...it yielded this practical little guide for telehealth client MarijuanaDoctors.com!
As I'm vacationing in Kauai with this very article on my poolside-To Do list, waiting for some SME's to call back with their expertise (sadly my own joint-rolling skills, or lack thereof, wasn't going to be sufficient for this assignment—this is serious journalism, people!). So my co-pilot and I decide to head to a remote beach on the far end of the island to watch sunset and spend the evening. We were just off the famous Napali coast, in a rental car heading down miles of unpaved, pot-hole-strewn road when we see this darkly bronzed, dusty man with a backpacker's pack, a pile of gear, and his thumb out. We pass him by, but remark to each other what a drag it must be, trying to hitch in a place like this. For miles we'd seen no other vehicle, nor any sign of life. In fact we wondered if we, too, weren't a bit off from our destination.
One completely-lost geographical circle later....we pass this man again. This time, my copilot yanks the car over and gestures to him—I'm thinking for directions. But turns out the man's trying to get to the beach we're looking for, and knows the way—it seems natural to invite him to load in. I sort of can't believe this is happening but....c'mon. In a place like the above (see photo for reference), *could* anything truly bad happen??
But grateful and good-natured, the man quickly put us at ease. He was out on a research canoe trip, and was back from re-upping on supplies. We'd be the last to see him off as he was about to hike back into the jungle to his canoe.
Living in isolation must turn you into something of a conversationalist—because before we knew it, we'd learned quite a lot about this man I'll call River (who preferred anonymity). Like about the research he'd been doing for the last few months on the native, DMT-like compound found exclusively in the region, or about his many world travels and spiritual ideas.
At some point, in exchange for the ride, he also offered us some..... Well, you know. And that's when we learned of his expertise in even more herbal matters: namely, the delicate art of rolling of cannabis flower into... cylindrical perfection. Or so it appeared to me.
In other words, with this exact deadline looming, I couldn't imagine a more fortuitous meeting. Or memorable—as I'll never forget this man, River, and our hearty conversation on topics big and small. What can I say? The assignment practically wrote itself.
[EXCEPT, WRITER'S NOTE: The editor annoyingly left in some typos and dropped in a crummy opener—the article *I* wrote starts two 'graphs down with the quotation...]
