Hemp and the woolly mammoth’s hair piece

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It’s no secret that hemp is one of the most misunderstood plants in history. For centuries, it has been used by all kinds of people for all kinds of things — clothing to car construction, bioplastics to building supplies, food to fuel.

Though it was grown by the Founding Fathers, was a major crop in the U.S. for many years and doesn’t contain enough THC to get people “high,” it was blacklisted along with marijuana in 1937 and later listed as a Schedule One drug under the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, at least in part because the federal government couldn’t tell the difference between the two plants.

As a result of our folly, makers of hemp products here — hemp, hemp oil and hemp seeds are utilized in lotions and salves, carpets and beer, paper and jeans — have to import it. Today, China produces almost 80 percent of all the hemp in the world. About $600 million worth of hemp products were sold in 2013 in the U.S., a number that should continue to grow once domestic production begins anew in states that are allowing it again. Its uses seem almost infinite.

But I think we found the most original use for hemp yet. Billie and I were wandering the Dinosaur Garden outside the Field House of Natural History in Vernal, Utah. The museum is a dinosaur-lover’s dream, and the outside garden is stocked with colorful, life-sized reproductions of various plant- and meat-eating dinos, with one exception: A wooly mammoth, the large, extinct elephant ancestor.

Looming over us with its huge tusks, friendly eyes and thick, dark coat, the only warm-blooded representative in the garden immediately got our full attention. Most impressive was the coat, which was thick and shaggy and black and spread over and around the body and huge curved tusks.

Wooly mammoths’ thick outer hair was called the “guard coat.” And this mammoth’s guard-coat hair piece was made from hemp.

Since it is far from any interstate or major city (Salt Lake City is nearly three hours away, and both I-80 and I-70 at least two hours), Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the Utah-Colorado border not far east of Vernal, is as remote as it is wondrous and wild, especially the gorgeous natural beauty of the Split Mountain area in Utah and Echo Park in Colorado.

The monument’s other claim to fame gave it its name. Voluminous fossils of the creatures we see in the Dinosaur Garden have been discovered in the immediate area. Among the monument’s amazing features is the Quarry Exhibit Hall, a huge A-frame building that encloses a 150-foot long and 50-foot high uplifted wall that showcases an extensive selection of fossilized bones left as they were found. Upwards of 40 complete allosaurus skeletons have been found in the area.

But no woolly mammoths. The replica, made of plastic, was donated to the museum in the 1970s, says Craig Gerber, maintenance specialist at the museum and the man in charge of the care of the creatures in the garden.

As far as he knows, the hemp was chosen by the original artist, and the tradition has continued since then. The local avian population admires the hemp hair as much as we did, he said, so much so that they pluck chunks of it for their own nests (which makes bird nests yet another use of hemp).

Not that keeping up the tradition is an easy task. The hair has to be replaced every 10-15 years, a procedure that Gerber estimates at several hundred man-hours. Or as he puts it, “It’s a nightmare from hell.”

The hemp comes from California in 50-plus-pound bales. The old coat has be removed, and the new “hair” readied. Thirty-gallon tubs are filled with water and then with hemp.

“You have to grab it, untangle it and lay it out to dry,” he says, before application. And then it has be painted. “You couldn’t afford to pay someone outside to do it. It sucks.”

So if you find yourself far off the interstate late one night on Highway 40 in Vernal, Utah, and you observe a woolly mammoth peering into a museum window, you’re not in the Twilight Zone. Be thankful for the occasional toil and trouble of Craig Gerber and mark up one more reason why hemp should again become America’s crop.

You can hear Leland discuss his most recent column and Colorado cannabis issues each Thursday morning on KGNU. http://news.kgnu.org/weed