Northern Lights, Another Classic from Divine Buds

This past week and weekend in particular was rough for my family, if I’m being perfectly honest. My son – whom I’ve mentioned before had a heart transplant when he was an infant – had some scheduled appointments over a couple of days with his doctors in Boston, and while he’s fine, there were some complications (some expected and some not-so-expected) that stretched that into three days. Plus, I had to navigate some of the worst Boston traffic I’ve ever been in, which ended in me pulling over into a gas station parking lot to have a legit panic attack, which has never happened in front of any of my kids before. And then, to top it all off, not long after we finally got home, my wife was out with the girls, and they were hit by another vehicle in traffic, and while everyone is physically okay, it crumpled the driver’s door, everyone was pretty rattled, and the guy who hit them drove off (though my wife was able to get enough of his info before he did, so it’s being handled). Oh, and my brother’s thumb got crushed while he was at work, and while he’s probably going to be fine, he’s in a cast.

So, my last 5 days sucked. I haven’t had the time to really sit down and enjoy a new strain the way I normally do, so I’m going to something I’ve had before, but only recently as fresh buds and not pre-rolls. It’s also from a grower I’ve written about before, so no need to do a long introduction to someone new for you all.

Northern Lights. Afghani crossed with Thai. A classic combo. It’s been years since I’ve had this in full flower form. It was long before I was doing this professionally. We’ve had pre-rolls at the store, and I’ve had some excellent edibles with Northern Lights in them (shout out to Pot+Pan), and even a vape cart, if I’m remembering correctly. But I haven’t had the pleasure of sitting down and packing a bowl and just getting ripped on Northern Lights. Man, I’d almost forgotten. So good. Pure euphoric bliss on the brain and mellow but just less than heavy on the body. Just top notch.

I’m sure I’ve said it before, but Divine Buds is really at their best with their old school strains, whether those be old school in the more colloquial sense, or truly old school as in landrace, heirloom, or legendary strains. The closer to Mother Nature a strain is, the better. And with Northern Lights, you’ve got landrace parents, putting this right in Divine Buds’ wheelhouse, as far as I’m concerned.

Now, all things being fair, these buds don’t have the highest bag appeal. They’re small. They’re a little stemmy, though they are the tiny little brittle stems, so it’s not like you’re losing much weight at all. I’ve said about any “smalls” buds, including the SeaWeed Co. branded Smalls, that they’re like the K-cups of weed: single serving, easy to handle, and so forth. So I’m not complaining when it comes to smokability or quality of the cultivation. In fact, in a somewhat opposite way, if you open a bag of this and think “these buds don’t look great,” then consider every 90’s rom-com where the girl just needed to take her glasses off and have a trampy friend do her not-at-all trampy makeup, and boom, look how gorgeous she is after all! Don’t sleep on this strain.

The aroma is fantastic, too, with pine and other herbal notes, all with a background note of muskiness. Imagine the smell of camping gear that’s really well-maintained, but has been stored for a while in a basement that is also really well-maintained. There’s this almost missable quality that implies something that has had some time to sit and think about what it did, but it’s not forgotten. You’re just taking it back out for the first time this season. To that, the smoke was buttery and thick, with just a touch of tingly throat feel.

Coming back to the high, it was blissful. I mentioned that I’ve had a rough past week, and this just took me right out of it. I was able to forget about those worries for a minute, which was really all I needed. Be forewarned, though, I found it to be a spacy blissful, where the gears in my brain were turning, but imagine those gears were in some sort of amalgam of Picasso, Escher, and Dali paintings. I had to backpedal something I said to my wife, because what I said made me sound like a total ass because I was trying to form a nuanced and subtle point for comedic effect, and what came out sounded absolutely stupid, and possibly even a bit ignorant. I think I got back to mostly where I wanted to be with my point, but it took some mental gymnastics. Point is, this may not be the strain for you if you’re about to host a podcast about Pre-Socratic philosophy, or give a lecture on social justice in the modern public school system. Maybe this is one for talking about other times you were high, or how fucking delicious those Shaq-branded gummies are (they are, by the way, and no, they’re not THC gummies, they’re just regular candy). Oh, and this one gets to be sleepy far enough in, both the brain, and in a heaviness of the body.

So, I guess a thousand words is short and to the point for me nowadays, so there we have it. Northern Lights, a first generation strain that absolutely hits. It’s fantastic, plain and simple. And like an historically accurate depiction of ancient Rome, I give it two thumbs up, because it kills.