Tripping in Clouds!

To read the whole trip (complete with pictures), check out the full story at...
http://www.geocities.com/~taoofearth/420/mushy/tirnanog.html

We had just under a half ounce of semi-weak mushrooms that we placed in a
blender with frozen 100% juice concentrate and 2 bananas (to add consistency and
hide the shroom chunks). In all, we ended up with about a liter and a half of the
frothy concoction.

The whole day was planned around a journey to the mountains, a 3 hour drive to the far western part of the state to a small waterfall on the side of one particular mountain. I’d never tripped there, but I knew the place was very magical ...
The journey was getting me worried at first because we started passing through
many short but sometimes intense rainstorms, but our spirits were still quite
high.
When we rounded the last corner and parked at the overlook, we were greeted
with the site of a valley laid out before us that was just shrouded in mist, and behind us, a mountain with a trail that lead directly into the very clouds
themselves!
As we packed the many items in preparation for the hike, my friend and I drank
about three-fourths of the now melted but still cold shroom smoothie...My wife was the designated driver for the return trip (since we only had a few hours before we had to head back), so she was also going to serve as our ‘San Demas’, our anchor to reality so to speak.

We left the car right at 4pm, and the hike turned out to be a lot shorter than I
remembered, so we were at the waterfall within 30 minutes, and I could already
feel the beginnings of things happening in my stomach.
It didn’t take long to get ‘home base’ set up and we were soon itching to wander...

By this time, the mushrooms were really kicking in. Everything became more fluid,
including my movements, and it became so easy to see the connectedness of
everything in my view, to the connectedness of everything else in that very same
view. We headed down the mountain just a bit and found a small ridge that marked
our boundaries, because just below it, you could no longer hear the music we had
playing at ‘base’, but you could hear the cars on the road below. Here was the
spot that the natural energies started to get diluted my mans technological magic,
and we knew we didn’t want to go back down into that until that last possible
moment...So we headed back up just as we realized that we were passing through
another cloud (I could just imagine something like Merlin’s castle that used to fly
through the clouds).
Within something like 20 minutes of our arrival, I was back up at ‘base’ and got
rid of my shoes, socks, and hat, and wanted to lose more, but didn’t think it would
be a good idea for some wilderness ranger to find this naked man running around
the woods, so I left the shorts and shirt on.
I always prefer going with just the bare minimum, expecially barefoot when I’m
out in nature shrooming because it’s so much easier to get reconnected to the
Earth. After having several experiences of barefoot/nature trips, there was only
one time I ever got hurt and that was when some girl asked, “How can you be
running around barefoot, aren’t you worried you’ll get hurt?”, and I said, “It’ll
never happen as long as I don’t think about...OUCH!”, and just then, I cut my foot
open on a rock! Needless to say, I still feel a lot more comfortable with them off.

The two of them were having a conversation as I decided to head out on my own
for a bit. As I passed by them, my friend’s voice took on a VERY dream like
quality, and for I moment, reality ebbed away from me as my mind took a few
seconds to check itself and make sure I was still, still in fact, awake, and not
really dreaming the whole thing. That’s when I noticed that they weren’t talking
any more and were staring at me so I explained to them that their conversation had just triggered a dream/memories, and that it was extremely vivid...and then I wandered
off. I found a spot about 30 feet away where I could still hear them talking, but
couldn’t make out what they were saying, and this made the ‘dream like’ feeling
even that more intense, so I just squatted for a bit on this large bolder and
soaked up the scene with my 5 senses. After an undeterminatable ammount of
time, I closed my eyes because I thought that they were hogging up too much
bandwidth on the ‘ole brain soup. Geometric patterns looking like neon and electric
spider webs danced behind my eyelids, reminding me once again of the
connectedness to everything which my friend kept calling ‘the Dance’...the dance
between energy and mind, matter and mind, soul and ego, etc....the dance between
EVERYTHING.

Suddenly I was overwhelmed with this desire to let out a deep yawn, and as I did,
I silently burped up this bubble of neon blue energy that came right out of the pit
of my being and flew out as I tilted my head way back into the yawn. Now, I’m
only using the word ’burp’ because it’s the best descriptive I can come up with to
explain the feeling.
There was no sound, and I know it wasn’t an actual air bubble, but there was a physical feeling to this ball of energy as it flew up from deep within me. I
only wish there was someone near me to see if was an actual, physicalized
energy...WOULDN’T THAT HAVE BEEN COOL TO SEE! It was the weirdest
feeling when it happened because at first, my mind was trying to register what it
just experienced, but my soul knew, and was already giggling inside. I yelled over
to my friend, “Hey, what’s the color blue? And he gave me a funny look, which I
guess most people would do if asked such a question, so I rephrased it to make
more sense, “ I mean what’s it represent?”, and he said that blue is the color of
creative energy associated with your throat chakra...Creativie energy!

My friend had found a spot on a fallen ceader tree and was very content to stay.
He said that where he was standing was just perfect for him, and there was just
no other reason to move around, the energy and view of that particular spot was
exactly the feeling he wanted while on the mountain. Please note, that just before
we had to leave, he realized that right under the log that he was standing on was
a GIANT piece of quartz, a boulder of it.

In all too short of time, my wife was calling us back to start packing for the trip
home. Packing was an experience because I was having trouble focusing on one goal
(like shoes, or my hat), because everything around me was still talking and wanting
to share itself with my consciousness.

My friend and I were still feeling the effects pretty well and my wife had a time
getting us in the car (worse than two little kids I imagine). When we finally did,
my friend leaned out the window and ‘sounded his mighty yawp’ (he let out a soul
yell!)! And decided that my wife was too uptight and needed to open her window
too, and yell as loud as she could,just to get all the ‘emotional gunk’ out of her
system (if anyone’s never tried this, I HIGHLY encourage doing it, just yelling as
loud as you can for as long as you can, but MAKE SURE you’re somewhere safe to
do it where it won’t bother others). Needless to say, she wasn’t really into doing
that and it kinda turned into this thing where if she didn’t do it, he was getting
out of the car, and of course if he got out of the car, that I'd have to get out of the car too, and it would be mass anarchy all over again, so she gave in and gave a yell, not a ‘yawp’, but a yell, and we had to settle for that.

Namaste,
Tao of Earth