Ana Bacigalupo left her office job in Argentina and flew to California to trim cannabis. What she found was the part of harvest season nobody brags about.
“I remember crying inside the tent at night, saying: ‘What am I doing here? I’m completely alone. If something happens to me, where do I run? Where do I go?’”
California trim season has its own folklore: cash, freedom, plants, mountains, community. Ana Bacigalupo lived the other version.
She was a secretary at a private medical clinic in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She did her nails every day. Stable job, neat life, nothing about her profile that said she was built for six months in a tent in the Central Valley. But the story was convincing. She crossed.
What she found was the part nobody tells you before you buy the ticket.
Night One
The hotel reservation had fallen through by the time she landed in Los Angeles. No room. They tried to rent a car. That didn’t happen either. They waited on the floor of the Greyhound terminal from three in the afternoon until midnight, when the first bus toward the Central Valley left.
They arrived at two in the morning at a town in California’s Central Valley, forty minutes from the ranch where she was supposed to start work the next day. At that hour, in that area, there is no Uber, no taxi, nothing. A man they didn’t know saw them standing there and offered to drive them.
Photo by Jonathan Tesmaye Salvador on Unsplash
“I told him: ‘I’ll pay you whatever it takes for you not to kill me,’ because I didn’t know who he was,” Ana says. “I’ll give you whatever you want, just please take me to the place.” He …
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Author: Javier Hasse / High Times
