Chapter 16. Vision Quest (pt.2)

I could pause and breathe in the experience of the vision quest at my A-frame in the goat pasture. The rest of the time I was there I never lost another kid to mama cat. It was as though some sort of cosmic agreement had been made between us on that spring day in the canyon. Some people would say that it was just a coincidence but I felt that I knew better. I drew pictures with lines in the dirt near my fire pit of the cat and the two cubs. I filled in the lines in with different color soil and offered up a prayer. I thought about it after that and, as time passed, felt a bit embarrassed at the superstition. I could never shake the impression that a special bond had been formed with that cat in particular, but with the spirit of cats in general. Years later I see a cat; whether it is a mountain lion, a house cat, or a tiger, I sense a bond. I came to understand this was a bond with a form of spirit-guide: like the ones spoken of by shaman and medicine men or healers almost universally. It was most certainly the high point of my stay at Risingstar.

Something else had happened to me on this quest. I wasn’t compelled to tell anyone about it. Part of the way out into the wilderness I had taken note of all the wonders I had experienced and couldn’t wait to get back to civilization to tell someone about it all. There was a point where I had merged so totally with everything around me… that I was in it so deeply… there just wasn’t any way to describe it with words. Once I did want to tell someone and I went to Brian to sit with him an hour… I couldn’t say much of anything.

I would start, “Uh… yes. Trees breathe… I saw them.” And Brian would simply nod in agreement: he’d already been there.

I picked up where the nod left off, “I was there breathing with them.” 

“Do you think this experience will amount to anything that will affect the drinking we talked about?” Brian seemed to be curious about it himself.

For so many at that time, LSD and psychedelic experience was the cure-all for everything. Brian seemed to have gone past those surface beliefs and I appreciated his experience since he had been around acid from the beginnings in the early sixties. He had been right there with the “Beats” in North Beach and had been in the Haight when the psychedelic revolution began before Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.

“I don’t know… truthfully. I would have believed so after my first experience but I can’t say that hitting on the godhead at the mountain-top is enough to do the trick. I can’t drink and I can’t stop. No matter what spiritual reality I encounter, eventually I forget and then it is all over. I no longer even want to quit.”

“Do you have a plan?” Brian pulled a book off his shelf. It was tattered and beat-up… pages earmarked and whole paragraphs highlighted.

“What’s that?”

“Alcoholics Anonymous…”

“Oh, I heard about that a few times. It’s a bunch of drunks… total abstinence and all that.”

“Have you ever read this book though?”

“Naw, can’t say I have. Have you?”

“Sure, I told you my dad had a drinking problem. This helped me cope with it.” He opened the book and passed it to me, “Read the part I highlighted there.”

“After they have succumbed to the desire again, as many do, the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless the person can experience an entire psychic change there is little hope of his recovery.” 

I had experienced that exact exchange of hope and disappointment.

“Read on to the next paragraph.”

“On the other hand --- and strange as this may seem to those who do not understand --- once a psychic change has occurred, the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them, suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol, the only effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules…”

 I paused there to take a deep breath, “Rules, eh? What rules? Anything like a religious order?”

“Perhaps… Yes, you can say that. They have twelve steps that are supposed to keep the wolf from the door.” 

Brian took the book back and put it back on his shelf. It was a faded blue like denim and resembled the size of the Blue Jackets Manual I was issued in the Navy.

“A few of the guys have been talking about Jamaica and I've been thinking of going there with them after the spring planting.” 

The idea of having a plan struck me as a novel idea and this was the only plan I’d had. “Mind you, I love it here but I feel as though things will settle down and the people who do the work can have a pretty good go at making it… but I don’t think I'm cut-out for it.”

“What do you mean, cut-out for it?”

“Well, I don’t have a woman. I don’t have any kids to take care of. I might start school sometime soon… G.I. Bill and all that. Maybe sometime later, after I’ve done what I set out to do… maybe then.”

Brian let out a grunt that was a sort of laugh, “I’m Queer, you know, I don’t have a woman or kids… but I know what you mean. You still have some exploring to do.”

 “Well, I didn’t know, Brian. I hadn’t even thought of it. I mean, does it matter up here?”

It still took an adjustment of perception for those of us with whom all of it was a new adventure. Stan, with his Georgia Peaches down at the Dome, and a one-time encounter with Sunflower, had me thinking about all relationships, sexual or otherwise. Everything seemed simple and pure in the rarified air of the New Mexico High Plateau.

I left Brian to go back to Charlie and his girls… to breathe, pause and reflect.