I found it hard not to feel furtive when we pulled into the parking lot of the Walking Raven. I felt like I was doing something sleazy, like walking into a “gentleman’s club” or buying a smutty magazine.
In fact, though, what I was doing was no sketchier than buying a bottle at a liquor store: The Walking Raven is along the Green Mile, a strip of marijuana dispensaries that have sprung up in an otherwise nondescript section of Denver since Colorado voters approved the legalization of recreational pot in 2014.
Locals take out-of-staters there the way we State Collegians take guests to the Creamery, except that I would never turn down ice cream whereas I regarded our Green Mile tour as more of an ethnographic experience than a consuming experience – at least at first.
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I “experimented” with marijuana when I was in high school; that is, I smoked an occasional joint out of scientific curiosity rather than a desire to get high.
Yeah, right.
While otherwise snoozing through school assemblies, my friends and I sprang to life when we got to the line “Van Buren High with you” in our school song, which we sang with great glassy-eyed gusto.
I’ve only smoked a handful of times since those “golden days,” as our alma mater calls them, though I firmly believe that weed is less harmful than alcohol, at least in terms of its behavioral effects. I look at it this way: Drunks get into fights and accidents. Stoners get into Oreos and philosophical discussions.
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Adding to the weirdness of visiting the Green Mile was the presence of two of my adult children. On the drive over I told them about the one and only time their aunties and I got high with their grandma. I must have been in my late teens. My sisters were in their 20s.
Mom prided herself on her open-mindedness when it came to whatever “the kids today” were up to. Dad sat off to one side with his chin in his hand, conveying his disapproval in the strongest possible nonverbal terms.
As marijuana’s magic powers began to take effect, Mom became even more loquacious than usual, enthralling us with a soliloquy on how her experience of motherhood changed from first child to second child to third child. Even Dad leaned in after a while, and eventually broke his silence to add his own recollections. But he never toked up.
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The Waking Raven is a scruffy little “joint” where we were waited on by a scruffy little guy from Bucks County.
I expected to see dried and coarsely chopped leaves that looked like the contents of the Italian Seasonings vial on my spice rack. Indeed, back in those “Van Buren High with you” days, more than one chump who thought he had bought a nickel bag of weed experienced the disappointment of trying in vain to get zonked on oregano.
What’s on offer on the Green Mile, though, is the marijuana bud, which looks like a pod containing alien life forms. Among the “strains,” as they’re called: Golden Goat, Girl Scout Cookies, Bubba Kush, Gorilla Glue #4, Abusive Train Haze.
Each strain, like each concoction of fermented grapes at a winery, has its own distinctive style, apparently. Golden Goat, according to one rapturous description I found online, has “glorious shimmering calyxes to complement its pale green complexity.”
The kid from Bucks differentiated the strains in terms of whether they offered a more “cerebral” or “full-body” experience. Some strains, I read online, lend themselves to house cleaning, though one user said he started chore after chore but didn’t finish any of them.
Like any retail outfit, the Walking Raven had some sale items listed on a whiteboard, including specials for customers wearing Denver Broncos regalia. In addition to smoking materials there was an assortment of edibles: cookies, brownies, candies, mints, and the like.
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I left the Walking Raven empty-handed, but motivated by the same spirit of experimentation that informed my youthful indiscretions, I copped some marijuana-laced mints across the street at the more upscale Green Depot.
That night, while watching the Kennedy Center Honors on TV, I popped one. Nothing. True, I cried when 73-year-old Aretha Franklin belted out “A Natural Woman” as part of the tribute to Carole King, but so did the teetotalers in the room.
The next day, I sucked down another mint while snowshoeing. I figured hiking at high altitude might enhance the candy’s potency, but again, though I was blissed out to be trekking through the snow, in bright sunshine, amid the red rocks, I did not feel buzzed.
Clearly, I needed to increase the dosage. But I also needed to go home and I did not have the guts to smuggle dope through airport security.
Too bad. I was so looking forward to Oreos and philosophical discussions.
