Whenever you see the name "George" CMonster was there! This amazing but true story took place in 1977 - and CMonster has finally returned to the cave of the "rock people" after 24 long years. <IMG SRC="http://www.dslextreme.com/users/cmonster3/rockpeople1.gif" border=0>
CHAPTER 21 - ONWARD THROUGH THE FOG
It was late September, 1977, two months had passed since my best friend Steve had died in a motorcycle accident. Just prior to his death, I experienced death from quite another perspective. Since I had given Saxon, my other best friend, an overwhelming hallucinogenic nightmare with dose of datura, he reciprocated by turning me on to some mushrooms in the mountains near his Topanga home. I described the event earlier in my writing as being "hell on earth," an overdose that took me to the brink of death, and perhaps beyond.
Looking back, it isn't clear why I had such a violent reaction to the mushrooms. Perhaps it was the high dosage, or the fact that I had also been drinking that day. Maybe I overdosed because Saxon, who grew the mushrooms, had admittedly used "aborted" fungi fruits, that is mushrooms that grow "funny" up the side of the jar - they could have been contaminated with other toxins.
In any case, as my memory of that horrible night began to return, I was almost on the brink of suicide, and depression over Steve's death didn't help matters. It was not that I hated life, it's just that I had to know certain things. I was ready to risk it all in order to find out.
Saxon invited me to go on a long camping trip with him, it would be a journey in search of Native American wisdom, and a vision quest in keeping with our practice of sorcery. It would take us through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and the other side of the universe. There I would find answers to some of my questions, but I would find many more questions than answers.
Fortunately for me, Saxon kept a detailed Journal of our trip, which helped me reconstruct some events that were hazy; wherever possible, I will now let his journal tell that part of the story.
SAXON'S JOURNAL - ENTRY 1. JOSHUA TREE
George quit his job, gathered all his money and possessions together and came to my house to prepare for the trip. We worked feverishly on the inside of my old Volkswagen van, getting it ready and sorting things we were to bring. The engine, which was sitting on a makeshift workbench inside a shed, had given us numerous headaches in the process of rebuilding and was still not fully assembled. However, after seemingly endless preparations we were finally ready to leave.
We said our good-byes, and headed out the interstate, past expanses of city, until we reached the desert. Darkness began to fall across the desert panorama and we decided to stop at a Mexican restaurant for dinner, then we continued on to Joshua Tree State Park, where George would do the devil's weed. We made camp and George proceeded to drink the tea from a large dose of seeds. Ironically the most robust datura plant I had ever seen was growing at the foot of some boulders right at the edge of our camp.
It wasn't long before George was seeing people, animals, and objects, that I couldn't see, but to George were very real, perhaps more so than I was to him at that point. He wandered into another camp and started putting wood on their campfire. He went over to a sleeping figure and picked up a shoe that was nearby.
"Hey that's my shoe!" said the person, who was not asleep.
"Oh, I thought it was mine." Replied George. Then dropping the shoe, he headed straight for someone's tent, and would have walked right into it if I hadn't grabbed him and steered him away.
"Let's get out of here, this is someone else's camp!" I said. But grabbing George produced a most violent reaction, and he spun me away with amazing force.
"DON'T GRAB ME!" He shouted.
I was very worried about him being in other camps in the middle of the night. I was begging him to return to our own. Putting on a show for the awakened campers I said forcefully, "Come on man, you're really ****ed up! Let's go back to our camp." After some difficulty George finally left their camp. Knowing that there was no way to force him to go anywhere, I realized that I had to stand between George and danger. I followed him around as he investigated "rats, plates, watermelons, sprinklers, disappearing knobs and posts, and other things I couldn't see. Whenever he turned into undesirable directions he always bumped into me. George was very frustrated by this but at least there were no more violent outbursts.
He mentioned things about the van, which we had been working on for the past week: "I found the locking mechanism but not the screws - bumper, horn, and speedometer, it needs a clamp."
He also talked about my family and home: "How did she do this?" He asked while trying to fold a sleeping bag like my mom had shown us how to fold a shirt.
"I just saw your mom give you that ten bucks, your dad was there too."
"It sure is a long way back to your little shed."
It certainly was, I thought.
At one point we were inside the van and George picked up a piece of onionskin and asked, "Is this your toothbrush?" Then he added, "Got a typewriter, know how to use it?" I drank some coffee and told George a long story about man and the universe as he lay in the back of the van. He thought it was ridiculous.
COMMENTARY
I felt poisoned, physically crushed, and an overwhelming desire to sleep came over me about an hour after I ingested the datura. The air was cold and the sky seemed unusually black, darkness surrounded me on every side. I crawled into my sleeping bag and propped myself up against a rock. I had a splitting headache. I closed my eyes for a moment and then passed out like a person who has had too much alcohol on a hot day. I know I did; it was like falling backward into something blood red. I must have awakened an hour or so later and rocketed out of my sleeping bag. I was drenched in sweat and startled to see the sky so full and bright with stars that there was not enough room for even one more. They seemed to be forming patterns on the horizon that resembled things I had seen while high on peyote. I think I shouted something like "I'M SEEING MESCALITO PATTERNS!" So started nearly three days of utter madness. My mind began to wander in a stream of unconscious images, which soon became reality by molding themselves to my entire sensual perception. Saxon wrote accurately his perspective of these events in the journal; but my perspective of them was obviously very different than his.
Saxon's journal ..CONTINUED
After a little while George began hallucinating human figures: Janine, Kim, and I don't remember who else. Then he pushed past me and headed straight into the other camp again. Worried, I ran after him, but he went straight through the camp and into the open desert. He was having conversations with "Pat" and "Henry West" and with me. We had some incredible talks as I humored him while he conversed first with me, then turned to talk with Henry and his other imaginary friends.
Next George began finding many objects beneath bushes, such as copper kettles and flashlights. "Here! You want a flashlight?" He said excitedly as he reached down under a bush and picked up an object I couldn't see. Then, looking at his hand with a sad expression, he said, "Oh it just broke and melted away." These conversations and objects under bushes went on for quite a while. Then I noticed a growing point of the crescent moon rising over a mountain; at first it was hardly visible. "What is that?" I asked, pointing toward the moon, which was now in full view. George looked up for a second, "An eclipse of the moon," he answered tersely. He was right.
Then George began finding patches of "magic mushrooms" and "peyote." He would walk up to a piece of ground and start investigating, making comments like "These mushrooms stain blue." The hunt for mushrooms went on for quite a while. During the height of this mushroom quest, he pointed to a piece of ground where he saw an exceptional growth of psilocybin; I stomped the rocks and dirt with my boots, upsetting him greatly. Later He said he saw the mushrooms breaking up and disintegrating. He showed me a "mushroom" which was actually a small twig, but it did look very much like a psilocybin stem.
As a beautiful dawn came to Joshua Tree, George began finding wallets and various other objects, which were actually rocks. I climbed a tall boulder and watched him as he wandered around that vast wilderness in the bright, clear, morning, the first day of our trip. I got him back to camp and managed to feed him one hotcake. He was wandering around camp and then disappeared. I started off on a hike, but wasn't feeling good and returned to the van. I checked a few things on the engine, cleaned camp, and packed our things.
I had just laid down in the van when George showed up with fire in his eyes.
"THE ROCK PEOPLE ARE COMING!" He shouted in a panic, "GET THE GIRLS, LET'S GET OUT OF HERE!"
"Where do you want to go?" I asked.
"DOWN TO THE BEACH WHERE THAT DINOSAUR IS." He replied. "GET THE GIRLS? ARE THOSE TWO GUYS COMING?" I didn't know who George was talking about. He looked at a range of rock hills behind us and continued insisting "HERE COME THE ROCK PEOPLE! LET'S GET OUT OF HERE! THERE'S ONE AS BIG AS A VOLKSWAGON - COME ON!" He was so panicked that I had no choice but to start the van and drive away, though I saw no rock people.
COMMENTARY
Some of my imaginary conversation partners, whose names Saxon recorded, had been counselors and comrades from the boy's home; however, Janine was Saxon's sister, and Kim was a tall girl we had given datura to while I resided in Oxnard.
I was hell bent on having powerful hallucinogenic experiences during this journey of ours. I had an all-or-nothing mentality, and believed that "power plants" would provide me with some kind of answers. Perhaps that is why I spent so many hours searching out imaginary patches of mushrooms and peyote in the barren desert sand, much to the annoyance of my exhausted friend.
The "rock people" were solid stone, but they were alive; they were the most awesome and terrible beings I had ever seen. Varied mixtures of creature and human features, they were made of, light rusty-yellow colored, sandstone. Some of them had clothing which was made of the same coarse material. Most of them were the size of great dinosaurs, but some were as large as the hills. They had no jagged edges, but every curve was well rounded and smooth. When they moved the whole ground shook, and there was a terrible thunder, like the sound of great boulders crushing and pulverizing against one another. They moved very rapidly for beings so large and cumbersome. No description could portray the terror I felt at the sight of them.
Saxon kept insisting that I was hallucinating, and that what I saw were merely rock formations that had been carved by nature.
This made me all the more eager to prove to Saxon that the rock people did indeed exist.
I always hated it when people did not believe me. About the same time I began to encounter "Joshua tree Indians;" I saw that the trees were actually families of beings who lived in harmony in a "perfect" world, as did the "rock people." Their world was somewhat on a dimensional shift from the one we live in, and only slightly overlapped ours, so that we could perceive them only as relatively motionless desert trees and rocks. Unless we were fast enough to catch a glimpse of them. I thought, "If only they would teach us the perfect way of life."
Journal -CONTINUED
I didn't know where to go, and I wasn't about to leave the relative safety of the park and hit the open road with a guy who was seeing "Joshua people" and "rock people." Every Joshua tree was a "Joshua person." I was driving about 5mph down the park road, not knowing what to do. Whole fields of Joshua people were having Yoga class by the side of the road. George told me about the rock people he had encountered on his hike from our camp. They were huge beings that looked like rock. Their purpose in life was to make giant rock carvings out of the boulders in the park, which were numerous, and so also were the rock people. Every boulder was either a rock person or a piece of their art.
I decided that it was time for him to eat a peyote button; I had faith that the benevolent power of peyote could bring him back a little. We parked by the side of the road, the day was bright and it was already fairly hot. As I got the buttons out of our stash compartment George warned me that there was an evil looking man with a gun, hiding behind a pick-up truck. I looked, but it was just an old dry bush or two on the other side of the road.
As we walked out into the desert, he told me that the Joshua people were moving all around us, but when you looked at them they stopped. There were Joshua families, dogs, and other creatures. He told me that one little Joshua girl had just turned to her mother and said, "Mother, there is a gentleman here to see you." He kept trying to get me to witness their movement, but I was never quite fast enough to catch them.
George ate one button, and so did I, hoping it would bring some sort of clarity amidst all this confusion. I was beginning to feel quite alone.
As we walked together, further out into the desert, he stopped and stared at a small cactus,
"Now that's cruel," he said, "doing that to a poor little dog."
The next thing we came to was an old branch,
"Wow! I thought those were extinct!" George said excitedly.
"What were extinct?" I asked.
"Unicorns. That's a unicorn's scull, isn't it?" He replied.
After a while we came to some boulders,
"Rock people beds?but just for the children." Said George.
We sat under an old tree; the van was just a small spec on the horizon. All of the sudden George jumped up and shouted, "DON'T YOU SEE THOSE PEOPLE IN THAT BLACK TRUCK? THEY'RE STEELING THE VAN!" And then he took off running full speed across the desert. I followed him, wondering what he might do when he reached the van. When we got there he said that the black truck was gone. I had something to eat, and wondered what might happen next. I drove a little down the road to Jumbo Rocks campground and decided not to go any further until George was safe to travel with.
I setup camp and then proceeded to change the oil in the van. George helped me untie the tarp from the top of the van before going off to investigate further "carvings" of the rock people. He saw a stone porpoise right next to our camp. He came back begging me to go with him, saying that that he could prove the boulders were carved and not merely natural formations, if I would just "hike over two ridges and see a boy with a baseball bat and a telephone." I declined, for I was thoroughly exhausted. Then, nice as you please, he searched through the back of the van and found some soap for me to wash my hands with.
"When are you going to come down?" I asked, beginning to worry.
"I am down!" He replied, and then went off in search of more rock carvings.
I lay down with a book, and felt like I was going to fall asleep. Then I heard shouting, "ALL RIGHT YOU GUYS, GET THE **** OUT OF THE CAR!" I bolted to my feet and saw George, knife in hand, yelling at the inside of the van. He said that there had been two evil looking men in the van.
Twilight was approaching and I felt a need to lie down. I just couldn't follow George anymore. I lay down on my sleeping bag and took a short nap. When I got up George was nowhere to be found. I wandered around the campground calling his name and asking people if they had seen him. I felt very lonely. No one seemed to have seen George at all, and it was getting dark, so I decided it was time to get the park rangers. In the dusk, I drove about 20 miles looking for the ranger station; I had no idea where it was. I got lost for a time, and all the while thoughts were running through my head like, "What if he's dead? The trip is already over. After all our preparations it would be tragic to end the trip like this, so soon after leaving home." Finally I saw a small sign, and followed a dirt road to the ranger station. We had agreed that if anything like this happened I would say that he had been messing around with plants in the desert.
I got out of the van and saw two rangers with ropes, practicing rock climbing. I walked over to them and told them the story. As I looked around, I noticed several large datura plants. They got their car, and I followed them back over the lonely miles to Jumbo Rocks. I gave them all the information I could about George. Now all I could do was wait in my camp and see what would happen next. The rangers stopped by a couple of times, but without George. I lay down to sleep when they drove up again; "We found your buddy!" said one of them. I was certainly glad to see George, and I was thankful to the rangers - they were good men.
I don't remember the exact words, but there were some pretty funny lines spoken between the rangers and us. George told them that some guy had given him some acid, so they wanted to search our van. I let them, but the quantity of our possessions quickly discouraged them. After some parting advice the rangers left.
George was still quite high, and seeing things. He said that he had hiked over five ridges to find the cave of the rock people, encountered a tribe of hostile "Indians" and a lady who tried to give him kerosene to drink. This last part of his trip was the most interesting, but is so long in detail that I think I will pass over it for now. He had lost his shirt and his knife, threatening the Indians, and had no shirt when the rangers found him in the night, at a campers trailer, where he had come asking for a glass of water. What guided him back over the five ridges, I did not know.
He ate some food, having had only one hotcake in 24 hours of wandering in the desert. "Wait till you see suitcases made out of rock." He said, as he finally lay down and fell asleep. Morning came and we watched the sunrise from a rocky pinnacle. George finally agreed that the boulders were nature carved, and not the work of some giant beings with skin like granite. We ate, packed up, and once again started off across the vast, desolate, California desert.
COMMENTARY
Though I was in a state of terror when we left our camp, I couldn't wait to stop and investigate more of the fantastic stone evidence of this hidden civilization. We were passing by the find of the century. And besides the rock people, I had a desire to learn more about the elusive Joshua tree Indians. I needed hard evidence to convince Saxon, my skeptic friend, that I was not lying or out of my mind. Well, at least I was not lying.
Once we had reestablished a camp, I went off in search of the rock people, or a piece of evidence that would be small enough for me to carry back to camp. Somehow the rock people had gone into hiding, leaving only their art as a sign to us of their perfect way of life. I also began to focus my attention on the harmonious society of Joshua tree Indians, which I came to believe existed in a spiritual dimension, as did the rock people. I saw the "Indians" moving and socially interacting in my peripheral vision, as well as atop every ridge and hill, some were on horseback, all of them were aware of me. And some of them were watching me. I often stumbled into their peyote fields, and would rush up to investigate a button, only to have it disappear when I turned to find a tool with which to dig it out. I saw the Indians eye me with contempt whenever I sought to pilfer a peyote patch. As I moved closer to them, the Indians withdrew again as much. Frustrated, I shouted questions at them,
"WHY ARE YOU KEEPING THE PERFECT WAY OF LIFE A SECRET?" "WHY DON'T YOU TEACH US HOW TO LIVE?"
About this time a great stone temple appeared before me. There were double doors on the front of it; each was half of a steep arch, perhaps 5 stories tall and 30 feet wide. Individual rock people and joyful families of rock people holding hands were entering in, passing right through the closed doors. These rock people were thinner than the ones I had seen earlier, but still giant. Everything, the rock people, their clothes, and the temple, was made of the same light rust colored sandstone - except that they were carrying black leather bound books. I attempted to follow them as they passed through the temple doors, but I crashed into the stone rather abruptly, and the vision of the temple vanished. I thought that I could not pass through the doors because I didn't have one of those black books. In retrospect, I think perhaps someone was indeed attempting to show me a better way of life.
I returned to camp and tried to convince Saxon to accompany me to a site that had some extraordinary rock carvings that I thought would surely convince him. He refused. I decided that the rock people must live underground, and set out to track down the entrance to their underground civilization, but not before chasing two evil looking thieves from the inside of our van. I couldn't understand why Saxon got so excited about me wielding my knife at them.
I counted the ridges as I hiked over them, so that I wouldn't get lost. Ridge counting was something I invented as a child, when I used to hike alone for many miles in the hills near Canyon Country. I had many adventures, as I hiked over five ridges pursuing rock and Joshua people, who always seemed to retreat to the next ridge.
I was hot and thirsty, and I kept telling Saxon, who I sometimes thought was with me, to wire his dad and have him pipe me out a drink of water. I would be willing to pay $200.00 for a glass of water, I said. I left my shirt atop a small cactus, confident that I would find it again on the return trip. It was getting very dark, and the adventures in the valleys between the hills were becoming gruesome. The devil came by in a dune buggy made of dry branches; he looked shriveled, dry, and dead, but his eyes were lit with the fires of hell. He stopped and asked me in a hoarse, evil, voice if I needed a ride. Believe me, I couldn't get away from him fast enough. Next a kindly old woman offered to let me drink at her stainless steel drinking fountain, but the water turned out to be kerosene, and I heard a devilish cackle from the woman as I spit it from my mouth. I crossed the valley of the fifth ridge and came to a small cave that was situated on the slope of the sixth ridge; I thought it was the entrance to the world of the rock people.
I cautiously entered the cave and found it illuminated by an unknown source of light, it seemed to come from everywhere. Littering the cave floor were large, primitive, stone axes and other prehistoric looking implements, my jewelry tools were also there, strewn all over the place. What were they doing here I wondered. On the other side of the cave was a door similar in design to those used on submarines, it had a large metal wheel to open and close the hatch. As I approached the door, I heard a most frightening sound coming from the other side, it was the roaring of an intense fire. I had not found the cave of the rock people, but an entrance to hell.
Months later, as I thought about the meaning of that vision, I concluded that human endeavors are primitive no matter how sophisticated they may seem. And I could see that by putting a price on everything, especially from the time I started making and selling jewelry, I had been paving a road to misery.
I became frightened that the rock people would not allow me to live because I knew too many of their secrets. I could hear that horrible stone on stone grinding as the ground began to rumble. I knew that they were coming and I began to flee for my life.
I side-kicked a Joshua tree Indian off his horse, and proceeded to mount it in order to ride away, but I got a crotch full of choya thorns. Leaving the uncooperative beast, I continued to flee on foot.
I got bogged down in the dark valleys between the ridges; strange creatures attacked me, and tried to pull me back into the darkness as I struggled to climb back over the ridges.
Just as I topped the next ridge there was a great voice from heaven, it said,
"WALK ONLY ON THE STARLIT PATHS."
As I looked out before me, sure enough, there was a network of brightly illuminated paths. They meandered a little as they circumvented the areas of darkness, but I soon discovered that by taking them I was making excellent time. All the while the demons groped at me from the edge of darkness. I could see their eyes and sticky fingers.
Then, as if my situation wasn't dire enough, the Joshua Indians joined forces with the slower rock people, and were shooting slow motion arrows while attempting to capture me.
I lost my knife struggling with them, and then picked up two softball sized stones and declared to the "Indians" that I had great magic with the stones, and that if I dropped them the entire world would blow up, "KA-boom!" I said. And I carried those stones back to the last ridge, from where I could see the paved road - the Joshua trees in hot pursuit. I threw the stones into the air, and the Joshua tree Indians jumped back in surprise, giving me the time I needed to climb down the last ridge. I had never been so glad to see a paved road. I saw a trailer and headed for it immediately, I had only one thing on my mind; I needed water.
I grasped a handrail and supported myself as I stood there knocking on the door of the trailer; I was weak, my strength was gone. An elderly couple answered the door and I voiced a meek plea for a glass of water. They seemed to be expecting me, and exclaimed, "Oh, you're the one the rangers are looking for! Come inside."
I sat in the trailer, quietly drinking one glass of water after another, while I watched the old woman play several games of solitaire. She comforted me by saying that the rangers would soon be there to take me back to my friend. I have to thank the old couple for getting involved. I think I might have died if I had not received the water. At that moment, I was a wild youth with long hair - insane, filthy, and half-naked. Had I been in the old man's shoes I might have greeted such a person with contempt and perhaps a loaded gun. At very least I would have turned him away from my trailer.
The rangers finally arrived and took me back to my friend. They were asking me what I was high on, I decided to tell them that some stranger had given me LSD. I thought that if I told them it was datura they would want me to get checked out at a local hospital. As we returned to Jumbo Rocks I was upset because there was no light on at camp and Saxon was asleep. The rangers checked my pockets and asked, "You don't have anymore drugs, do you?" Then they obtained permission from Saxon to search our van. I got paranoid that they might find our stash of peyote buttons, so as one held the flashlight and the other rummaged through our possessions I tried a distraction. I pulled my pants and underwear down to my knees, "LOOK, NO DRUGS HIDDEN IN MY UNDERWEAR EITHER!" I declared. The distraction worked. The rangers couldn't help but laugh out loud. One of them said, "That's all right, you can put your pants back on now," while shining his flashlight carefully on my face to avoid my genitals. At that point they decided their job was done and they departed.
Morning came, and Saxon dragged me up to the top of a hill to see the sun rise. I was annoyed because my body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. He was still insisting that I accept the fact that the boulders were formed by nature, so I decided to agree with him, though I still strongly suspected that they were the work of the rock people. Anyway, making peace with Saxon seemed like the only way to get our trip moving again.
SAXON'S JOURNAL - ENTRY 2, THE TRIP CONTINUES
We traveled on to Needles, where we had lunch, and then crossed the state line into Arizona. As we continued on through Kingman, driving well into the dark of night, I was exhausted and wanted to sleep. We came very close to getting killed in an auto wreck that night, but narrowly escaped by the grace of god. Finally we pulled into a roadside rest area and slept.
The next morning we continued on; we were looking for a spot to do some peyote buttons. We turned off Interstate 40 and headed north on Highway 64, towards the Grand Canyon. We found a deserted ranch road and followed it for awhile, eventually turning off onto another dirt road, barely a trail, which led us down into a small canyon. It was a nice place, and seemed empty enough for our purpose, so we set up camp and cooked up some venison for lunch.
We began our peyote encounter atop a small hill, where we chewed peyote and dried apricots. We ingested twenty small buttons apiece. I felt rather nauseous for a while and then had an urge to walk. I hiked down trails, over hills, and into a canyon which had a kind of ranch road in it, and a watering well for cows. I was practicing throwing my knife, and then started the long hike back. But after a while of walking, I realized that all the scenery looked the same. "I might be lost," I thought, "but with this belly full of power food nothing can happen to me." I think I was slightly wrong. I was beginning to "come on" quite heavy to the effects of the twenty buttons in my stomach, and I had to sit down by a rock. Insects were loudly buzzing around me.
The red dirt of the ranch road stretched off in two enticing directions. Something did seem slightly familiar on one horizon, so I started off in that direction. But after a while of walking that way I decided that it must have been the other direction I had come from, so I turned back. I passed the rock, and continued walking. Everything looked the same as everything else.
I don't know how, but I found myself walking along some part of that road when I heard faint calls. I went towards them yelping and howling. Finally I came over a ridge and saw George off across the way, and our van beyond in the canyon. He ran towards me and hugged me. "I've never been so glad to see someone I love in my life." He said, "Didn't you hear me calling?"
"Yea," I said, "didn't you hear me?"
"No, but a whole herd of cows came while I was calling you." Said George.
I looked down in the canyon, and sure enough, there were the cows, about thirty of them or so. We laughed together.
Walking back to the van, he told me that he hadn't really come back to himself from the devil's weed until I left him sitting alone in the desert, where we had chewed the buttons. I guess to come back to himself and find out that he was sitting alone in the middle of a vast desert was quite a shock for George. At that point, he couldn't be sure if anything was real. I guess the last couple of days seemed like a hazy dream to him. He said that after finding his way back to the van, he touched it, not sure if his hand would go right through or not. It seemed solid enough, so he started it, but was unable to drive, because all he could see in the rear view mirror was some kind of beast looking back at him. He said that he saw all of our possessions lying around, but that I was nowhere to be found, and he wondered if I was just someone that he made up in his head, or part of the devil's weed trip maybe. He wondered if he was really all-alone.
George said that at that point he began praying to the Lord Jesus Christ, and promised to have faith in Him if only He would bring me back. That is when he began calling my name, shouting for me. When I finally did come back, some of George's first words to me were, "I'm picking up a bible in the next town." This seemed interesting to me. I didn't know much about the Bible, and I had never heard George mention it before.
We sat by the van for a while and looked through some books; by this time we had both entered an altered state of consciousness. Things were becoming clearer to me and I guess to George also. The simplicity of everything that I had glimpsed so many times became even more apparent. We made a spiral out of rocks on the earth, the ever-opening circle, symbolic to me of eternity.
We went to the top of a small hill to watch the sunset, and as dusk came we stood some distance apart, facing each other, using our eyes we each saw reflections of ourselves in the other. Anyone who has ever experienced this technique will know of the profound effects it can have. When it was dark we returned to camp, made a fire, ate dinner, and talked of the world. We talked of many things that day and I learned more than I can or want to tell. Finally, we wrapped up in blankets and drifted off to sleep.
The next morning we had a big campfire, and George burned his datura digging stick, a carved stick he used for digging the root of the devil's weed. I burned mine also. There would be no more of that plant on this trip.
COMMENTARY
As we said good-bye to Joshua Tree, that second morning of our trip, I could still see some faces and shapes in the stone. To say I was exhausted would be a gross understatement. I had only slept a handful of hours the night before, that was the only sleep I had during the past 36 hours, time that consisted of intense activity, physical stress, and torrid hallucinations. Not to mention the fact that I had eaten almost nothing; it was too hard to swallow anything because the datura had made my throat as dry as the desert sand.
I fell into a semiconscious state, slumped down in the uncomfortable seat of the van. The engine droned on and on, scenery passed, but it all looked the same. It was as if we were moving on a treadmill. Finally we stopped at a service station with a large black asphalt lot and I got out there to use the restroom. But as soon as my legs hit the asphalt they collapsed under me. I rose to my feet again with all the steadiness of a newborn fawn, and proceeded to march toward the restroom. The ground felt spongy to me, though it was just the weakness of my legs, and I perceived the asphalt giving way under my weight as if it were a giant sheet of black foam rubber. I was still hallucinating. I overheard a station attendant saying to my friend, "Your buddy sure is walking funny."
I don't remember anything else that happened that day or evening. I think I slept the better part of the time.
The next thing I knew it was morning and we were in a roadside rest stop. It was a pleasant place on the side of a low hill that had some old twisted desert pines further up the slope. I enjoyed seeing something with green on it. However, my serenity was interrupted. I saw the black truck and those people who had been trying to steal our van, the men were slinking around the bush with their guns drawn and evil expressions on their faces. Of course I was hallucinating again, I knew I was this time, so I didn't say anything to Saxon.
We continued on, eventually stopping in a deserted place near the Grand Canyon to do some peyote. This was Saxon's idea. And it all began in much the way that Saxon described in his journal, but there's a side of the story he didn't know. After eating the buttons, Saxon did indeed go on his walk and get lost, but I was about to face a different kind of crisis. I had successfully fought back the nausea that typically comes with peyote, and now I began to feel its effects. It was proving too much for my system to bear and I began to convulse. It was much the same feeling that I had experienced during my mushroom overdose, just prior to my heart stopping. I instinctively knew that I had only moments before I would once again enter cardiac or respiratory arrest. This was something I should have considered before going directly from one experience to the other with so little rest in between. But now I was faced with the probability of returning to that place of judgement and eternal condemnation I had experienced during the mushroom overdose.
I was dying, and I knew it. I was gripped with fear and panic; I knew my destiny. Saxon was gone, and I had to get help quickly. I tried to start the van and drive for help, but I could not tell if the engine was running or not, besides that, there was a strange beast in the rear view mirror, a reflection of myself perhaps. Then a line from the song "White Rabbit," came to mind, "Remember what the doorman said, feed your head." I took it as emergency advice and decided to try to eat some food.
I took a bite of venison from the pot of stew that we had made for lunch, each time I bit down on it I heard a whispering bible verse that said something like "there shall be weeping, and wailing, and a
gnashing of teeth." The "gnashing of teeth" part would echo with each subsequent chew. I spit it out. Instead, I began to drink water from a canteen, but I could not feel its soothing coolness going down my burning throat. A whispering voice sounded again; "There is an eternal thirst in hell!"
I decided that sleep was what I needed, and lay down in the back of the van. It began to shake like a violent earthquake, as my body began to convulse furiously. I jumped out of the van and then noticed that I could see through it. I extended my hand to touch it, but my hand went several inches into the metal with no sign of stopping, so I withdrew it. I was in the transition between worlds.
I had asked again and again "What is IT?" that night I overdosed on mushrooms. But now I knew exactly what IT was, or rather WHO IT IS, and I knew what simple thing it was that I had to do in order to be saved from eternal misery. I fell to my knees on the ground and prayed this simple prayer with all of my heart:
"Dear GOD! I KNOW that I'm a sinner. LORD JESUS please come into my heart and save me, cleanse the devil out of me LORD!"
Suddenly there was an overwhelming peace and sobriety in me. In fact, I felt more sober than I had ever been in my whole life. It was as if a missing piece to my life's puzzle had been put back, and I was whole again, at last. Then I promised God that I would get a Bible in the next town and begin reading it. Although, strangely enough, it was Saxon who finally brought a Bible back to camp, near the end of our trip.
I had been possessed but now I was free, the house was swept clean.
I realized that Saxon had been gone a very long time and I began to wonder if he was even real. Our possessions seemed real enough, so I was becomming very worried that he might be lost.
I knelt down again and prayed this second sincere prayer of my life,
"Dear God, I don't know if Saxon is a sinner or a saint, but he's my friend and I want him back. Please send him back."
I believe it was after this prayer that Saxon turned around from going the wrong way on that dirt road.
There was not another living thing in sight and I began to feel quite lonely. I began loudly shouting Saxon's name. I noticed a large, black shinny wasp was prancing across the ground around a cooking knife that was reflecting the sun. He would approach the knife cautiously, touch it, and then retreat quickly. He was a marvelous creature, a fantastic creation of God, and he was genuinely curious about the shinny thing on the ground. What a marvelous package of life, it made me smile.
I continued calling Saxon's name; my voice was aching with concern and distress. But I knew I had to stay near the van and keep calling. I heard a distinct low rumbling voice from just around the bend, "Geoooorge," it said, in a long, stretched-out, sort of way. I went running around the bend, and to my surprise there was a whole herd of cows, some of which were answering my calls with deep "moos." I knew that they had come because of the great distress in my voice, they had feelings too, I could see that now, more marvelous creatures of God. I felt much better; I even laughed a little. I hoped they would stay a while, because Saxon was never going to believe this.
When Saxon finally returned I greeted him in much the way that he wrote, but there is one more thing I would like to mention. I found it hard to come right out and say it, but I had to tell him, and I stammered as I spoke,
"Saxon, I have t-to t-tell you? I've become a Christian." I said.
He answered me with a boisterous grin, "Yeah, IT'll make a Christian out of ya." Obivously refering to the fear of the whole ordeal.
To this day Saxon does not remember saying that, but I think perhaps his answer came from a higher source.
For the rest of the afternoon and evening I kind of forgot about God as we practiced various sorcery techniques, and just generally enjoyed each other's company. My sobriety had given way to a duality of being perfectly sober on the one hand, and extremely high on peyote at the same time. It was the best of both worlds. Anyway it would be nearly a year until I saw that there was no more use in trying to reach a spiritual God through a physical means, such as peyote. But the peyote lessons were not over yet, not by a long shot.
We made a fire as night fell, Saxon noticed me spacing out and gave me a command, "Don't just stand there," he said, "gather pieces of wood to burn." We talked, and laughed, shared observations, and told stories around the fire. It was a wonderful night, and I slept well. In the morning I made my repentance complete by burning the last vestiges of the devils weed in our campfire. It was like the repentance of the Ephesians mentioned in the Bible, who burned all their occult books, though I had yet to read that story. I was surprised that Saxon was willing to forever ban that damnation weed from his life as well. And a few years later Saxon also accepted God's gift of eternal life through His Son, Jesus Christ.
But we weren't ready to burn all our occult books just yet. And the trip continued.
Just as an updated, "Saxon" (not his real name) now holds two masters degrees; one in electronics engineering and one in business administration, and he is an expert UNIX programmer...
..as for me - I'm still a flake
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