The Trip to Big Bay

It all started with an ounce of dried Mushrooms. Two of my great friends from my home town decided to come up and visit me in college. For a long time we had planned on eating psychedelic mushrooms, but never had had the perfect opportunity like we had no – or so we thought.

When they arrived, the 5 of us went to the Black Rocks at Presque Isle, in good old Marquette, Michigan. Before we even started munching, we had already lost track of time. The next 2 days would be a haze of drug-induced insanity. Sitting at the Black Rocks, looking into the great and powerful Lake Superior, the munching began. At first, we had roughly 3.5 grams each between 4 people (the 5th person did not trip the first night.). We were tripping pretty hard within the next 2 hours, but we were not yet at the point at which we wanted to experience. We began to eat more, with a total of 7 grams per person the first night. We drove to Big Bay to find the small log-cabin duplex in which my good friends were staying the weekend in. After talking to the owner of the duplex cabin while off a little in our own worlds, we decided to walk to the water. The beauty of the diamonds shining on the water was indescribable. After settling ourselves into the cabin, it was time to go on a hike to see where our minds would take us. This is where the trip became crazy.

If you know anything about the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, you know that Marquette, Michigan is the biggest city in the U.P. and that Big Bay is an old (albeit haunted) Logging town about 25 minutes NW of Marquette. In town there is a Bar. Only a Bar. Because this town was so small, we decided that staying in town for the hike would be best. We drove to the old logging trail on the edge of town and drove back into the woods. Parking behind a large mound of grass and stones, this is where the trip started and almost didn’t end.

We started out close to the mound. We packed the Black Pearl (the glass travel bong) and began our first toke of the night. After being packed once, there was never a time that the bowl was empty. It was constantly filled and constantly passed around. We began talking, chatting about whatever came to mind at the moment in time. About halfway back into the walk, the group had split up. 2 were with me, and the other two walked deeper into the woods. This is when the trip began to intensify.

Although there is not much of the first night I remember, I understand everything that happened to me.

This was the first time I had eaten more than 4 grams of Mushrooms. I knew I was in for a shock, but, of course, I didn’t know what to expect. I do remember stopping constantly to chat because walking and talking was the hardest thing I could possibly do. Things started getting very intense, and I started feeling incredible with an incredible body buzz. As soon as I started to peak, one of my friends came up to me, put his hand on my shoulder and just said, “Wait, they’ll come in waves today”. The moment he said this, a cool breeze filled my mind – there was no wind outside. I felt like I could do anything, I felt like…God! The feeling of energy that was shared between my friend and I is a feeling that I could never share with any other person in the world. A feeling of supreme knowing. The person before me whom I believed I knew as well as I could; had just been opened up to me in a way that I never imagined possible. Also at this point, it seemed as though the Grass had turned into a never ending field of energy (imagine – in Gladiator when the main character is walking through the fields of wheat after he is dead. This is what is felt like – the white fuzziness around my vision, the energy fields of white, streaming beauty. It felt like I had reached Nirvana.)

After this intense moment, we began to walk again towards the deep part of the woods. As we kept going, my friends all emerged from the deep woods and came towards us. I remember that as soon as they got close to us, I felt an unquestionable feeling of “locking” inside my brain, almost as if all of our brains came together to form one mind. I knew this was true, because I could hear all of their thoughts inside my head. We began walking, as a group, towards a path that went off into another direction. Suddenly, we heard a snapping noise as the trees began swaying and talking to us. I could feel the trees in my vocal chords, telling us to leave their mighty forest. Suddenly, out of no where, a log that had to have been at least 4 feet long and 2 feet in diameter fell from the top of a tree, almost hitting the non-tripping friend square on the head. Needless to say this freaked us all out (because even the non-tripping friend had seen this). We headed back to the Van so that we could head back to the small cabin.

This was the beginning of the mistake of a lifetime. I knew at once when I had gotten back to the van that this trip of a lifetime was going to go to somewhere I didn’t want it to go to. Inside the van, we talked and smoked and I remember very few details – I know reality was completely different than it really was, I know my surroundings looked completely different than they really were, as if I were in a video game, but so real that it was scary. I remember that I couldn’t breath, it felt as if the air in the Van had all been used up, and I was getting squished; choked. I opened the sliding door to a rush of feelings that I still to this day cannot comprehend.

From this point, I remember getting back to the cabin. It was a small log-cabin duplex with a small loft with two beds, a living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. The walls were covered with brown knots.

As we entered the cabin, a completely new understanding of myself entered me. I knew everything about myself and my mind that I ever wanted to know. I had reached enlightenment. Of course, being in such a small cabin, this didn’t last long. We sat on the couch, we talked; we smoked more.

Soon after arriving at the Cabin, we all started to freak. One friend just stood in the corner repeating to himself “oh my god, what’s happening”. Why was he saying this? Well, my other friend was fine; he was sitting on the couch next to me, just happy as all hell, comforting me. The other friend was going a bit crazy – It got to the point where he fell down and basically died. He said he was in complete control of breathing and moving and all operations of his body that he normally wouldn’t have been completely in control of. All of a sudden, he fell to the floor, pitch white. We picked him up, he came back to life, proceeded to run outside and vomit more than any living being I had ever seen before. He came back inside, went into the bedroom closed to door laid on the bed and yelled “I WANT YOU OUT OF ME NOW!”

He came back out maybe 20 minutes later, sober and back to normal.

During the time in which this happened, I was also freaking out while my friend tried to comfort me on the couch. I could not help thinking that everything that was happening to me at that point of time was a hallucination. That my entire life had been one giant hallucination and I didn’t know who anyone or I was. I was scared. I went up to the loft upstairs and lied on a bed, curled in the fetal position. I remember I felt like I was dying, that is the only way to describe it. Reality was twisted; one scene was repeating itself over and over again inside my head, and it was all that I could comprehend. Someone walked outside, another walked inside. One came upstairs to see if I was ok, the other stayed quiet. I remember very vividly the radio had something to do with the intensity of the trip – although it was not in the same room as me, nor was if even turned on. It almost felt as if I was inside a movie, but on a set. Like one wall was cut away to the audience and they could see us all doing what we were doing, but we had no idea.

I went outside to try to calm myself down. Fortunately there was a couch on the deck, so I sat down. Within 30 minutes I was back to reality.

The next night one friend and I split another 4 grams we bought. We got off slightly, but it was nothing worth mentioning.

Later that night, the friend who didn’t trip the first night was ready to re-experience mushrooms. (She is almost 50 years old, and did lots of LSD and Mescaline, etc. in the late 60’s/70’s.)

She handled herself well, until she peaked. She hallucinated and saw a young girl on the front porch who said she was murdered there. We all got a little spooked, still being weirded out from the night before, but it all ended safely.