BajaNomad

Mountain mescaline - Baja Sur

Osprey - 5-18-2012 at 06:00 PM

No Passport, just Cokes and Honey


Juan and Chuy dropped the peyote trip thing on me one Thursday afternoon. I knew there was some peyote cactus up in the canyons and now we planned to drive up there on Saturday, spend the day tripping in the Lagunas. So I had some time to think about it, prepare for the experience – I had never taken any kind of drugs so my frame of reference was limited. I spent about half the day on Friday on line finding out what I could about the wonders and possible dangers of the stuff.

The search engines startled me when I discovered all we had learned since the 1950s when I read Huxley’s description of what mescaline did to him one sunny afternoon. I put my faith in my pals, made up some sandwiches, gassed up the jeep, got a cooler ready for the trip. I was curious about how we were going to find the stuff and wondered if it would be so strong and bitter that we’d get sick before we got high.

On the way to the store Juan explained the rare and rustic process: We needed to load the cooler with cokes and beer and ice, grab two jars of local honey and that would be our ticket to trip. An old woman at Rancho Acacia would trade us a little prepared cactus for the cokes, honey and a few cactus we would harvest further up the canyon. She dried the buttons, ground them up and made a tea with honey to fool our tummies and our livers about the bitter drugs we were ingesting. From ancient Meso-Amerindians to modern plains Indians people learned quickly to take some powerful hallucinogens anally, to cheat the liver; the tea seemed like a much better idea to me.

We stopped by the rancho, talked to Auralia, the old woman, a few minutes to explain our deal and to get directions to the best places to search for the cactus. While we searched, she would prepare the tea. I wore my old deck shoes and I was sorry for that as I struggled up and down rugged hills covered with thick forests of small but spiky brush and cactus. At long last I heard Chuy shout and we hurried to see his find. I was unimpressed – an ugly little grayish green thing was barely seen just at ground level as though hiding in the cactus forest. In the next hour we found two more, dug them up and backtracked to the rancho. When we laid the little cactus out on the relic of a table in the yard, Auralia laughed at our meager exchange gift. I got from the gesture that it takes mucho plants to make a good batch of tea.

I thought we were going to spend the rest of day at the rancho but Juan had another plan. While we could still navigate, before much of the drug had taken effect, Juan showed me how to get to Rancho Corral Falso where a huge, toothless jolly Mexican ranchero waited for us and the beer.

I had reasons to record what happened next with my camera. Also when I believed that most of the drug’s effects were gone, a couple of days later, I felt compelled to do the Huxley thing and try to recapture on paper what my senses told me up there.


The Trip in the Mountains

I had taken some toast and coffee at home for breakfast and I don’t know what, if anything my friends had before our 45 minute trip up to the rancho. Kind of unscientific dosage; we three shared a large coffee cup of the awful tea at the ranch and then it was time to head for Rancho Corral Falso. Chuy said it might take an hour or two for the stuff to kick in and we had plenty of time to get to the ranch.

Not more than 100 meters from Rancho Acacia I spotted a gopher snake crossing the road, stopped and captured it just for fun. Juan and Chuy were aghast that I wanted to handle it, was not afraid of the deadly bite, the venom. After I explained that the snake was harmless, showed them how docile it was they warmed to the idea and began to touch it, handle it a little. They couldn’t wait to show Jose, the ranchero the fearless way they handled the colorful creature. Jose wasn’t as warm to the idea as they were but after a while he joined in the fun with squeaks and giggles. The ranchero would be our witness while he drank one Pacifico after another, played guitar and paid little attention to how we were changing.

Now that two more days have passed I can report what I felt, saw, heard when the mescaline was in my system with the fairly good knowledge that my writing is drug free but the memories are fresh and clear.

Before I get into the sensual stuff I will preface with the overall feeling that my life’s filters were shut down or impaired --- there was a general sense that I was no longer afraid to look, feel, touch the world as I might have done as a child. My child’s world was real and I somehow felt like what I was experiencing was always there with me but only now was I allowed to view things as though a film, a scrim had been lifted from them. At first I heard myself saying “I knew it, I just knew it. I knew all this was here” and I embraced the childish ideas of everything suddenly having a name, a personality, alive with color and movement I just could not imagine without the help of the chemicals.

I became a living sensual processor without ego or bias; when the trees and boulders came to meet me, talked with me I made no value judgments about the propriety of such actions. The exploding neon new colors looked natural to me, not bombastic, showy or artificial. I was surprised that I could taste the colors while I enjoyed their texture, their meaning, their vibrancy representing the first visual suit of the personality of a big hardwood or a tall cactus.

The overloads were all around me but if I was chemically surprised it was with a sense of wonder and glee, not that my senses were lying to me or that I had entered some parallel world. Jose’s three kids, several goats, Jose, me, Juan and Chuy all seemed part of a thing, perhaps like a jellyfish, a group of organism, where we joined invisible hands that held us all together in a beneficial scrum.




The kids became part of a Zalate tree. The tree had a colorful name, Obert. The children were Obertsherbas and when I said hello they laughed and swung about like supple limbs dancing in a whirlwind. The taste of Obert was lemon-lime-lemon; I remember that very clearly.

This afternoon Chuy told me I spent almost four hours in the water. I remember the stream, the water but since we became one I was on the clock that flowed down the canyon spinning rivulets of minutes, hours, eons working hard to grind down the walking rocks. The water pouring over the tiny waterfalls onto my back was caressing me, singling me out as blessedly necessary material it could not bear to wash away, carry down the canyon to the sea. This was the very first meeting in 75 long years and we were joined in the vortex of one solemn, if clumsy, celebration.

Now I get the feeling that if I move my Mind Child to a different setting and repeat the process, I’ll still be giving life and notice and deference to what surrounds me just like I would in kindergarten. My crayons would conjure up what I really see and feel and taste and hear without fear or filter, without stultifying preconceptions or a dire need to change whatever I encounter to something else. Ten days after the trip Juan told me I spent the whole day talking with one of the ranch goats. I pressed him on the matter of the word talking and he was smilingly vague.

I can’t begin to explain the chemical ups and downs of the day, how I felt beyond what I perceived but I count the whole other experience as a validation rather than a revelation – perhaps my filters have never been firmly in place, perhaps my innocence leaks through all the moving parts of a switchboard with three quarters of a century of connecting, reinforcing until my patterns are your patterns, my trees are your trees.

Whether I’m right, wrong or slightly off the mark, I’m glad I passed through the Doors of Perception.

The goat’s name is vluusic. He is musical like his name (and like his father before him).

[Edited on 5-19-2012 by Osprey]

woody with a view - 5-18-2012 at 06:43 PM

great story, Osprey! i once new a guy who had a couple dozen buttons. i never tried em but he said when he looked at a tree he became the tree, and so on. anyone read the Carlos Castaneda books? check out "Journey to Ixtlan" sometime.

Mexitron - 5-18-2012 at 07:39 PM

Beautiful, Osprey!

A buddy of mine, somewhere way back when in the olden days of Laguna, ate quite a number of buttons.....went home, dug a hole and planted himself sometime in the early evening.......as the almost full moon rose in the east he watched himself grow into a Joshua Tree until the wee hours of the morning. He said the Joshua Tree started fruiting with Peyote buttons just before sunrise. We should all be so lucky to be buried knee deep with arms outstretched to the Great Mystery.

Woody, I Am Sorry

Gypsy Jan - 5-18-2012 at 08:12 PM

But Carlos Castaneda was a fraud.

I read his books and was enthralled in the day, but here it is: http://www.skepdic.com/castaneda.html

woody with a view - 5-18-2012 at 08:17 PM

i didn't ask if was true or not.

Mexitron - 5-18-2012 at 08:35 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Gypsy Jan
But Carlos Castaneda was a fraud.

I read his books and was enthralled in the day, but here it is: http://www.skepdic.com/castaneda.html


Party pooper.

Carlos Castaneda and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Were Toxic Predators

Gypsy Jan - 5-18-2012 at 09:01 PM

I was interested their thoughts about creating a new world but I duowish that they had been honest and open about what they were doing instead of going mysterious, control hungry and predatory.

Do y'all remember Swami Rajneesh? Mr. Purple and pink with the several Rolls Royce vehicles and the compound in Northern California?

I am still so angry about that I can't spell his name or the places correctly.

My cousin was a devotee and when she was rejected because she wasn't devout enough and they would not let her join the commune in Northern California, then, as a life long victim of parental abuse and when her new family rejected her, she became so despondent that put a gun in her mouth and committed suicide.

[Edited on 5-19-2012 by Gypsy Jan]

Ateo - 5-18-2012 at 09:58 PM

I have something to say about this. But my wifi sucks so I'll comment when I have better wifi.

[Edited on 5-19-2012 by ateo]

Udo - 5-19-2012 at 09:26 AM

Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between George's non-fiction and his fiction.

p.s....thanks for the preview!:bounce:

capt. mike - 5-19-2012 at 09:49 AM

did you throw up? those things can make you violently ill before the tripping starts in.

so i am told.

willardguy - 5-19-2012 at 09:54 AM

'hey, chavez' how come they aint killing us?

"because we're in the spirt world, a$$hole. they can't see us"

young guns 1988

motoged - 5-19-2012 at 10:10 AM

I had the honours of having a late Navajo Road Man, Tommy Nez, include me in several ceremonies (12 hour experience in a hogan and tipi at different times) here in BC.

The first time, the buttons had been dried and ground into a gritty powder as well as being steeped into a tea (to wash down the ground up buttons)....the last few times the cactus was fresh and mashed into a pulp....and made into a tea. The fresh stuff made me more nauseated than the dry form.

The experience was not as hallucinogenic as "chemical" hallucinogens, but the ceremony created a context (drumming, singing, fire rituals) that added to guiding the mind out of its usual constraints of perception.

The last time I did this (a couple of years ago and a month before Tommy passed away [he was in late 70's]), I decided to leave the ceremony at the halfway mark (when we took a break for a short time outside), but made the serious faux pas of not telling folks (this is seriously disrespectful)....I made it home at 2:00 AM to "let the medicine take me on its own path"...and because my bad knees were killing me sitting cross-legged for that long (it is also disrespectful to have your straight legs facing the fire).

Within the hour once back home, I had the experience of "being back at the ceremony" watching Tommy and the group offer prayers for me and expressing their concerns.

I realize on one level it was "just what I was thinking", but on another level outside the box of my rational mind, I was there.


I hope this reply doesn't go off on some anti-drug tirade while some Nomad is slurping their beer/marg while reading it....

Just another experience that is not "maybe fiction".


Osprey, thanks for your story :saint:

willardguy - 5-19-2012 at 11:18 AM

at least you know its coming!:cool:

DavidE - 5-19-2012 at 11:30 AM

Mexitron,

All Fiction Can Be Considered Fraudulent

But there is a distinction between fiction and deception

I try to remember that

As I switch reading JRR Tolkien's work

and political news reporting

[Edited on 5-19-2012 by DavidE]

willardguy - 5-19-2012 at 11:42 AM

"all paths are the same:they lead to nowhere" -don juan

anyone looking for a signature?:spingrin:

Mexitron - 5-19-2012 at 12:18 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by DavidE
Mexitron,

All Fiction Can Be Considered Fraudulent

But there is a distinction between fiction and deception

I try to remember that

As I switch reading JRR Tolkien's work

and political news reporting

[Edited on 5-19-2012 by DavidE]


What I've gathered about Carlos Castenada is that the first book was basically true but that the rest were conjured up in his office at UCLA, but likely while under the influence, as it were...so they are fictitious, deceptive, and true all at the same time.

DavidE - 5-19-2012 at 12:48 PM

As was much of the story by an indigena from Guatemala who was awarded a Nobel Prize for her story of anguish. Some of it was found to be irreconcilable to her actual history. But all of it is undeniable. It was reality to millions of Guatemalteca.

Who is capable of judging the morality of over-emphasizing an evil reality? Who has the wisdom, and the right, lacks the moral turpitude to become judge?

I for one, do not, and can not.

[Edited on 5-19-2012 by DavidE]

Cypress - 5-19-2012 at 12:59 PM

Turpitude? I've got plenty of it.:biggrin:

DavidE - 5-19-2012 at 01:21 PM

Cypress,

Yeah, un-huh, I'll bet.

Gracias por la risa!

"A Seperate Reality" pretty heavy stuff!

woody with a view - 5-19-2012 at 01:39 PM

"Our lot as men is to learn. I have learned to see and I tell you that nothing really matters. A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting. A man of knowledge chooses a path with heart and follows it; and then he looks and rejoices and laughs; and then he sees and knows. He knows that his life will be over altogether too soon; he knows that he, as well as everybody else, is not going anywhere; he knows, because he sees , that nothing is more important than anything else. In other words, a man of knowledge has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country, but only life to be lived, and under these circumstances his only tie to his fellow men is his controlled folly. Thus a man of knowledge endeavors, and sweats, and puffs, and if one looks at him he is just like any ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under control. Nothing being more important than anything else, a man of knowledge chooses any act, and acts it out as if it matters to him. His controlled folly makes him say that what he does matters and makes him act as if it did, and yet he knows that it doesn't; so when he fulfills his acts he retreats in peace, and whether his acts were good or bad, or worked or didn't, is in no way part of his concern.

Our lot as men is to learn and, as I've said, one goes to knowledge as one goes to war; with fear, with respect, aware that one is going to war, and with absolute confidence in oneself. Put your trust in yourself. There's no emptiness in the life of a man of knowledge, everything is filled to the brim and everything is equal. For me there is no victory, or defeat, or emptiness. Everything is filled to the brim and everything is equal and my struggle is worth my while.

In order to become a man of knowledge one must be a warrior. One must strive without giving up, without a complaint, without flinching, until one sees , only to realize then that nothing matters. You're too concerned with liking people or with being liked yourself. A man of knowledge likes, that's all. He likes whatever or whoever he wants, but he uses his controlled folly to be unconcerned about it."

Don Juan

Thanks for the memories, Osprey!

Iflyfish - 5-20-2012 at 01:01 AM

Wow Osprey, you did it again, and yet again! Great thread. With the demonetization of these native medicines we lose the opportunity to learn from them and those who use them. I admire your sensitivity and courage in writing this piece, a real slice of deep Mexican culture not often seen by the outsider. Motoged tells us here about what few "outsiders" have experienced and your posting this has provided us with a forum to honor some of these amazing experiences and as Huxley said opening our doors of perception. So much has been written about the negative affects of drugs, few have written about what can be learned from them and it takes courage in this day to talk about such things. The image of burying oneself in the ground to experience the Joshua is priceless, just priceless.

Not all trips are good trips, as Andrew Weil M.D. sagely said "the trip is in the person".

Here is a clip of a suburban housewife under the influence of LSD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGf2loLAwVE

Peyote has been used among the Dina (Hopi) as a successful treatment for alcoholism. Those successful in their recovery report that the spiritual nature of the experience filled a deep need in them and they could no longer dull themselves with alcohol. I have read studies of high rates of recovery using this treatment and "Crossover States of Neurofeedback" which can produce similar experiences.

Iflyfishtojointhetao

edited to add youtube link

[Edited on 5-20-2012 by Iflyfish]

Osprey - 5-20-2012 at 07:41 AM

Since I'm a hobby writer I use that license to offer fiction based on fact, fantasy and personal memoirs to these ends:

I'm hoping the work will

engage
educate
entertain
evoke or inspire
enlighten
tease and please

I'm also hoping the work will give the reader some of the above whether it is fact or fiction. As an example: In Edgar Allen Poe's short piece "The Adventure of one Hans Pfaal" the lead character takes a trip to the moon in a balloon.

The story is so well constructed as to make the reader believe the trip was possible. Would it change anything if the writer told the story as reportage, with the writer in the balloon basket?

In the peyote story I spoke the truth when I said I had never taken drugs like mescaline. Then I fabricated an adventure in which I pretended to go to the mountains, take drugs, report the experience. I've been to the mountain many times. Everything about the cactus, the drugs, the drug experience is pure fiction. I imbedded large photos of the mountains, the cactus, the story setting and characters which all went nicely to make the tale plausible. I couldn't post the photos in their present format -- hope the story still rings with the sound of organic adventure.

Iflyfish - 5-20-2012 at 10:34 AM

Osprey "hope the story still rings with the sound of organic adventure"

It does indeed. These are the skills of a great writer, to be able to write in the voice of the opposite sex, to write of experiences one can only imagine, to paint verbal images of metaphorical and imagined experienced. We are fortunate to have you aboard providing all of these for us. Thank you.

Iflyfishinaweofosprey'swriting

Osprey - 5-20-2012 at 11:08 AM

fish, thank you so much. You've been on my patio so you know what a challenge it is for me, lying there in my hammock, watching the clouds whip by, to begin there and end up at the conclusion of a tale worthy of your reading.

Best hobby I ever could have and the very best payoff in praise like yours and the sometimes kudos back to me from noble Nomads.