Category-5

The phone rings and it's Chuck. Come up for dinner? Sure, no problem. I'm on the way. The first storm of the year builds off shore. Category-5 typhoon just inundated the Philippines. Villages buried under mud. People swept away in floods. Upgraded to a Super Typhoon -- whatever the hell that is. Fisherman in the South China Sea call them daaih-fùng or big winds. But it doesn't sound good in any language. A nasty business these big winds. Anybody's guess what lies in store for us. But it's dark and ugly. That much I know.

Batching it is never quite as desperate as it sounds. Chuck turns out a respectable meal with a modicum of flair every time. We eat some spicy vegan concoction and wash it down with a fine red wine. It seems many of the local farmers are in a bit of a jam. By waiting for that one last week of sunshine to fatten up their pot gardens, they are now perilously close to being royally screwed and losing it all from a monsoon three weeks early and now only hours away. So the calls go out to friends and friends of friends to jump in with both feet and lend a hand in finishing the harvest.

One kid literally stepped out of his battered Toyota Forerunner 12-hours ago a complete stranger without any ties to the community or any reasons for local job prospects. For bailing out my farmer neighbor, he walked away with about three pounds of the exotically named Afghanigoo. The sweetly pungent, sticky buds will move at $20 per gram back in his hometown of Phoenix. The 453 grams in a pound will bring in a staggering nine grand on the street in Arizona. Multiply that little stash times three and it's not bad for a day's work. No wonder he's grinning from ear to ear as though he's just won the biggest lotto in history. But, I don't blink an eye. What's given away locally as a neighborly gesture is nothing short of a major crime where he comes from. All it takes is for some sad sack to have the misfortune of a run in with a redneck deputy in the Grand Canyon state and they might be staring at a ten-year stretch in a federal pen for interstate narcotics trafficking. Some may say, changes in latitudes - changes in attitudes. I say, pure and utter insanity.

The sky continues to darken over a night cap of aged single malt scotch. Thank god, neither Chuck nor I have a green thumb much less the inclination to ever consider driving across the desert and into the arms of trigger happy Arizona rangers. I'll take my chances with a northern California storm. As the first big drops splatter across my windshield, I pull into my driveway with yet another new appreciation for the sounds of a howling wind through the trees and the crackling roar of a fire waiting inside.

Doesn't it always feel good to be home?