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3g alone on a backpacking trip

Pure magic, and also stress



So last weekend I went hiking on a 3-day trip by myself.

The first day, I hiked a little over 10 miles. I wasn't actually sure if there would be a campsite where I was hoping there would be one, but it turned out that there was a perfect little campsite in the perfect location. It was at about 4600' elevation and had some great views across some hills, and a stunning view of a large nearby mountain.

I got to the camp at about 4:30 and set up my tent and my hammock and tried to get things organized as well as I could. I started a fire and stuff. I wasn't sure when I wanted to eat my mushrooms... I was afraid that if I ate them too early, some other backpacker(s) might happen upon my site hoping to camp there, and I'd have to share the spot with other backpackers while I was tripping, and that didn't seem like a pleasant idea.

At 5:45 I decided it was the right time to eat them. A little after 6:00, I heard voices approaching... 2 guys were approaching me on the trail. I wasn't tripping or anything yet obviously, but I was thinking "shit, they're going to try to camp here and I'm going to have a terrible trip". Fortunately they just waved at me and walked by. The rest of the evening I didn't see anyone. That was perfect.

Oh, the weather was amazing as well. The whole weekend the high temp was about 80, totally sunny and beautiful.

I got in my hammock and waited for effects to come. As I have noticed before, the time period between 30 minutes and 45 minutes after eating the shrooms seemed to take forever. Slowly I began to get a bigger and bigger grin on my face as I realized that my normal perception of reality was being subdued in favor of the psychedelic reality.

I'm not sure how long I lay in my hammock. Probably about an hour after the trip came on. I used my new camera to take some photos and videos of my surroundings. My mind began to produce music... kind of like when you have a song stuck in your head and you can almost hear it audibly, I was creating some really intricate psychedelic sounding music that I had never heard before, thinking "if only I knew how to actually create these sounds in the real world it would be great music!". My mind began to move faster and faster, able to do a lot of thinking on top of the music production. 

Sooner or later, I thought to myself that I would like to get my boots back on, get out of my sleeping bag/hammock and do some walking around. After much mental deliberation, I finally was able to sit up and get out of my hammock and put on my shoes. I rekindled my dying fire, and checked out my view of the mountain.  The next several hours are kind of blurry in my mind in terms of the order of events, but I can tell you what things I remember. I spent at least a hour in awe of the mountain in the sunset light, and in awe of my campfire's embers. If you've seen the Double Rainbow guy, you'll know the kind of emotion I felt at the beauty of this nature. I couldn't stop my wide-eyed and ear-to-ear grin, moaning and cheering at the setting I was in. I took a few videos where I would point the camera at the mountain, and then run to my campfire and point it at the fire, just capturing the magic for future times. I would shake my head in amazement as I was filming, as if to say "there is no possible way to improve upon this film -- just look at that scene!". It was seriously really magical, totally exciting and thrilling... one of the happiest feelings in my life.

At the positive peak of my trip, I was so ecstatic about my life, about being out in nature for 3 days. I thought that when my trip ended, maybe I would retain the same pure enthusiasm for life and for my surroundings; that I would come home to my wife and she would see me as having a totally different enthusiasm for life.

There were parts of my trip that weren't so good, too. I had set up my hammock pretty close to my campfire, and a spark ended up burning a small hole in it. This distressed me because it's kind of technically my wife's hammock and I didn't want her to be sad about that hole. There were a few times when I got thirsty or cold and wanted to satisfy those needs, but had a hard time remembering where I'd stored the water or my jacket or whatever, and I would stand around stressed out trying to figure it out. Also, when I felt it was time to enter my hammock and look at the stars and go to bed, I decided to put out the fire. I scooped up dirt with my hands and dumped it on the fire, but killing it was a slow and stressful process. I felt like it was an unwanted entity in the end and I couldn't make it go away. I did eventually kill it -- mostly. The damn thing ended up smoking all night and generally blowing right into my face. I had a headache the entire next day, and I'm guessing it's because of that smoke inhalation overnight. In the morning I just poked at that smoking ember to expose it, put a couple sticks on top and they lit right up.

At times during this trip my mind was just absolutely racing. I was thinking about so many different things, so fast. I thought about friends a lot. I deeply regretted not inviting a couple of friends who I have been spending a lot of time with outdoors this year. I thought about my marriage and that was stressful as well. Things could have been more peaceful in my mind overall. It might have been nice to have some music.

Before this trip, I had been afraid that I would be scared out there by myself. Scared of animal attacks, or whatever. Turns out that was never a problem in the slightest; I felt totally safe from animals and nature. So that's pretty cool.

Well that's all I can think of to say... let me know if you have any questions.

-Splendid tater

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