Chapter 12. Easter Peyote Hunt

I found comfort in the solitude of the goat pasture. I had plenty of time to reflect on what it was that had happened when Sunflower showed up that day. The fact that she moved on meant something to me too. I didn’t know what it meant but I knew it meant something to digest about love, relationships, and my spirit, she saw as large, shrinking because I had been grasping to appease the loneliness of that same spirit. She saw it and loved me for it. Why couldn’t I?

I spent my time exploring the arroyos and mesas around the property and venturing up the road to Arroyo Seco, the village on the way up to the Taos Ski area. Arroyo Seco was more than a stop for skiers. It had an old hacienda style house where there was an art school. I’d spent a few days watching artisans throw pots on a wheel or making equally precise and beautiful pots with a coil technique smoothed over and burnished the way pots have been made for millennia before the wheel.

I had always wanted to study art and learn some of these techniques but I knew it would take a considerable commitment in time and discipline that I would have to try at a later date.

I knew I was on a quest. I wasn’t sure what it was a quest for either but I sensed that this quest had some further exploring to do before settling in to any demanding discipline. I simply understood that there was no rush and that if I didn’t get it in this lifetime perhaps the next one would do it for me. I love you Sunflower.

Down at the Dome, Stan and the girls had quite a thing going for them. The three of them were a tandem team and Stan always had a shit-eating grin on his face. He had completed his mission in life and there was nothing else for him to do but enjoy the blessings of the day. I went down occasionally to visit. The Dome had a fifty-gallon-drum wood-burning stove like the kiva. The bed was situated on a loft built about eight feet above. Hot air rises so it didn’t take much to heat the loft. However, to visit the place, it was colder below the loft. Visitors were more comfortable climbing up into the loft and sharing the bed. It was an especially cozy arrangement conducive to all kinds of hanky-panky if that was the inclination. However, I had little desire beyond curiosity to try much of anything, even though I was invited to. It was apparent that Stan had sewn up that threesome and, as far as Deborah and Leah were concerned, that was it… they loved Stan and Stan was young enough, with libido enough, to handle it.

Occasionally Stan would show up at the A-frame to chat a spell, or just plain take a breather, but he nevertheless seemed to have his mind back there at the Dome.

I was curious whether such an arrangement was one that could be sustained. I had to ask, “So, how’s it going with the girls, Stan,”

“Man, you wouldn’t believe it.” he groaned.

I had to laugh at the sheepish look on Stan’s mug, “You holding-up okay, pal?” 

“Well, the first few nights were one big fuck-fest but we have settled into a routine. These girls are twisted, man.” There was barely a hint of complaining… it was more of a simple realistic appraisal.

I goaded, “Ain’t your pecker raw?”

Stan took a serious pose, “You can only do it so many times before the urge slows down.”

I changed the subject, “Say, I hear Mason, Joe and one of the Injuns from the Pueblo are taking that jeep to Laredo and harvest some peyote.”

“Where’s Laredo?”

“Texas… way down on the border… Mexico. I understand the desert’s the only place where peyote grows in the USA. It takes some guts and luck to get the stuff out of there.”

“It just grows wild? Why don’t more people go ta’ get it? There can’t be that many cops around the desert.”

“You got the Texas Rangers, Border Patrol and banditos… they have a lock on the area. You know, if a van full of hippies comes out of the desert they are sure to get noticed and checked out. That is why you kinda have to have some Injuns with you… religious freedom and all that.”

“What do you mean… religion?”

“You heard of the Native American Church?”

“Naw, can’t say as I have.” Stan had the endearing quality of being honest about what he did know and what he didn’t know.

“Well, Mason says peyote is a sacrament in the Native American Church…”

“No kiddin’, like bread and wine?”

“Yah, Stan, like bread and wine. I’m gonna go with ‘em. We want to bring some back for Easter.”

I had been mulling it over… the risks and all, but my talk with Stan erased some of those fears. I knew nothing of the laws around peyote and depended on everyone else’s knowledge in this case. I looked forward to spending some road-time with Mason and Joe… and, hell, a real shaman type dude, Marcos, from the Taos Pueblo.

We started out at daybreak after eating some peyote. The shaman was a regular looking guy in his fifties with close-cropped salt-n’-pepper hair, a pair of silver tipped walkers and a black Sundance Kid hat with silver around the hat-band. His name was Marcos. Marcos held three dried pieces from a pouch of the sacred cacti to the sky and, before passing them to us, he prayed, “Grand Father, we thank you for protecting and guiding us,” and to the Chief (a piece of dried peyote he held from a pouch), “We thank you for a safe return trip home. We will respect your house and take only what we need…”

The jeep rolled out through Taos and cut over at Albuquerque and on down the eastern side of the State through Roswell and Carlsbad where the caverns are. I felt the peyote moving me to stay silent and listen as the others spoke haltingly. We took turns driving, only stopping to gas up, replenish our water or take a leak. We had a bucket to puke in if the peyote made us nauseous, and it did. The highway took on a kaleidoscope of vivid electric color as the desert opened-up to us. I felt especially protected and trusted these men with my life in a way that I hadn’t never trusted anyone. Mason turned to face me while driving to ask, “Max, how you doing?”

I answered, “Who’s this Chief? Are we meeting him there?”

There was laughter from Joe and Mason. Mason explained, “Peyote grows in clusters. There’s always one from which all the others originate. He’s the Chief.”

“Then the Chief’s a peyote button.”

Marcos corrected me gently, “Buttons are something you put on a shirt. To be respectful of their power, we call their spirit, medicine.”

It was the middle of the night by the time the jeep pulled off the highway and came to a stop in the desert where Marcos busied himself with gathering a stick here or there of deadwood. We rolled out our bags around the small fire. I worried about rattlesnakes, tarantulas and scorpions. Marcos seemed to have read my mind: “You have nothing to fear. We thanked Grandfather for protection already.”

I kept my boots inside my bag anyway. I didn’t want to stick my feet into a scorpion stinger in the morning. We picked up where we left off on the Interstate and then south to the Mexican border as the sun rose in the east. We were in Peyote Country and Marcos knew exactly where we would turn off the highway down a dirt road and head out on foot with burlap bags folded up under our arms. We walked through the dust and sandy landscape. The rocks and creosote bushes vibrated with molecules in the air around them. Everything was resonating harmony.

About a quarter-mile from where we parked the jeep, Marcos stopped. Mason and Joe froze in synch with Marcos but I still took a few more steps. Marcos spoke quietly, “See Max, Grand Father led us here and his spirit is in the Rattler.” He pointed about ten feet in front of his silver-toed boot with a stick he’d been carrying.

A huge, eight-inch thick, rattlesnake was coiled up and his tail rattled a warning. I realized that the place in which the snake was coiled was a clump of cacti of an olive-green color with a grayish fuzz. “There’s the Chief.” Marcos said barely above a whisper. They waited. I was in no hurry to challenge the rattler for the medicine and Marcos had no intention of disturbing the rattler any further. Eventually the rattler moved off as Marcos prayed: “Thank you Grandfather for leading us to the Chief and thank you for this blessing.”

The rattlesnake watched from aside, sunning on a rock, as the bags were filled with his medicine. Three bags were for the various pueblos around Taos and one bag was for the Risingstar commune. Each bag had a different Chief kept separate from the rest. But the second biggest Chief was going to the Taos Pueblo. Now the trick was to get the bags back to the jeep and then back to Taos.

The riskiest part of the trip was from where we were in the desert to the route that joins the highway from Laredo to San Antonio. It was there that we had to cross empty desert watched by the Border Patrol and the Texas Rangers. None of these law enforcement agencies had any respect for the 1^st Amendment Rights of Native Americans at the time even though the Native American Church was guaranteed those rights whenever taken to court on the matter. What would happen if we were stopped would most likely turn into a confiscation of the “contraband” and we could, all four, end up in jail for an undetermined length of time, awaiting a decision from a judge who would have read, and understood, the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The plan was make it to the well-travelled I-10. From there we would be okay if we stayed within the speed limit and drove sanely. On the way, however, we found ourselves surrounded by several vehicles with Texas Ranger and Border Patrol markings.

Out of nowhere they appeared! I was sure I’d spend the rest of my life in a Texas jail or Federal Prison. Marcos, Joe and Mason seemed to be unmoved by any of the shouting and commands coming from behind pulled guns of the various agencies. “Show your hands and come out with them clasped behind your heads!” called out a voice from a bullhorn.

We complied as we, one by one, came out of the jeep spread-eagle, face-down on the desert dust and sand as the officers talked back and forth in low murmurs for what seemed an eternity. The three burlap bags of peyote were in plain sight as Marcos looked at me saying, “Don’t worry… remember? They belong to our Grandfather.”

Since Marcos was driving, he was asked if the vehicle was registered to him. He answered no but Mason butted in, “It’s in my name.”

“Do you have a valid driver’s license?”

Mason answered, “Yes.”

“How about you?” the Ranger asked Marcos.

“Yes.”

“What are you doing out here?” The Border patrol officer asked Marcos.

Several minutes passed and, so far, they hadn’t looked in the jeep, nor had they asked to be shown Mason’s license or registration of the vehicle. Marcos answered, “I am showing my friends my Grandfather’s house.”

I couldn’t figure what it was that saved the day but, as suddenly as we had been surrounded, the officers got back in their vehicles and tore off into the desert.

“See what I mean, we have Grandfather’s protection,” Marcos grinned for the first time the whole trip. “This has happened before.”

When we got back to Risingstar, I was on another plane of existence. I wasn’t sure what I believed but I was sure that something was happening on that high altar of the earth called Taos. Something was happening and, it seemed that the more I tried to define it, the more elusive it was. There was a hand in all of this for sure. I couldn’t wait to tell Stan and the girls about it. I rushed to the Dome full of excitement and bubbling with enthusiasm. The peyote hadn’t worn off yet and everything was still vibrating when I related the whole story of the peyote Chief, the rattlesnake, Grandfather, the Border Patrol, and the Texas Rangers. Stan was looking at me like I was nuts. I caught myself babbling on and wondered too if I hadn’t completely flipped.

Chapter 11. Sunflower & The Georgia Peaches

Ghost moved on after about two weeks, leaving Stan without the bread truck for a flop. The seemingly tiny space in the A-frame was just big enough to house two people comfortably, with about a foot in between when we were in our bags. So, I offered him a spot.

I had acquired a small library consisting of a Bible, biographies of W.C. Fields and Nicola Tesla (who was completely unknown then), and a copy of the Aquarian Gospel of Saint Thomas. Stan didn’t seem to have a need for reading but sat by the fire outside on those cold nights as I curled up with a book inside.

One such night, Stan came in from the cold as I was reading, “What’cha readin’; the Bible?”

“The Gospel of John,”

Stan crawled into his bag. “I’m fuckin’ bored…” he clasped his hands behind his head, “I ain’t religious or nothin’ but can you read what you’re readin’ to me?”

“Sure, boss, don’t mind at all.”

“I like hearin’ stuff but I can’t read.”

“Did you ever want to?” I had known a few people who couldn’t read but knew that it was extremely rare to have any of them admit it. Most sort of got by through school, and even the military, by faking it or memorizing whole passages … God knows how.

“Yah, I wanted to, but by the time I wanted to, I’d dropped out of school to run the streets.”

“Okay, so I’ll start from the start:” I read, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made…”

“Why didn’t it just say; in the beginning God made everything?” Stan wasn’t being a wise ass. Stan had little tolerance for making the simple complex and he had a good instinct for making the complex simple.

Stan listened to me read for several nights. He enjoyed the biography of W.C. Fields the most. But when we talked Stan talked mostly about women. “These girls,” he said with his usual candor, “most of ‘em don’t wear no underwear… no panties… You notice that”

“Yah sure,” I couldn’t deny I’d paid attention to one of them who always sat open-legged on a chair or on the ground.

“You see her, Joe’s ole lady, Kate?” Stan continued, “You think she’s a tease or does she even know that she was pointing her pussy straight at me while we were eating the other day.”

“Uh-huh…”

“Well, she got red pubes and she ain’t shy about flashin’ ‘em.”

“Yah, but she’s Joes ole lady and I wouldn’t want to tangle with him over her.” I cautioned.

“Why, he’s so bad?” Stan sounded disappointed. They were drinking Red Mountain they acquired on the trip into town and it was drawing the street punk out of Stan.

“Let me tell you about what happened a week before you guys got here. We all were hanging out by the fire and the girls decided they wanted to go down to Arroyo Hondo and dance to some juke box music.”

“So, Sam and his ole lady Sandra, Joe and Kate, and a few others all piled into that ’49 International flat-bed and went down to the bar and grill down the hill.” After a pause to make sure Ralph was paying attention, I continued, “We all got inside and there were about a dozen rednecks hanging out at the bar. Now Sam, being six-foot-seven and black with an afro and white woman stood out enough, but Sandra, being a big beautiful blonde, made them the object of some muttering from the boys in the booths.”

“Oh, I see …”

“Yah, then there was Joe; a pure blood, reservation Papago… dancing with Kate and the rest of us were dancing too, when the remarks started getting louder… something was said about Injuns and white girls who fuck Injuns… Well, Joe stopped dancing right there and took one of the cowboy’s beers and poured it out on the table right there! He said something about how white boys can’t handle firewater and oughta go home… back to Europe, where they came from. Meanwhile Samuel sort of ushered us all out back to the truck as Joe backed out the door facing the cowboys… must have been four or five that had gotten up…, I could hear Samuel saying, ‘We don’t want no trouble… we’re just going to walk out to our truck and we’ll be gone… as we got out the door everyone piled onto the flatbed of the truck except Joe… he was backing out slowly with the cowboys right after him. Joe made a break for the truck and grabbed a tire iron from it. Those cowboys were right on his ass. He spun around with that tire iron, jet-black braids swinging left to right… right to left and whacked the lead cowboy smack across the face!”

“Shit, then what happened?”

“He shouted out to Sam to get the truck out of there and he let out a war-whoop going after those cowboys like he was Crazy-fuckin’-Horse. It was amazing! Then Sam turned the truck around and drove straight for the crowd while Joe grabbed a side rail on the flat-bed and leapt into the back like it was his horse in a Cowboy and Indian movie… we hauled ass out of there but, thankfully, no one followed.”

“I see what you mean now.” Stan admitted as we headed for a special meeting at the kiva.

Down at the Kiva the group had gotten together to introduce the new folks to meditation. We all, even the winos from the parking lot, went down to see what it was all about. I was slightly buzzed from the wine, and so was Stan, as we sat there with the group watching and listening to Samuel.

Sitting in the lotus position, he spoke, “When we greet each other we ask, ‘How ya’ doin’?’ We hardly give it a thought and answer automatically; ‘Fine, I’m doin’ just fine.’ If the truth were known we might not be doin’ so well at all. In fact, things might be fucked up worse than ever… but we say ‘fine’. We can’t be authentic with other people because we aren’t authentic with ourselves. Meditation isn’t about navel-gazing as much as it is about uncovering the layers of the onion through the unconscious by means of chanting or focusing on our bodies through our breath.”

It went like that as Samuel taught about the word, “OM”, and how to say it correctly without trying to sound pretty or melodic; but rather to let it out from the belly…. aaaaahhhhh, OM… and then he went into a bit on chanting. He brought up the Nichiren Buddhist chant of “Nam-Yoho Renge Kyo” that I had been introduced to in Hollywood. Samuel was a good teacher and I absorbed most of what he to say… especially since I had sobered up a bit. Surprisingly, Stan was soaking it up too.

When we got back to the A-frame, Stan brought up the subject of women again. “You know, there ain’t any available girls around here.”

“Yah?” I wondered where this conversation was going but I knew Stan well enough to know that he was earnest.

“What if we chanted for pussy? Eh?” Stan was grinning, “Let’s see if this crap is bullshit or not.”

I wondered, saying, “Hmmm… How would we do that? Say we just chanted the word, Pussy?”

“That sounds good to me… Pussy!”

We were both laying there flat on our backs with our hands clasped behind our heads… I said “Pussy!” and then Stan said, “Pussy.” I answered with “Pussy.” And we went on like that for a good fifteen minutes… in unison and back and forth: “Pussy… Om, pussy… Om, pussy… Om, pussy… Om, pussy… Om, pussy… Om, pussy… Om, pussy… aaah… Om!”

“Do you think it worked?” Stan asked.

“Do you see any pussy here… now?” I answered.

Stan was puzzled, “Maybe we didn’t chant long or hard enough.”

Such faith; Stan had expected two women to show up there out of the night after fifteen minutes of chanting.

We went to sleep.

The next morning, we awoke to the usual breakfast of oatmeal with raisons. A new red and white VW van was in the parking lot. After breakfast, we went over to the Pueblo where there was music coming from one of the rooms with the door open and several people inside.

I walked in the door to see a gorgeous brown-eyed, jet-black-frizzy-haired, dark-skin, girl playing a twelve-string accompanied by a long-straight-haired redhead playing a mandolin. I locked eyes on the dark, frizzy-headed, one and she stopped playing to ask me, “Do you know where we can get a bath around here? We’ve been driving all night to get to this place.”

“Yah, sure,” Stan jumped on it like a lightning bolt… and looking at me, exclaimed, “Chanting does work.”

“There is a pond a bit from here, but it is cold… still got ice on most of it,” I ventured. One of the peculiarities with the high desert was that it might be freezing with snow on the ground in the shade but, in the sun, if protected from the wind, you could sunbathe.

“Let’s go then,” Frizzy introduced herself, “I’m Sunflower and this is my friend, Debby.”

I was a bit dazed as I led the group down to the pond. Once there the girls immediately put out a couple of blankets they’d hauled with them and stripped down. Stan followed suite and I slipped out of my denims too. I was in awe of being in the presence of such beauty. The sunlight played with reflections of water glimmering off goose-bumped flesh as wondrous and anything else in nature’s display. I quickly headed for the water and dove in while the others tested the water one toe at a time. The icy-cold of it was a shock but I was not one to prolong agony. Swimming vigorously back to the bank, Sunflower dove over my head and into the icy water. Coming up from the dive screaming gleefully shocked she grabbed me from behind as Stan and Debby dove in behind her. I felt her perky, chilled, nipples press in against my back as I fell back into the pond. There was no escaping the thrill and the chill of it.

Yes, there was sex. There was talk of this and that. I had not been so fulfilled since the Pillow Shack with Mary. I wasn’t about to allow the moment to go unappreciated. Making love in the sun out under the New Mexico sky was more than sex for me. It was a holy moment in time, forever sacred in the open delight of sense for the sweet quality of it. This, I thought, is what making love ought to be… for I was making love… despite the casual nature of it. I was in, on, and above love, as the passion mounted and subsided.

Sunflower hung out with me and the rest of the folks there in the Pueblo for a while. I began feeling like I wanted to cut her away from the herd to keep her for myself. She played the twelve-string guitar in the small room where we’d first met, sweetly strumming and falling into a rhythmic flow of words and images unlike anything I’d ever heard before. As I watched I pictured the bucolic life of the two of us standing barefoot in corn fields and making babies together. Back in the A-frame we made love into the night.

I realized years afterwards that these two girls had come to get laid with no strings attached. They weren’t looking for anything else... no commitment beyond the ole Yam-ah-Yum.

“How long do you plan on staying here?” I asked, thinking of corn fields, bare feet and babies.

“We are heading out first thing tomorrow.” She nuzzled her nose into my neck by the shoulder.

My mind raced… my Gawd! Thinking of the scene in Easy Rider where Fonda said he had to be moving on… the commentary in my head said her choice was too much like Fonda’s character, Captain America’s, last chance to be human and settle down before going off to New Orleans to meet his fate. “Do you know there are alternative universes where you stay here with me?”

“I would like that… I really would, but I have a boutique on Sunset that needs my attention.” She turned serious.

“But…”

“No… don’t argue.” She rolled on top of me, “This is a special moment. Perhaps in the alternative universe you speak of, we are already in it and doing it… hmmm… but I need to do what I am doing, Max.”

I understood and I certainly knew better than to argue while bodily engaged.

The warmth of the little hearth filled the A-frame as we lay there afterwards. She explained further, “When I saw you first walk in the door of that room in the Pueblo, your spirit occupied the whole room. I had to make love to you… I just had to. But I can see now that you are trying to make your spirit smaller to accommodate me…”

Sunflower left the next day leaving Debby and Debby’s sister, Leah. I hadn’t noticed that Debby had a sister with her. Leah had spent the day before visiting an old friend at the geodesic dome next to the road on the way up. There was no chance I would have seen her, even had I not been so busy with Sunflower. I went back to the A-frame and the goats while Stan moved in the geodesic dome with Debby and Leah. The man-friend Leah had been visiting at the dome left for L.A. with Sunflower, so Stan had the whole dome and the two sisters to himself.

Chapter 10. The Goat Pasture

The mesa was divided, east of the pueblo, by a barbed wire fence beyond which was a pasture for a herd of goats. A hundred feet in from the gate of the fenced area was a small A-frame, not much bigger than a pup-tent. I asked around to find out who lived there and it was presently vacant. There were a few temporary structures from the previous year around the property. They were lived in until the more permanent pueblo or hogans were built (the burlap/concrete wickiup I mentioned was one such place).

I liked the idea of living among the goats and moved into the A-frame after sharing the wickiup with a half-dozen other young men for a week or two. The A-frame was comfortable; having a hinged door and at the other end, a small adobe hearth (about one square foot in size) with a tin chimney jutting out of the tin roof. A couple sticks was enough fuel to warm it up keep and had elbow room enough for two people. Though it’s height wasn’t enough for standing, I could crouch and sit with ease. Outside, in front, was a larger fire-pit with iron tripod for hanging a pot and a grill for a cast-iron frying pan. It was almost a full kitchen for me: good for oatmeal, beans, rice and frying-up anything else… occasionally eggs and tortillas.

My first night sleeping in the A-frame was one of tremendous relief. At last I had a place of my own. I sat by the open fire pit after sunset under the stars and, as the coals burned down, I retired inside the A-frame taking some of the live coals to start a fire in the hearth. I wrote in my journal: First night… at home, high above the plain and deep inside my castle, I will sleep well tonight. I snuffed the flame in the kerosene lamp and drifted off to sleep.

I awoke just before sunrise to the sound of hooves on the roof. I came out of the A-frame to see what was on the roof. Charley, the alpha goat, greeted me with a, “Eah-eh-eh-a-a-ah!” It was the beginning of a testy but sweet relationship. Charley made sure that I knew exactly who was in-charge of things in his pasture by sneaking up and gently butting me from behind as I walked from the A-frame to the gate. The trick was not to react in any manner. If I was to make a break and run for it, I would have been run down and I can say from experience, run down rather violently. To stand my ground and push back was an even bigger mistake because goats love to push back. It wasn’t enough to push back a little and try to walk away. Once the pushback had been initiated you were committed until something like a Huey med-evac-ed your dumbass.

I was pleased with my digs and enjoyed the solitude of living in the goat pasture. There was something that felt biblical about it. After a couple weeks, I had been sitting by my fire pit and enjoying a pot of rice and beans. Across the mesa a dark cloud approached at eye level. It looked apocalyptic as it neared. The sky was clear otherwise but soon the black bottom of a thunderhead took up the whole sky. It was ominous enough that I was struck with fear for a moment and, as a bolt of lightning burst from the belly of the cloud fifty feet from where I was sitting, I felt naked and exposed. It exploded with such force I found myself flat on the ground. The storm wasn’t done with me yet; with bolts of lightning thundering, booming a barrage, a cannonade, lightning and hail stones striking and drumming the earth all around my naked spot on the mesa. Awe replaced fear as I surrendered to the fact that there was absolutely nothing I could do… there was nowhere to run or hide. My little A-frame was the most prominent thing to cower in on the entire mesa. I saw the goats huddled, huddled down together under the piñón trees for protection from the hail stones and rain. Charlie bravely stood his ground and watched over his girls and kids. Even goats heed the call of leadership and its attendant responsibilities in the face of horror. Charlie had earned his stripes as Alpha Goat on this and countless other occasions. I cowered in the A-frame.

The storm passed almost as fast as it arrived. I crawled out from the cover of the A-frame; the odor of argon-electricity and fresh rainfall had wakened my senses. I didn’t know it at the time but the tin roof made a perfect Faraday cage that would’ve protected me.

About that time an old bread-truck rumbled up into the parking lot between the goat pasture and the pueblo. I walked over to check out the new arrivals. The winos at the parking lot fire pit had headed for shelter when the storm dumped its load so I was there before they returned to pan-handle a jug from the newcomers. The driver, a middle-aged man in a fringed jacket, jumped out as soon as the bread-truck stopped.

I offered a greeting, “Hello…”

The guy ignored me as he pulled out his prick and took a leak on the rear tire of the truck. A young man with curly jet-black hair and black leather motorcycle jacket came out the other side “I’m Stan and that’s Ghost. He don’t talk much… you want some bread n’ peanut butter?”

Ghost went back into the truck and brought out the loaf of white bread and, with a good-sized skinning knife, popped the lid off a jumbo government surplus can of peanut butter. Using the same knife, he slathered the thick oily goo onto a couple slices while I watched as I would when anyone pulls out a knife that size.  

“I see…” I took the bread without thinking about it when he passed one he’d prepared for me. I felt obligated to repay the gesture. I pointed towards the pasture, saying, “I got some rice and beans over in that A-frame.”

Stan was enthusiastic about my offer, he finished off his slice, half-complaining, “Great, this shit’s good but it gets old. We gots a couple mess kits I kin bring.”

We walked to the A-frame. Ghost hesitated at the fence eying Charlie, who was taking notice at the strangers entering his domain.

“Avoid eye contact and you’ll be okay.” I assured him, “Where are you all coming from?” I asked, more to make friendly noises than out of curiosity.

“Detroit, we drove straight through. We were on the way to L.A. but a hitch-hiker in Kansas told us about Taos and free land… or at least a place to crash for a week or two.”

“Hey, I heard that rumor in L.A. That’s how I got here. I wonder where these stories get started?”

Several minutes went by as we noshed on bread and beans before Ghost spoke, “There was an article in Newsweek.”

“Oh?” I hadn’t opened a newspaper or magazine since Altamont.

“Yah,” Stan offered, “It said there were communes and homestead land in Northern New Mexico and hippie chicks and shit from all over are leaving the cities and getting back to nature here.”

The courtyard between the wings of the pueblo had a table where a common meal was served. Everyone pooled whatever they had. It was a chance to get together, make plans and whatever. The organizing that got done got done there. Not everyone participated in the common meal as it was characteristically an open-ended affair. However, it was an opportunity to feel a part of, and contribute to, the group.

“Let’s take what’s left here to the pueblo, I’ll introduce you to the people.”

We enjoyed a brown rice concoction with some chicken pieces stir-fried into it. Alongside of that was a tortilla type bread called chipâté made of several whole grains. When I first got there, I heard folks talk of macro-biotic diet but had no idea what that meant except for lots of brown rice, whole grains, beans and, for the non-vegetarians, some meat like chicken... rarely beef. If anything was sweetened, raw sugar or honey was preferred. If salted, iodized table-salt was taboo, sea-salt was the regimen.

Ghost was quiet but for an occasional grunt or observation of no more than two or three words and Stan did the most of the talking for him. It seemed not to matter to anyone. People were welcoming. Besides the landscape, the thunder and lightning, the mountains and streams, I enjoyed these moments of comradeship the most. Even though Ghost was near mute, people had no trouble warming up to him and he to them.

Most of the people had food-stamps. The irony of that back-to-the-land policy became evident to me when Ghost took some of us into Taos in his bread truck and we applied for food-stamps. Thus, thanks to the so called “establishment”, food wasn’t as much a problem as water.

Every household had a couple of heavy glass five-gallon water bottles or cans that got filled whenever anyone with a vehicle went into town. At Arroyo Hondo the cans were filled with tap-water from the gas station. Otherwise, one had to hike; with a five-gallon plastic can, that fit neatly into most standard back packs, over the mesa a half-mile to a small creek that emptied into a pond. A pond had been made by bull-dozer that dammed up the creek before winter set in.

During my stay, the creek water posed no problem but, as the weather warmed up in late spring, dysentery became a real problem. A well was in the plan to be drilled as soon as the group got enough cash to pay for it. But there was no progress on the well in the time I was there. We settled then for filling up our cans with tap-water down in town.

Ghost took some of us into town once again to get provisions and water. Several folks piled into the van and we made for a happy group. Passing the Foster Freeze, some yakked about how organic food rendered greasy hamburgers a disgusting food choice. At the Organic Food Co-op I was introduced to all kinds of foods I hadn’t heard of. My favorite was Halvah bars made from honey and tahini. It was there that I discovered tahini, blue corn-meal and several varieties of wild honey. For those of us awaiting approval for food stamps, the Co-op was generous with a line of credit that almost everyone I knew abused.

Being winter, coupled with the high altitude, there was very little need for refrigeration, so we also bought huge five and ten-pound logs of sharp cheddar cheese. On the way back, by consensus, it was decided that the van pull over at the Foster Freeze. No one turned down the offer of a greasy hamburger and milk shake as a reward for our dietary diligence… especially those who maligned bourgeois values and food only a few hours before. All, except for Ghost, Stanley and I, expressed certain guilt for their weakness and betrayal of culinary values.

Stanley said to me, as we finished off some salty fries and ketsup, “Them’s Booshy-washy guilt trips.”

Chapter 9. Rising Star East (pt. 2)

Wheeler Peak sat to the East

as a mystical force

powerful enough to

entice me to stay.

The pueblo consisted of three wings in a triangle open at two ends with about three to five small rooms in each wing. It sat at the end of the mesa pointing westwards past the kiva over Arroyo Hondo and far beyond the Rio Grande across a broad landscape to the distant range of Petaca Peak. Piñón pines and prickly-pear cacti along the edges of the mesa accented the mostly cleared grassy plain to the east extending miles toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains crowned by Wheeler Peak against a wild sky of swirling clouds.

Risingstar was on one of three or four mesas; about 800 acres stretched out like fingers from the mountains. Two communes shared the mesas; the other was called The Cosmic Construction Company. The owner of the property, Michael Dragon, had a house on a field at of the northernmost finger above the Rio Honda. Mason, or the others in the commune, told me a little about Mr. Dragon and, from what I’d heard… picked up from here or there, the guy inherited some cash and used it to purchase the land and open it up to experimental communities.

Rising Star was begun in California by folks around a folk singer character named Lenny Goldberg. He’d owned a ranch he called Mahayana Ranch and, under the threat of eviction from Sonoma County, he ceded the ownership’s deed to the property to God.  The small tribe living there created a community of an array of sheds and shacks throughout the ravines and hills. They called themselves the Risingstar Commune. When the authorities forced them to leave, many of the people there picked up to try again in New Mexico. They settled on the mesa, naming themselves, Rising Star East.

I was curious about who it was that was “the leader” in New Mexico. It didn’t seem possible that there was no single leader of authority amongst the group.

“So, how does all this get organized?” I asked Mason.

He laughed, “You’ll see.” Then after a long pause he offered, “Most of our decisions affecting the whole are made by the group.”

I sensed that this was bullshit. I knew, from experience, that there is always somebody that comes up with a plan and then organizes people around that plan; that the chaos I’d witnessed at Altamont happened because there was no plan or leadership. The Hell’s Angels had a plan and leadership. A handful of them cowed three-hundred-thousand disorganized and dazed hippies.

“There are no Charlie Mansons calling the shots here, if that’s what you mean,” he explained, “we only have one rule and that rule is love.”

“So, no one gets ‘vibed”’ on or off the mesa… like Zardoz?” I worried about the way the most egalitarian societies exert power and control. I could live with it if there was such a structure but wondered how it would work if there wasn’t.

Mason grinned, “You are either ‘On the Bus or Off the Bus’, you stay or leave of your own volition.” Then Mason paused a moment and added as an aside, “Look, the guys at the parking lot contribute nothing and bum enough for a jug of wine whenever a vehicle arrives. They won’t be told to leave either. They’ll get bored and move on. You don’t look like a wino. You’ll be okay here.”

I was familiar with the Ken Kesey bus ride across America but I had misgivings nonetheless about how far one could go with this philosophy for any real results.

Mason pointed out, as sternly as Mason ever got, “Cosmic Construction Company … on that mesa,” waving his hand north… “They have an elected council. They’re trying it that way and we’re trying it this way.”

I took my time getting acquainted with the other members from the pueblo and explored the mesa finding several other living accommodations around the fringes of the property the first few weeks. There were a couple classic hogans: houses dug into the earth with few feet of adobe above ground to add height, and a wickiup: a native arrangement of saplings arched in a circle and covered with either thatched grasses or deer hides. One such wickiup was formed of saplings and covered with burlap soaked in concrete. It had a fire pit in the middle and the smoke from the fire went out through a hole at the top.

As on the streets, there were mostly young men on the fringes of the commune staying in the kiva or other temporary shelters put up before the Pueblo. Most of the women were already hooked up and I found it somewhat ironic that, even in this so-called egalitarian society, the men with the best nest seemed to draw the most attractive women. Of course, this didn’t bother me. In fact, it was refreshing to me that biological imperatives still functioned here as well as everywhere else. Men build the nest; the women decorate it, make babies and, from what would be potentially just a flop, turn it into a home. Despite of all the feminist rhetoric of the late sixties and early seventies, this is how it seemed to come down. I realized that I had to make a home for myself or go without female companionship.

Mason didn’t live anywhere near any of it yet he seemed to be one of the leaders, if you could call anyone that. I was later to find that Mason, and a wild looking woman that called herself Trina, lived in a cabin on an island in the middle of the Rio Honda a half-mile, as the crow flies, from the mesa.

Chapter 9. Rising Star East (pt.1)

It was evening by the time the road veered away from the Rio Grande and crossed the chaparral plane to Taos. Maggie drove through town to an adobe house near the highway where her friend, Magic Maya, lived. Magic Maya was nowhere around but the house was full of musicians that night playing twelve string guitars, violins, dulcimers, mandarins and an assortment of flutes and reeds in a circle on benches and chairs around a large hearth. The party had been going on for more than a day and Maggie knew most of them. We were welcome guests.

Maggie explained, “Maya does this often enough and leaves when she needs some space.”

I felt a soft joy from the sweet sounds coming from around the hearth, “It seems right to me, I like the freedom here.”

She smiled, “You will love it here Max.”

There was talk of how the communes in the area were faring after enduring their first winter in the high country around Taos. Some communes seemed to be thriving while others tended to be nothing more than crash pads for dopers. Some were quite exotic. There was one house in Taos where everyone called themselves Lords and Ladies. Every fantasy was lived out in this place.

The Hog Farm and Risingstar were the most open to newcomers. The Lama Buddhist Foundation in San Cristobel was even more interesting to me but I was told that there was no tolerance for drugs, even mind-expanding ones such as LSD or Peyote. I figured I’d be better off at the Hog Farm or Risingstar. It was a choice that seemed right. This would be another time I’d often wondered afterwards which way my life might have gone had I chosen Lama over Risingstar.

We crashed there at the house. Bottles of Red Mountain wine laced with acid, and bowls of pot, were passed around. The accompaniment of acoustic guitars and homemade flutes played wordless rhythms to the vibe of the night. It was sweet and exotic to me to lay there and listen, getting a good night’s sleep, before embarking on my adventure the next day.

That morning Maggie drove up the hill to the mesa from Arroyo Hondo, about eleven miles north of Taos. Where we were going was accessed by a one lane winding washboard and gravel road. An even narrower recently cut dirt road branched off past a geodesic dome and snaked up through a couple switchbacks towards the top. A makeshift parking lot was graded out at the end of the road where all trucks and autos were parked. No motor vehicles were allowed past that point. At the end of the mesa, a hundred feet from there, I could see a small complex of newly constructed adobes in a triangle formed around a small courtyard. The top of a teepee peeked out of a ravine beyond the mesa. Apparently, these people had been busy before winter set in.

A group of half a dozen men sat at a fire pit by the parking lot smoking pot and drinking wine. I didn’t expect to see winos up there and thought it odd they were drinking wine that early in the morning. I was further put off by a scraggly, red-bearded, hippy in a buckskin fringed jacket, and a partially concealed a Bowie knife on his belt. He approached Maggie for spare change and Norm told him to fuck off. I was pleasantly surprised when Bowie so readily obliged. Norm was a half-head shorter than this character but his boldness got him through where superior size and a huge knife didn’t count for much.

Norm was standing with his arm around Maggie’s waist so I asked, “Norm, you ain’t unpacking?”

I knew before Norm spoke that he was going with Maggie, “I’m not staying here, were goin’ to Questa.”

“Great, I kinda thought so,” I grinned. My happiness was authentic for this Spring and Autumn coupling. “Take care of him Maggie, he’s taken good care of me.”

“I will, Max,” Maggie’s piercing blue eyes locked onto mine, “I hope you find what you’re lookin’ for.”

We gave each other a warm parting and Norm and Maggie drove away.

The characters around the fire pit told me that I could stow my stuff in the Kiva just past the adobe. A kiva is a circular building where native ceremonial rite are performed in the Pueblo culture of the region. I climbed down a pole in the center of the roof, with notches hewed into it for rungs. I adjusted my eyes to the dark. A kerosene lamp lit the interior but it still took a moment to adapt my eyes to the darkness. The forms of a handful of people in the dark began taking shape. I sat and opened my pack for a bag of Bugler and rolled one for myself, offering the pouch of tobacco to one of the forms. I didn’t speak but waited for someone to start off the conversation. A fifty-gallon drum situated on the opposite side of the center circle from the ladder pole had a stove pipe joined to it providing more than adequate heat for a large space.

A shadow spoke from behind the stove, “What do you call yourself?”

I peered into the dark and made out a kind face of a blond, braided-haired man, with a beard braided likewise. Woven into the beard braids were turquoise beads. I hadn’t considered it but I figured I could call myself anything I wanted; however, I stuck to my name, “Max.”

“I’m Mason. Pick a spot and roll out your bag.”

Mason did most of the talking. I wanted to know more about the place. I asked about the pueblo and Mason told me about how the local Taos Pueblo Indians came up and taught the basics of making adobe and that our people put it up last summer. “I’ll show you the forms and where we made the mud bricks when you’re ready.”

“Who designed the kiva?” I was curious about the roof.

“It is mostly a traditional Hogan style built into the ground. Are you interested in building?”

I was looking up at the ceiling. Ten-inch diameter logs that tapered only slightly towards the center with notches cut out to lock each one crossing over the other. “Yah, I want to know about that roof. Is that a traditional roof?”

“Naw, the way those logs are positioned was Brian’s idea. I mean, we were all sittin’ around trying to figure out how to make a roof for this place. Brian took some six-inch nails and laid ‘em out the way you see those logs. He set them up and challenged anyone to put enough weight on ‘em to collapse them.”

“So that ladder doesn’t support the roof?” I liked this Mason guy and I suspected that he was probably the brain in the outfit. I couldn’t wait to meet this Brian character.

“You’ve got a good eye, Max.”