Onward, Psychonauts! in Das Book

Spring Break in Utah. It was supposed to be myself and my love (Alex), my two best friends from my tiny cohort (Cody and Lindsey), and two other girls from my cohort whose company I enjoy. Day 2, the two other girls split off, citing that it felt like we were on two different journeys and there’d be less resentment all around if we parted ways. They were right.

After some exploration around Moab we headed deep into red-rock-juniper-and-sage-mormon-country and stayed for three days. Day two we tripped on LSD. I journaled about the journey the morning after, but I only made it halfway through. Still, I’m wanting to share it here.

I’m in Comb Wash, in Utah. The first time I was here was years ago, before Japan, just passing through. I was with Ted, in the Scion. We ended up staying somewhere on the mesa where the sky opened up and you could see for miles. We had a really beautiful evening there. I bathed with a gallon of water in the moonlight by the fire.

Yesterday, I tripped on LSD for the first time with Cody, Lindsey, and Alex. We started by walking. We noticed ants and I had a wooly feeling in my chest and stomach which Cody described with the word “electricity”. Then, we came into a forest of sage. It was soft, hale, hearty sage. It smelled incredible. Alex backed up into it until it was supporting his entire body. Cody too.

Then, we found rock. Swirling, white, yellow, orange, red. Sandstone, sticky, easy to climb. There was a bull snake and there were tiny holes and caverns hollowed out of the rock. We sat and we looked. The land was undulating. The snake was vibrantly camouflaged. I watched it while the group watched the land. Alex went below, back to the ground, to start a fire. I found a curve in the rock that cradled me perfectly; Lindsey came behind and spooned me, and Cody added his weight and presence to the back of the womb we’d made. I felt like the core of the womb. I was really happy to be there.

Before the trip, I told both Lindsey and Cody that I’d been attracted to them at some point since meeting them. While I’m glad to have said it, I don’t know that right before tripping was the time to do it.

As we lay in the womb, Alex built a fire out of sage wood. It smelled like a SUWS fire. I was thinking about the pain my dad feels just from being in the world.

I went to join Alex. It felt like he wanted to be alone still. I felt like an intruder. I just wanted to be present with him.

Alex mentioned taking more (we had two more tabs at camp, that had originally been meant for the two compadres who left us at the beginning of the journey). I immediately decided that I wanted more. It took us a lot of time and conversation to get back to camp. Alex and Cody kept their feet dry while Lindsey and I walked through the stream. The bottom was sand, red and golden brown, edged in yellow, shaped by the rippling water, shifting underfoot.

We found out then that other people had camped near us so we got what we needed and faded back into the forest. We walked and walked for a long time. I was ready to sit and experience. Walking felt too stimulating to focus on anything. We found a place to ground, under a juniper tree. We each ate another 1/2 tab (putting us at a tab and a half each). Cody and Alex ran back to camp, came back to us, and then Cody ran back and forth again, all while Lindsey and I watched the cloud that was above us, shimmering, dancing, forming streams of vapor that intertwined into a delta of cloudiness in the sky. We spoke of femininity. Appreciated estrogen.

Somewhere in there with all four of us under the juniper tree, we saw an older man and his grandson and their two dogs walking into the canyon. We spoke with them. Despite my attire (I was wearing some pretty colorful clothing), I am pretty sure we passed as simple weirdos and not drugged out hippies. They were kind and informative.

Alex and Cody carried on into the canyon. We sat. We grounded. Words failed me. Worlds failed me for most of the day. Words fail me most of the time. Lindsey and I decided to follow the boys. On the way, she found a magnificent piece of rose quartz, and I found a smoky agate, blue, grey, green with red accents. It stayed with me the rest of the day. I put it in my mouth. Everyone noticed that I’m rather orally fixated. It’s true.

We carried on. I saw ruins. Flat stones held together by sand and some sort of binder, making outer walls under and overhanging roof of rock. I knew that the boys were ahead, there must be more. We carried on; we saw the boys in the distance. We went down and then up. We were on the headwall of the canyon. We could see a seeping spring with moss growing around it, weeping out of the rock. The boys hinted that there was more to see. I started along again immediately. There was a huge, smooth panel of rock with ancient art carved into it. Concentric circles, and a man, and arches, and a turtle man as well. I found another rock recliner and it cradled me as I saw the art. I spun around on the recliner and made love to the boulder I was perched on. (Not entirely, there was no physical penetration, but the emotional sensation was that of making love.) The most grounded I’d felt all day.

We kept finding shards of pottery. “Women made these. A woman made this.” I thought of the woman. I wondered what her ratios of happiness, presence, fear, anxiety were in her lifetime. I sat in a half crumbled shell of a pueblo with Alex. We joked about it being our first home. I felt total love and acceptance with Alex. Like he is my constant in a world of ever-shifting variables. Like I can rely on him to be my partner through everything in this life.

Our proclamation of commitment to each other has been the most earth-shattering, mind-blowing, profoundly grounding experience I’ve ever felt. It is ongoing and it continues to deepen.

A little girl (4ish?) and her dad came. Dad knew we were tripping. He was wary but kind.

I could feel the shape of the thumbs that made the pottery shards we kept finding.

Sometimes Lindsey made the surest proclamations, assured that Alex, or Cody, or I, or the sky, or this rock, or every sage brush was One Way, when I felt entirely sure that each of these things was actually a million ways.

But words failed me, so I didn’t speak.

There’s more. It’ll come later.

<3

Last updated March 28, 2015