UNWELCOME BORDER TRADE

BIRCHDALE, MINN. -- The grandmother showed up in this tiny Koochiching
County town a day after the "For Sale" sign went up on the old Bauman
place, a remote log cabin overlooking Rainy River and the Canadian border.

The cabin needed work. But Gail Darwin, 63, who had come from California,
called it a perfect place to retire. She put down $150,000 cash on the
$250,000 asking price.

Darwin told locals she had recently inherited money and ran an alternative
health practice called the Earth Healing Institute.

"I figured she sold herbal remedies," said a man at Nelson's General Store.

In a way, she did.

Darwin and Joseph Heater, 65, who lived just across the river in Ontario,
pleaded guilty last month to possessing 826 pounds of marijuana valued at
$4 million. Local and federal authorities caught them with the huge stash
stuffed in a trailer this spring in one of the biggest marijuana busts ever
made along the border.

Their arrests are a strange tale with a serious point: Minnesota's far
northern wilderness, authorities say, appears to be emerging as a
pot-smuggling pipeline from Canada to destinations that include the Twin
Cities, Chicago and Detroit.

Neither Darwin nor Heater had a previous felony, so at first their arrests
seemed like unusual criminal career trajectories for two older citizens.

Their lawyers have since said the pair, who now each face a plea-bargained
sentence of 27 months, are mere pawns in the multibillion-dollar trade of
"B.C. bud," marijuana cultivated in British Columbia.

"Wrong place at the wrong time," said Heater's attorney, Steve Nelson.

But investigators say their willingness to invest major money in border
land suggests they either had substantial financial backing or were
preparing to make Minnesota a significant, long-term transfer point for
B.C. bud, a choice brand for upscale pot smokers in the United States.

Darwin and Heater, who declined to be interviewed for this story, also were
found with high-end countersurveillance equipment, investigators say,
including satellite phones and instruments that detect police radio
frequencies and infrared monitoring devices.

"It's very sophisticated equipment," said Sgt. Bruce Grothberg of the
Koochiching County Sheriff's Department.

Their arrest was the third significant bust involving B.C. bud in
Koochiching County in the past two years. But authorities say they have no
idea how much more may be coming across the border.

"We've seized more than 1,000 pounds in two years," Grothberg said. "But I
don't think we are even scratching the surface."

As it gets tougher to smuggle marijuana along the West Coast, dealers are
spreading out across the Canadian border, according to author Robert
Sabbag, who ran with a group of B.C. bud couriers for a recent article in
Playboy magazine.

And with its wooded, watery and porous border, "Minnesota is as good a
place as any to work," he said.

Big-Money Crop

Marijuana production has become a major enterprise in Canada, where
penalties for possession are slight. The mayor of Vancouver has even
advocated legalization. Forbes magazine estimates the crop's value at $7
billion in British Columbia. In Minnesota's border province, Ontario,
authorities say B.C. bud is a $1 billion crop.

Sabbag, who has written several books on the drug trade, said tougher
penalties against marijuana in the United States inflate the value of the
pot coming from Canada.

And unlike Mexico's drug trade, which is largely controlled by organized
criminal groups, the Canadian marijuana trade tends to be more of a
mom-and-pop operation, Sabbag said. "There are a lot more rural people, and
elderly, paying off mortgages by growing this pot," he said.

That could have been Darwin and Heater's motive. Or they could have been
part of a larger and more sophisticated smuggling ring, Sabbag said. "I
would guess that if they had 800 pounds, it wasn't their first time," he said.

The Drug Enforcement Administration says dealers can purchase marijuana for
$1,500 to $2,000 a pound in Canada, then sell it for $6,000 a pound or more
in the United States.

Over-The-Hill Hippie

Little is known about Heater, a retired engineer, married with children and
living in Alberta.

But Darwin, whom acquaintances describe as friendly and outgoing, is an
exotic figure: She had a reputation in the alternative health field for her
work in "deep breathing," according to former colleagues. She also hosted
seminars and has a Web page that advertises: "Through activating our solar
connection, with profound, deep breathing awareness, the natural flow of
energy is reactivated within us."

According to authorities, Darwin also has had residences in Calgary and St.
Joseph, Mich. In St. Joseph, she rented at least one residence, as well as
an office in a former bank she was renovating under the name "Integrative
Alternatives." Her sign was taken down a few weeks ago.

Federal authorities say they began watching Darwin last winter, after
finding sled tracks from her house to Heater's in Canada.

Some residents in Birchdale said they started getting suspicious when they
noticed increasing numbers of Border Patrol officers in the area.

When Darwin's closest neighbor, Jennifer Eck, went into labor at 3 a.m. one
day, she and husband, Carl, sped toward the hospital. As they pulled onto
the highway, a Border Patrol car appeared and followed them.

When they arrived in town, other police were waiting. Upon discovering that
Eck was pregnant, they let them go. "But I knew then that something big was
going on," Carl Eck said.

In Michigan, Darwin told people that she also ran an adventure travel business.

"I envisioned people canoeing down white-water rapids," said Richard Lewis,
a New Age health provider to whom Darwin made referrals.

He said Darwin also was trying to start a kind of utopian clinic along Lake
Michigan that she planned to make a one-stop shop for physical and psychic
care.

"I couldn't figure out how she was going to make any money," Lewis said.

Grothberg, the Minnesota sheriff, speculated that Darwin had plans to
launder the money she earned from the drug trade, a common ploy among B.C.
bud dealers.

"One day she came in and said, 'I want to get the [health] center started.
I'm getting ready to retire,' " Lewis said.

He called Darwin and her friends "over-the-hill hippies" trying to pad
their retirements.

Darwin also made contacts with a New Age health group in St. Joseph called
"Expansions," which offer treatments such as chakra spinning and something
called "Self-direct Access to Oversoul and God-Mind."

Janet Swerdlow runs "Expansions" with her husband, Stewart, who has written
that he was brainwashed by aliens and the CIA and who claims to be
clairvoyant. Janet Swerdlow said they "were terribly surprised" to learn
that Darwin was involved in drugs.

At the time of Darwin's arrest, police initially thought she told them she
was a "breeding expert," according to her lawyer, Bruce Biggins.

The misunderstanding may not have been entirely false: Two years ago,
Darwin was convicted of "operating a bath business without a license" in
California. Prostitution charges also were filed but later dropped.

Campers Or Couriers?

On a recent weekday afternoon, Grothberg pulled alongside Rainy River and
spotted a lone tent deep in "a mosquito hell hole," as he put it.

"Weird," he said. "If they don't have a boat or fishing equipment,
something funny is going on."

Grothberg, an area native, had seen the scene before. Sometimes, he said,
it's only people getting away from it all. But often he suspects they are
waiting for something.

The mosquitoes in the thicket were unbearable. One couple sat listlessly in
a car with Nebraska plates. Another couple sat in a tent.

There were a dozen designated camping spots within an hour's drive. But the
group had chosen one without a river view but with access to a canal where
drugs have been found before.

Grothberg asked a few questions, then notified the Border Patrol.

"Kooch County has 490 square miles," he said. "You can drive 70 miles and
not see a house. It takes less than a minute to cross the river, and in
some places you can walk across. If you want to meet someone in the middle
of the river, no one is the wiser."

Local prosecutor Jennifer Hasbargen said her uncle once found an ice cream
bucket filled with marijuana floating down the river.

And Grothberg recalled finding a hole in the ice in the Little Fork River,
which spills into Rainy River. At the bottom of the hole was a snowmobile
with marijuana floating inside.

Though border surveillance has increased, authorities say they cannot cover
the seven-county stretch along the Minnesota border around the clock. They
say they do what they can and hope for the occasional big bust.

Assessing Darwin's New Age cures, bath-house bust and drug trade, Grothberg
mused about the incongruity of it all in northern Minnesota: "She had quite
the little world going on there."

Grothberg said he figures Darwin and Heater were players in a larger,
lucrative drug-smuggling operation. "They'll take the punishment, maybe get
paid for it. Do their time and move on," he said.

"But," he added, "I think we got their pension."