little minefield to tiptoe through.
I’ll admit my first instinct for this was to just ignore it. Maybe meekly write back to Mark and explain my understandable reluctance to tackle this topic in such a public way. There’s a good chance he asked this just to watch me squirm. And besides, if I play along, won’t he just ask more and more challenging questions until he makes me crack? Cutting this sort of thing off at the start is certainly tempting. However, what fun is asking questions if the only ones that get answered are the ones I’m totally comfortable tackling?
In other words...fine, Mark, I’ll march into the minefield so that you can prop your feet up down there in Dallas and enjoy the tale.
And Be There When I Feed The Tree
The Lake of the Ozarks was a pretty weed-friendly place to grow up. Most of my friends were reveling in their love of nature’s psychedelic bounty by the time I was in eighth grade or so. If it weren’t for the huge stubborn streak that I still claim as my own, I’d have probably started down my road to herbal decadence at about the same time. But, I had little inclination to follow the crowd and staked my claim to a strange middle ground in the social dynamics of high school. I dressed in tie-dye shirts and rope sandals; I listened to my dad’s old stoner music from the 60s and 70s; and I studied all things hemp. I was fascinated by the counter culture revolution: Woodstock, Haight-Ashbury, etc. But I never partook of the drugs so openly endorsed by the era of my fascination and so freely available in the circle of friends I ran with. I’d sit in the circle and join in the insane philosophical discussions…but I’d simply and merrily pass the joint around.
There were several reasons for this I suppose. First, I had this idea that I was going to become a big time hemp activist once I got to college. I reasoned that my opinion would be taken more seriously if folks couldn’t quickly discount me as just another stoner. Secondly, while lots of my friends seemed to be having quite a bit of fun with their pot, several were smoking more and more and developing a habit that I just wasn’t too thrilled with. So, I sat on the side of the metaphoric pool and continued to size things up before jumping in.
As the high school years went by and graduation loomed, however, I began to give up on the dream of major legalization activism. I became more comfortable with the idea of smoking in moderation and came to feel that I’d rather smoke for the first time with my long-time friends instead of the mysterious and undefined friends I would make in college. So, on April 8, 1994, my friend Laska and I set off after dark, hiking up to the Elder Tree’s clearing on the hillside facing my mom’s house.
The town of Linn Creek is nestled in a valley, surrounded on all sides by the rolling Ozark Hills. Across the street from my Mom’s is a house. Behind that house is another house. Behind that second house is a large field that hosts a construction company of some sort, littered with dump trucks and piles of gravel. Beyond the gravel field, is the creek that gives the little town her name. And beyond the water raises the green slope that houses the bald patch. Over the years since, the mysterious patch has lost its geometric shape, but in 1994, it was a perfectly square patch of grass on a hillside that was otherwise uniform with trees. At the top and center of this patch was a massive evergreen, bigger than any other tree on the hill. The Elder Tree we called it as if this tree spirit had lay claim to this small parcel of land and none of the younger trees dared encroach. We felt it important to visit the Elder Tree on this auspicious occasion.
After finding the driest place to cross the creek, we meandered back and forth across the face of the hillside, tracking imaginary switchbacks through the thick Ozark underbrush to minimize the slope of our moonlit climb. We chatted about song ideas that Laska was working on and story ideas I was working on as we made our way through the shadows toward the general area we thought we’d find the clearing.
The moon was nothing but a sliver, but the sudden opening of the trees made the clearing seen fully lit after our time under the tree canopy. The expansion of our vision made the space feel as holy up close as it had looked from a distance. The Elder Tree towered over us to our left and the ground fell away to the tiny lights of the tiny town to our right. Above us, the stars spread in every direction through the clear sky. The ground was rocky and not nearly as plush as it had appeared from our yard, but we wiggled around a bit until we found relatively comfortable spots to recline.
We absorbed our surroundings for a while before Laska produced his metal pipe and for the first time…I didn’t just pass it. We lay there, passing the pipe back and forth, talking about college. I had been accepted to what was then called Northeast Missouri State in Kirksville and he would be heading to Culver Stockton, a small school on the Mississippi River. With only about an hour and half separating the two schools, we discussed how great it would be to be able to zip over and see each other as often as possible…a simple plan that was only enacted once for some reason.
Intoxication of any sort is difficult to describe. A sensation in your toe can be quickly categorized, but sensation in the organ you use to analyze sensation can be much more difficult. You don’t even notice it’s happening until you catch your mind in a thought process that just wouldn’t happen otherwise. It’s like falling asleep. A dream-like pattern slips into an otherwise normal thought and you’re suddenly aware that you are drifting away. In addition, it affects each person differently and can change depending on your mood. I would spend the next several years of my life trying to come up with metaphors and descriptors to properly capture the feeling of being stoned…but after all these years, I’m still not really able. But generally, I would describe the feeling as a falling away. As if my conscious and subconscious had temporarily switched places. I was a step removed from my senses, shrunken away into the recesses of my mind just a little. Wrapped up with processes that normally go undetected, noticing little details that normally go unnoticed, dreaming while awake.
We laughed.
Eventually, Laska announced that he was hungry, but I didn’t want to move because scenery was too perfect. I couldn’t absorb the stars fast enough or stare long enough. “Can’t we just stay here?”
“Don’t you want to eat something?”
“Sure, but to get that, I’d have to give up these stars.”
“Well, that’s life. I mean…you never know, the walk down could be even better than this.”
This struck me as infinitely deep…a perfect allegory for my fears of departing for college. We pushed ourselves up, said a polite “thank you” to the Elder Tree and headed back into the darkened canopy.
Whatever care we had shown while making our ascent was abandoned for the trek down. Switchbacks be damned, we strolled straight down toward the creek. I’ll admit the trip is mostly a blur to me, but I have snippets of leaning against trees and sliding on loose leaves, aware but unconcerned that my behavior would rightly be called “reckless.” I recall resting against the truck of a thick tree and being unsure whether or not I was imagining the slimy feeling against my hands. I pushed away to get a better view and my mind reeled, unable to make sense of the pulsing vision I was seeing. The bark was covered with slugs. No, not some drug-induced vision, but real, ooze-on-my-hands slugs. We stood for a moment or two as we attempted to invent a reason so many slugs would cluster on one tree, but eventually abandoned the questioning to continue our mission to find food.
At the bottom, we splashed our way through the creek, no longer concerned about staying dry.
We laughed.
Mom was away that night, out on the town with her friend, Pam. We put on Belly’s new Star album and made some snacks before returning to the living room to watch MTV. They were showing some sort of documentary on Curt Cobain, but we were having a horrible time making sense of what they were talking about. We just sat in silence, off in our own little worlds, staring at the screen and eating our Pop-Tarts.
“Wait,” I said. “Did they just say he died?”
“No, he’s probably just on tour or something,” replied Laska.
We sat quietly for another stretch.
“I…I’m pretty sure they put up one of those…those…date range things. Like he died.”
“No, they….” Laska froze. Kurt Loder was there on the screen, telling us to call a depression hotline if the news was too upsetting.
I think I may have said something akin to, “Oh, man.” Words may well have failed me even under the best of circumstances…but they were especially unforthcoming in my current state.
We turned off Belly and swapped the cd for In Utero.
So we sat there, Laska and I, eating Pop-Tarts, and then popcorn, and drinking Mountain Dew; discussing Cobain while the speakers crooned about Pennyroyal Tea.
The term surreal gets tossed around a lot. Quite often on this very site, as a matter of fact. But it really is the only word I know to describe that night. The only word I know to encompass both the stunning beauty and the bewildering news. The brightness of the stars and the darkness of the loss of "the spokeman of our generation."
I long ago packed up my bong and now opt to keep my subconscious mind right where it is. But, I wouldn’t trade that experience or the countless experiences that would follow for anything. Someday, when Norah is old enough to ask, I’ll have to decide how best to deal with such stories.
Compared to that…in-laws and church groups seem a breeze.
When Moonshot and I agreed on the name 
