TRIP to Coopers Rock

I suppose it all started in mid-April. We on spring break and, as was usually the case, I was at home working on some gay project for and engineering class.
I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but somehow I found myself surfing the net and ending up on a shroom message board. Before I knew it, I had ‘arranged’ a transaction with some dude for 3 syringes of spores. My friends thought I was crazy. In fact my good friend Scott said, and I quote, “man, what kind of crack are you on?”
Then Scott, Jared, and I thought about the idea of growing shrooms since, they are always somewhat of an enigma at school.
You know, the kind of thing where one dude is like, “yea, I can get you some shrooms.” Then when you get ahold of him, he’s all about, “sorry, I JUST sold my LAST bag man.” BULLSHIT!!!

I week or so went by, and sure enough, my package arrived in the mail. I wanted to get started right away, but by this time finals week was quickly approaching and the ‘project’ took a back seat to studying, drinking, and getting stoned. For a long time, I wondered if I would ever get around to doing it or if I had simply wasted my money on 3 syringes that I thought had spores in them.
Then, one night early in the summer, I decided to see just how green, or should I say tie-dyed, my thumb really was.
I set up two jars of inoculated substrate initially and I was in disbelief as the white, fluffy network began to appear after only a few days.

My friend Scott then helped my set up 4 additional jars. This was towards the end of May. As May turned to June and July covered June, I had shrooms, actual real shrooms, growing in my closet.

This past Friday, Scott said, “hey man come up to Morgantown this weekend and we’ll hit the bars and on Saturday we can go hiking all day.”
It sounded good to me, and just before I hit the door, a devious little thought crossed my mind. Friday (7-7-00) had been an unbelievably beautiful summer day in the Mountain State.
I was in Charleston (location of my summer internship) and the day was absolutely amazing: about 80°F, breeze blowing, blue skies, just one of those days when there is a contagiously soothing and peaceful feeling of excitement in the air that, in itself, defines summer. Anyway, I grabbed the shrooms I had been drying and picked any that looked ready and edible and headed for Motown. Friday night was a classic night at the bar with many, many good friends and a run in with the disgruntled Morgantown police dept, as Jared and I were nearly arrested for urinating by a dumpster outside of Bent Willies at 3 in the morning.
We talked that night about our plans for the next day. The 6 of us (me, Jared, Scott, $Bill, Lewis, and $Bill’s friend JC) were heading to Cooper’s Rock the next day.

We woke up around noon and finally left for Cooper’s at 2pm. Lewis, $Bill, and JC went in $Bill’s car and Jared, Scott, and I went in another.
At this point I should mention that $Bill and Lewis do not smoke, let alone eat shrooms. JC is a different story, but we had no idea he was coming in. Anyway, of course the car that had the 2 non-stoners in it beat us to the park.
However, there was another reason they beat us there. About a mile from the parking site, Scott, Jared, and I pulled down the Henry Clay Iron Furnace road (if you’ve never been to Cooper’s Rock this name means nothing).
Next thing you know there we are dividing up a 20-gram bag of partially dried, homegrown shrooms on the back of a car alongside the road to the Iron Furnace.
It was absolutely immaculate outside. Even more beautiful than the day before.

Scott and I chucked the shrooms in our mouths and washed them down with some Mountain Dew and I must say the taste left a little something to be desired. In fact Jared couldn’t stomach it and decided to swallow them whole.
We quickly jumped in the car and headed to meet the others about a mile down the road. They had gotten tired of waiting and had left without us. We were heading out to Raven’s Rock, about a 20-minute hike, so it was no big deal, we would just meet them out there.

The hike to Raven’s Rock is amazing, only it’s not long enough. There are huge rocks scattered about in an impressively random, yet perfect manner that seems like a scene from a Bob Ross painting. You have to kind of jump from rock to rock and climb a few faces, its just fun. The scenery along the lush path is awesome. Its like a long hallway of wilderness, its cleared of all large trees for the power lines to pass through the mountains.
It’s a long strip of rocky terrain surrounded by a wall of trees and lush vegetation on either side and covered in velvety moss and knee-high underbrush.

Anyway, we start down the path (a path we’ve been down many times) and Scott’s like, “I think I am already feeling this, but it may just be my head messing with me in anticipation.”
I was thinking, “no way it’s only been like 10 or 15 minutes,” but I couldn’t deny that I felt something too.
The path looked so green, but yet even though I know it was green I wasn’t sure.
We came to the last part of the path and up to Raven’s Rock. The view is so majestic there and it’s by far one of my favorite places on this planet. We were standing on a huge, flat rock overlooking the Cheat River, which flows far below. Across the way is another tree-covered hill and you can see the river lazily snake its way between the two hillsides, cutting a small valley all along the way.
There is almost no sign of civilization, only hills as far as the eye can see in all directions, overlapping off in the distance to meet the blue sky and sparse cloud cover. The sun shining down over all. Breath-taking.
We saw the others and we all sat down on the rock. I took off my shoes and looked over at the neighboring Snake Hill. The hillside was breathing, actually pulsing in and out in a most unbelievable way. I was
Fascinated. Everything began to take on a sort of rainbow silhouette as the line reality was smeared from the straight and narrow black-on-white to a curved tie-dyed splatter of beautiful shades and hues of color.
I looked at Scott and Jared, both grinning ear to ear in disbelief, as I was.

Above Scott’s head in the sky was a curved cloud and if I wished, I could turn in into a rainbow and I frequently did.
I looked back at the trees on the other hill and they were growing and swaying all over the place. Then they were melting as moving around, seeming to sprout upward in smooth controlled, pulsing bursts.
They reached further and further up, continuously sliding in a beautiful flowing rhythm, yet staying in the same place.
The sky was breathing, the clouds were shifting. A peaceful feeling came over my mind and soul that I have never felt before in my life.
I know this sounds corny, but I felt spiritually tied to the earth for a few moments, at peace with nature.
I had slipped away from the world of spite, pollution, and crime that we live in and I felt more at one with the surrounding world than I ever have or had.
I looked down at my outstretched legs. Lewis and $Bill were bouncing pebbles over my leg and off the cliff’s edge. When the pebbles bounced and flew through the air they left these beautiful traces through the air, ripples or waves if you will. I could see them pushing though the air sort of like a boat leaves resounding waves in a river. I watched in disbelief and could help myself from saying, “Whoa!…..that looks REALLY cool!” Leave it to me to say something stupid, I seem to have a knack for it Lewis was like, “I’ve been throwing rocks over your leg for 20 minutes..what are you talking about?”
It was close, I kind of forgot that they had no idea we were tripping. They just thought we were stoned.
I covered (somehow) with, “ I don’t know it just looks cool because it blends in then I see it go over the edge.” He looked at me, then let it go.
Not that they would have cared at all, but we figured it was better not to tell them, because we didn’t have enough for JC, who would have loved it. As Cooper’s is littered with numerous rhododendron trees, there were tons of bees buzzing around. Whenever one of these bees flew past me, it left ripples through the air
As well and I could see its flight path quite vividly. It was stunningly accurate, or so it seemed.
Then I looked in the sky, it could have only been about 3:30, but even in the bright blue sky and shining sun, the half moon, parallel to the horizon, was highly visible.
I laid flat on my back and looked straight up. I was like, “look at the moon!” Jared and Scott both said something in the neighborhood of “wow” and we were all looking up, flat on our backs tripping on the edge of Raven’s Rock.
I put my sunglasses on and all of a sudden the blue of the sky was melting to a midnight shade of black as I starred at the moon. Unbelievable, it was mid-afternoon, but I saw stars appearing by that moon. It was beautiful, I was speechless. I could never describe it fully. All of a sudden I saw floating in the sky a small glowing cannabis leaf, at least that was what is was from the corner of my eye.
I then saw it was only an airplane flying overhead, but I don’t remember hearing it. Hearing an airplane didn't seem very important at the time.
The trees were still dancing about, as we moved to another edge of the rock to sit and talk.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the rock on the ground. Normally, this rock is pretty much uniform in color, a few different shades of brownish-gray maybe. Today, however, it was a tremendous platter of deep, rich earth tones. It reminded me, for some reason, of an antique Roman plate or design. The color patterns were making those types of designs. We talked for what seemed forever. Up to this point all I knew was that we got to the rock around 2:30 or 3:00 and the whole thing may have been hours or simply minutes, I had no way of knowing.
We then hiked for hours probably throughout the wood rocky areas of Cooper’s Rock. Later we ended up at the main observation deck, once again lying on our backs and looking over the great rivine. Raven’s Rock could be seen and I was still in awe from what I had experienced there. I looked at the glowing half-moon, which was now perpendicular to its position from before, it had rotated 90°!!! The sun was going down and leaving beautiful splatters of color that melted into each other. The trees swayed, but only enough to notice. It was almost over, and ironically just at the time the sun was sinking. We lay there until it was dark. Just me and some of the best friends I have ever known finishing a day I will never forget. Some day we will tell $Bill and Lewis that we were shrooming all day and tripping all through Cooper’s Rock State Park, but to my knowledge they had (and have) no idea.
One piece of advice--if you're gonna shroom, do it outdoors. Its much better!!!