Flying and Frying!

During my late teens and all through my twenties I had many psychedelic experiences with LSD, peyote and mushrooms. The shrooms were always cubensis. I have yet to try any other type. Many of my trips involved doing something, as I and my friends were quite outdoor-oriented. Psychedelics are a source of energy and I think if all you’ve ever done is trip and sit around you’ve missed a great thing…

Some of my first memories of psychedelia were of ice skating on frozen ponds in Vermont. I recall a very cold day with an icy wind blowing and the ice like glass- we zoomed and shroomed all over, watching fish below the surface and visiting a beaver’s nest, which was sticking up above the ice. We cut fresh tracks and played crack-the-whip. We would skate into the strong wind to the edge of the pond and then take the downwind leg as fast as we could. It was a trip! a rush! a blast!

I was a ski bum in Vermont and then in Lake Tahoe and we skied and tripped countless times. It was a wonder we never killed ourselves- throwing ourselves fearlessly off cliffs. Sometimes one of us would suffer minor injuries- like to time I hit a piece of avalanche debris hidden in fresh fall as I landed and it ripped off my ski and I took it in the face. The snow around me was Technicolor red with blood and my buddies just laughed.

My favorite cliff was the cornice just off the KT-22 chair at the top of the 75 Chute- so named for being 75 degrees off the horizontal I suppose. STEEP! We would hop off the chair, aim for the edge gathering speed and BLAST off, blowing-away the tourists who were poking their poles at the edge. The sensation of speed and control and gravity was delicious!

One time I was pulled by the ski patrol, ostensibly for skiing out-of-bounds which I wasn’t, but they took me into the patrol shack just as I was coming-on to a major dose of shrooms, I was all grins and I was amped! Now, these patrol guys were no saints either- they liked to party, and whether they could tell I was tripping or not I’m not sure but I was just wanting to get back on the chair and make some more turns and they let me go!

I remember sitting on the chair in a full white-out, with absolutely NO visual reference beyond the chair and tripping. Whoa! I remember brilliant sunshine days sitting on the chair and tripping on the rock faces as they slid past underneath and being so happy and so blown-away at the same time I cried! There was a ‘turkey’ on the chair next to me who I guess thought I was a real nut. I WAS! Whoa whoa! A thousand other memories...

All this led to my penultimate experience with shrooms some years later at Slide Mountain, on the edge of Lake Tahoe and above Washoe Valley. I was setting up my hang glider for a flight on a beautiful day. I had been flying for some years and the past few days had been just awesome at Slide- we were climbimg over 15,000 feet above sea-level and staying there for hours. I had my wing all set up and my harness laid out for the magic hour and I was in my motorhome making an omelette. Up walks Eve’s Tall Chief, a native American friend of mine and fellow glidehead. Chief knew I was a stoner, we had smoked many joints together, and so he whips out the first FRESH cubensis I had ever laid eyes on! Big beautiful fresh fungi! I said “Chief! Where’d ya get them?”

We sliced them up and sprinkled them on that omelette and then stood on launch waiting the first effects. It was a beautiful day a Slide and we watched several flyers bail off and peel into the sky heading for the clouds several thousand feet above, whilst other flying friends stood around and grilled us, “Are you feeling anything yet?” I felt nothing but ecstatic anticipation until the first psychedelic yawn overtook me (I don’t see this listed as an effect of fungus but I nearly always start tripping with a body-yawn) and so my friends watched carefully as I climbed into my harness and clipped into my wing and stepped over the guardrail there on the Slide Mountain launch. They said I was nuts, they wished me a happy landing, and I took the next cycle into the wild blue yonder.

There is just no describing THAT journey, except to say that I ‘merged’ with my glider; we were as one, that all I had to do was let go and up we went, and that Lake Tahoe was the most beautiful I’d ever seen it.

I don’t know how you’re ever going to have such an experience- unless you’ve had a lot of experience tripping and, even more importantly, lots of experience flying! I wouldn’t even recommend such an experience either- these days I am a flight instructor and can’t reveal my past indiscretions without endangering my livelihood.

But I feel quite certain that all my past experiences both flying and frying led up to this first flying trip, that all the rest of my life was just preparing me for the ultimate. So… every once and a while I get some fungus and head out to the mountains for some flying and frying! WAHOO!

I have enjoyed writing about this too- a catharsis I suppose. Whoever is responsible for the shroomery, THANKS A LOT!