On my second trek with S, accompanied by M the Guru, as we backpacked through the picturesque, unspoilt, idyllic, Gaian beauty that is the Lakeland, something happened to us, and to me, that further shaped my outlook on life.

The three of us had arranged by e-mail to meet at Windermere Station at 2pm of 12/5/1999. From there we were to head by bus to Ambleside and then, trekking clockwise around Coniston Waters, towards an area marked on S's map indicating a goodly campsite for night 1; with fresh streaming water and ample dead wood for our nightly fire event. S was the man with the map and the compass, and so he was the scout.

Pleased to see each other again after almost one year, we talked of camping equipment, of future books, of jobs and of rent arrears! We walked for five miles on the first day, through occasional light showers of rain, which were to be expected in those parts, and finally came to camp at the base of a large hill in a field dotted with cow-pats. On the following day we walked an impressive ten miles through drizzle and rain, and came to camp at the edge of a forest carpeted with bluebells. Erecting a tent in the rain is not something to relish, yet all this time we were happy to have escaped the dull sensations of 'routinery without greenery' back in the cities from which we had come. After two fair days and two splendid nights I really was becoming accustomed to this lifestyle.

It seems to me that we city dwellers have lost a great deal of contact with the real life in the country; important contact. Potted plants and designer gardens - even parks - are poor representations of what we have rejected in pursuit of social integration and consumer orientated, vehicle dominated lifestyles.

On the third day, after another seven miles of trekking up, down and across rough terrain and 'weird, spongy miniature trees', past cairns (ancient burial mounds set atop hills) and, at times, in sight of the Irish Sea, my feet were beginning to tire of the walking, and rebelled by forming a blister the size of a golf ball on my left ankle. A packet of socially acceptable drugs called Neurofen painkillers, which I had remembered to bring along due to the exact same experiences of last year, came to my rescue. Being that we had wandered off course, expecting to find a sizeable forest in front of us, and yet seeing only hills, I remarked that 'here' would be a good place to set up camp for the night! Privacy, fire wood and water were aplenty here. S removed his rucksack and went climbing to the top of these hills to see what was over the horizon and was gone for 10 minutes while M and I sat admiring the panoramic view around us. On his return, to my relief, he agreed.

After setting up camp, gathering wood and water, and laying motionless in our tents for quite some time, S happily announced that "this would be a good night for taking psilocybin mushrooms." M and I agreed; although I did observe an element of apprehension in both our replies (1).

Merely swallowing a medium dose of mushrooms (40-45 unprocessed and naturally dried) gave me a feeling of achievement and happy expectation of something important and other-worldy to come. Luckily, by advice from S, I had not yet eaten anything and this aided the ingestion considerably. I felt immediately refreshed, amongst excellent company and in possibly the best of all surroundings. I carefully put on my Moac boots and went to help with the formation of that evening's fire.

There is always a period of 'tuning in' or 'adjusting' to the mushroom experience, and this was now very much underway. I found myself looking around in all directions while wondering what the others were feeling as they too roamed first this way and then that way, met by the fire and then separated again - as though waiting or looking for a sign from within or without - searching for that elusive something which we all knew was almost upon us.

Gradually, the surrounding landscape began to show me different aspects and patterns which I had not, and could not see earlier. The curvature of nearby rocks, the flow of the terrain, the rich colours of the clouds and the vastness of the sky above; the realness and the majesty of the moment began to dawn on me, with myself just passively watching as it happened. My surroundings had not changed in the least. Nothing had moved or morphed or reformed itself. It was my own 'lens of consciousness', as S would say, that had, in some subtly profound way, changed its state or mode.

A sure way to test the 'tuning in' is to close your eyes and to watch the amazingly complex images and geometric shapes which happen the instant the eyelids close - even for a split second.

They happen in three distinct stages:

Stage 1. Entoptics: geometric and symmetric...
Stage 2. Construal: culture dependant imagery...
Stage 3. Iconics: universal, more real than real, visionary, symbolic

Stages taken from The Long Trip: A Prehistory Of Psychedelia - Paul Devereux. Penguin / Arkana - ISBN 0 14 01.9540 8

The term 'Entoptic' is derived from the Greek for 'within vision', that is, anywhere within the optic system between and including the eye itself and the cortex - where signals from the optic nerve are interpreted (Lewis-Williams and Dowson, 1988). Lewis-Williams and Dowson further break these down into 'phosphenes' which can be produced by physical stimulation (such as the patterns seen when you close your eyes and apply gentle pressure to your eyelids), and 'form constants' which are produced beyond the eye in the cortex itself.

On several occasions, with my eyes closed, I was shown, and beheld some very striking images of wireframe figures such as men, horses and Goat's Beards (Tragopogon pratensis) - complete with their myriad seed pods, ready to be blown away by a virtual wind. The wireframe aspect struck me as being an intriguing analogy. The idea seemed to suggest that underneath the rendered surface of things lies another unseen dimension that is fully comprised of mathematical principle. The wireframe images smacked of design and intelligence, being highly organised in their structure, yet are no different, as it were, to the real objects which they represent in the physical world around and about us!?

M, being 54 years old and still recovering from a recent quite serious illness, was content to sit and gaze into the flames of the fire. I regularly heard him say "See that! That is beautiful". I guess there really is no better way to describe a fire seen through bemushroomed eyes. Within the fire lies seemingly molten matter waiting to drip to the ground, but instead it either vaporises into a spark, drifting into the air and gone from our spectrum of vision, or it turns to flakes of pure white ash via every colour of the rainbow. S commented that he could see mathematical order to fire - pyrology being of great interest to him, and he told me how Gurdjieff had once ordered huge fires to be built in order to sit and gaze into the flames while he recuperated from illness. I did not as of yet understand his explanation of mathematical order? Could it be that fire also has a 'wireframe' dimension? I must add here that S seemed to be constantly keeping the fire going for M? He would come back from his wanderings just to feed the flames, only to disappear again into the darkness. Only now can I connect why. Fire, like water, seems to have a healing effect on the body and the psyche simply by being in close proximity to a sufficient quantity of it.

I felt fear, and part of me wanted to sleep through this event safely tucked up in my sleeping bag with my eyes closed - like a cocoon, but I knew that my fear would follow me wherever I went. It was at this moment that I remembered the task I had set myself last year, while experiencing similar things high on Mnt. Snowdon, which was 'to elucidate that state called bad trip' (1). I made a big effort to detach myself from myself; after all, I am not my thoughts, or feelings, or sensations, and as I did, the fear, like a hand letting go of a live wire, immediately retreated and was no longer a problem. This seemed to be a major turning point in my inner life. I had overcome fear simply by recognising it, by detaching from it, and by letting go of all resistance to the new experiences underway within me. I laughed and I related all of this to S and M. They both knew what I was referring to; I could tell by their answers, and by their nodding of heads: we all have feared...

S is always on the move. He yawns like a very lethargic lion waiting for big game to arrive, and yet he springs off again no sooner than he has sat down. I caught sight of him closely examining a tree with his soft, diffuse torch light. The mushroom experience seems to have a 'seeing for the first time' effect each time it is applied. He came back towards the fire saying that the tree in question was, in fact, a dwarf oak tree; a fine example of Natural Intelligence - a subject which S avidly writes about. He said that the Oak tree had adapted itself to it's rockier, windier surroundings and that we should all go take a look hencewith; and prepare for something 'astoshinning'. I went to have a closer look.

I approached the tree in a manner of some reverence. I could feel its healthy presence. There was, in fact, so much detail about the Oak Tree that I decided to study just one tiny part of its system: a single leaf. Remarkable; in that the patterning of the leaf closely resembled that of human skin (only green in colour), and also that this patterning was similar to the entoptic patterning occurring behind my closed eyes. A Living Thing !? "What exactly is it that a living cell has got which a dead cell has not?" asks O in 'A New Model Of The Universe'. Science today cannot say. The leaf and stem exude oxygen (which I just happen to inhale) in exchange for my carbon dioxide (which again I just happen to exhale... and sometimes knowingly). It is very easy to forget just how perfect a relationship we mismanage with the plant kingdom. And who shall we credit for the complex bioengineering behind this amazing Tree? Nobody & Co. !!!

The torch which I used to illuminate the tree is a fantastic and handy invention! One can easily see the intelligence and design which have gone into its existence, and man is to be credited for his ingenuity. But, on the other hand, we view something as fantastic and 'handy' as a tree to be a mere accident with no design or designer !? Quite by unremarkable accident does it symbiotically exchange gases with the animal kingdom. According to science, the entire universe, including man, sits in this same sad boat:

Quote from linked site: "In fact, the Hot Big Bang Model is now so well-attested that it is known as the standard cosmology."

Supposing we were to study the growth of a foetus within the womb of a woman. Seeing a gradual increase in the size of the foetus we might conclude that the cells were expanding due to a big bang (no pun intended). We would be incorrect in our conclusion would we not? Because, knowing that the final outcome of this 'apparent expansion' will result in a new-born baby, we quite rightly agree upon a process of growth, and not of expansion. This slapstick analogy 'could' be applied to something as grand as the universe itself. Not knowing any final 'shape' or 'outcome' of the universal process, yet, by way of the same sense-based reasoning pertaining to the womb-baby example, we assume an expansion, due to explosion, of super-hot, super-dense gases. Nothing is proven until all is proven; and yet "a number of unanswered questions remain regarding the initial state of the universe" e.g.:

1. The origin and nature of the forces required to cause, in a hot way, a big bang...
2. The origin of the material which hotly banged big... or else
3. How something hot can come banging big from nothing - even apparently...

Many 'pieces' do not fit into the framework of current scientific calculation, and science is therefore at a complete loss as to suitable answers. Simply by side-stepping such inconceivable questions, the illusion of truth is upheld in the eyes of a world which knows no better. The immensely hypnotic authoritarian assertiveness of the scientific community plays on the willing suggestibility and naive gullibility of the denser masses... Yet, even as we speak, the theory of evolution is being 'withdrawn' from the curriculum of several US schools because of its *speculative* nature. This is not to say that the theory of evolution is wrong, just that it is presented without referrence to an alternative interpretation (i.e. evolution can be seen as a manifestation of Natural Intelligence).

Quote from linked site: "The Big Bang model makes accurate and scientifically testable hypotheses in each of these areas, and the remarkable agreement with the observational data gives us considerable confidence in the model."

But, as Gurdjieff said, "if a piece does not fit into the framework of our model (or, to be more exact, of our mythology) then we should change the framework"... and if something cannot come from nothing, then what exactly is it that is already in a state of existence prior to existence? Could it be that we, as a species, are avoiding something?

The switch from egocentricity to logoscentricity is the most painful yet pleasurable, bitter yet sweet, fearsome yet reassuring experienceavailable to us...

I knew beforehand, by using a nifty piece of Planetarium software called Starry Night Basic, that Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Moon and Sol were all to be seen in the Western Hemisphere around this period, and that after sundown only Venus would be visible... so it was easy to spot the brightly shining Venus (which appeared and dominated it's space with star-burst qualities... rather like a photoshop filter had been applied to it, giving it a similar appearance to the five-sided stars painted on the ceilings of some tombs in the Kings valley, Egypt). S spotted Mars towards South-east, and this all led to an hilarious confusion as to the nature of a glow of light appearing over the mountains on the distant horizon. We could not be sure if it was due to the Sun or the Moon. A compass came into play - making matters worse!

For what seemed hours, but was probably only minutes, I simply lay on my back wondering how to describe 'sincerely' this state I was now in, and I finally settled for the word 'ecstasy'. I was looking at the rising smoke from the fire, at the night sky (which had become ominously black/grey, and yet there was no rain), at the net-shaped patterning of the cloud formations, marvelling at the stars and how a trail of light appeared as I shifted my gaze, and at my left hand - in all it's alienesque beauty! Never before had I seen such a strange image as my right hand silhouetted against the smoke and the sky; and I thought that "if I could photograph this amazing image, everyone would see it the same as I had seen it, and conclude that something is not right with our usual mode of perception."

S commented that 'looking at hands' is a common act under mushroom influence. I can see why; the shape of the human hand is fashioned by the same force or law that shapes the trees and their roots. All are extruded cellular expressions of plastic and malleable DNA, a sublime flow of manifest Natural Intelligence....

We sat and talked until sunrise... just 'being'. We talked about chaos theory and how order and pattern emerge from within the chaotic potential (but *why* order should arise I still don't understand). I related this to essence by adding that "our essence is our pattern within our chaos". We talked of how plans were being made by unconscionable folks to copyright, of all things, the human genome! But all of this, oh listener, seems like nothing compared to Sunday night when we again took mushrooms.
Sorry to play at Shahrazad - but it is true.

By the next morning (11am) the effects had worn away - or so I thought, as I closed my eyes and saw a symmetrical array of brown shiny worms or even snakes, each with a yellow band around its body, scurrying into holes in the ground. This happened merely in the blink of an eye. Under normal circumstances such a vision would be startling for its clarity and 'vision like' qualities. Try as I may I cannot imagine or visualise anything near to the vividness of even that which was left to me the day after!

Some, if not all of the images I saw could have been hung in the Tate Gallery itself - if there was any way to project them externally to the mind's eye. Saying this, the Tate Gallery would have to move into the animation medium because all of the bemushroomed visions are constantly on the move or morph from one to the other with ever increasing complexity... astoshinning.

"Very interesting things are happening in the blackness behind your eyelids while laying still in silent darkness, and that is where the mystery comes from and goes to."

Terence McKenna. The Archaic Revival - p168: ISBN 0-06-250613-7

Saturday night found us camped overlooking Lake Windermere and the town of Windermere itself. Street lights were aglow and reflecting upon the surface of the water. Apparently, on this very lake, due to its length, certain hominid specimens once tried to set and then to break again, of all things, water speed records. Truly a pointless waste of time, money, resources and intelligence. Shirley one of them could simply have sat upon a cruise missile and skimmed across the surface at Mac-8.....

I felt incredibly thirsty that night. Not even three mugs of tea could quench my thirst. I told S, and he went over to his tent and came back introducing a slim, stylishly designed packet containing an energy drink in powdered form. "Makes one whole pint" said S. This reminded us of the time in the mid-1980's when my kitchen back in Woodford Green was transformed into a laboratory for the elucidation of all known, and many unknown hallucinogenic substances - including Fly Agaric Mushrooms (the red one with white flakes, famous in children's books), Catnip (used in stuffed toys for cats, and allegedly smoked by hard-up hippies), Monosodium Glutamate + Dill, Horse Chestnut Tree Bark soup, Nutmeg (poor man's LSD: smoked, mixed with curry powder, swallowed with milk), Banana Skins, etc. etc. The powered energy drink almost did the trick and my thirst was almost quenched, but then S introduced an apple into the equation. The apple was so pleasing and refreshing that I decided to be an apple in my next life. M slept all night long. I went to bed early while S climbed trees outside my tent.

These apples are cunning. They know all too well that they look and taste fantastic and, by way of such manipulation, they manage to disperse their seeds world-wide - seeds which contain the data required to produce another apple tree with seeds: ad infinitum. Again, the credit goes to Nobody & Co.

It was decided that the following night would be spent at 'The Den' in Grasmere - where a sacred landscape complete with indigenous psilocybin mushrooms, water and juniper trees can be visited - as though the land was beckoning auspicious events. If one were to find acrylic paints, turps, brushes and canvas' all growing in one region, would it not seem mighty strange? S and M had trekked together to The Den many times before and had shown me panoramic photographs whilst dining in Pizza Hut, Brixton. They told me trekker's stories of the mysterious sheep there and had related all sorts of sheepy witticisms (they once stumbled upon a night meeting of sheep in which there was much fighting and raucousness). I had been looking forward to being at The Den.....

S and I go back quite a way - to a time when we produced thrash punk music with questioning (and questionable) lyrics. Questioning in the sense that we had, IMO, a critical mind as a band. Punk was, after all, a shock to a sleeping, mechanical society. Better the state we now live in yeah? If only there was a choice whether to subscribe to the system or not... but there isn't. That, to me, seems 'wrong'. Simply by going off into the wilds of Nature, and trying to become self-sufficient in food, is impossibly illegal because 'fleas own dogs', and throw you off as soon as talk to you. How did all of this territorial pissing and materialistic possessiveness, quite OK for animals, but unbecoming for Men, come to be? There was a time in England where land was free to use so long as it was for a good use, but the splitters took all of this away by subscribing to their own absurd notion that land could, in any way, be owned! Last year Mnt. Snowdon was for sale for £4,000,000. That's an awful lot of subscribing.

There is no way out of the system - not yet awhile, and bundled with the bondage to the hand that feeds us comes the stupid face that the hand belongs to; Man! Is it dumb!? 'Pull up all the trees, dig up all the grass, poison all the rivers and seas, drain all the oil reserves if nobody complains.' Man truly knows not what he does. As Ouspensky stressed in 'A New Model Of The Universe', the individual mind is way smarter than the collective *hive* mentality.

The view from The Den is amazing. It overlooks the small town of Grasmere and beyond. To get to this place one has to climb pretty high up along stony paths, past waterfalls and pools (which do look remarkably like Jacuzzi's), alongside tarns and over slippery wetland bog - which threatens to steal your boots if not careful. Eventually we set up camp and took two journeys each to gather some Juniper wood. We never leave any non biodegradable waste behind, and neither do we use any living material for our fires. Only the naturally discarded wood strewn upon the ground is for use in a fire.

I wasn't expecting S to offer mushrooms for a second time! M and I agreed, only this time there was less apprehension and we both immediately replied with a thumbs up*. Due to the fact that the human organism gradually becomes desensitised to the active substances found in Psilocybian mushroom (Psilocin(e), Psilocybin(e) (Greek spelling), which make up approx. 10% of it's body weight - the other 90% being H₂O*), and which substances mimic and near perfectly resemble the chemical structure of the neurotransmitter 'serotonin' (found in the neo-cortex of Man*), and hence their immense importance in understanding the relationship between man-plant-consciousness, it was suggested by S that we take more of a dosage in order to correct the weight-4-weight tolerance. This time I took 60 dried mushrooms (dried naturally *), while M and S took 80 each. There were 20 remaining should I want them, but I was not pushing for anything. IMO this trek has already proven value beyond words, and I desire not to be overwhelmed. I stick with 60. Come September I would hopefully pick some myself*.

* Why should a fungus contain the chemistry of human consciousness?
* Why does it exist in such abundance?
* Does it store these substances in a passive state, or does it actively use them for some form of internal / external process?
* Are we the external process?

Consciousness in exchange for assured progeny of species?*

Like the example of the apple above, has the mushroom learnt that by giving us something (i.e. more consciousness) to assure itself of survival as we disperse it's spores by way of our shit? Even from a strictly reductionist-evolutionary point of view this is quite a remarkable relationship worthy of much investigation.

"One could not write a better science fiction story than this, yet here we are securely in the realms of science fact."

It is also remarkable that here in the UK Psilocybe semilanceata (Liberty Cap) mushrooms are still legal (when fresh or dried naturally), and spring from the skin of our Common Mother during mid to late September time amidst typical cattle grazing pastures and wet woodland decay.*

* "English law took the view that it was preposterous to try to outlaw a naturally occurring plant. They took the position that only the chemical was illegal, which I think is a very wise position..."

Terence McKenna. The Archaic Revival - p164: ISBN 0-06-250613-7

M is a very difficult person to sum up in any way. The clearest memory I have of him is from 12 or more years ago when the same three of us were sitting in yet another of the omnipresent McDonalds fast food restaurant outlets - this one in Hyde Park, London, having a coffee and discussing life and self. He seemed to me to be the most adult person I had ever met - relaxed, with humour, and his senses about him at all times: self cognisant, and careful to explain exactly what he meant and thought.

M was my lodger for several months, and had an irritating habit of always leaving the toilet door wide open while in use by himself. He didn't care what people thought of him. "So what?" he would say, with a noticeably Maltese accent, "am I the only one who shits!" S, on the other hand, is a fleet footed prankster who recently tricked me into announcing to certain online newsgroups that a secret film of Gurdjieff was about to be released 50 years after his death - by decree of will. Such a dastardly jape.....

The tuning in had already started for S, and M was surprised by this. I felt nothing at all at this point, and I wondered whether or not to take the remaining 20 mushrooms. I sat looking into the fire with M, while S moved to and fro - yawning and folding his arms to keep warm, and occasionally pausing to say "astoshinning" to himself. I too began to feel the presence of the mushrooms more and more.

I thought to myself that by paying some attention to the environment I would gain something in return by absorbing impressions and retaining memories that I would not have otherwise absorbed just sitting by the fire - as beautiful and mysterious as it was, and so I decided that I would go for a stroll.' I set off (bearing in mind that it was almost pitch black a night) to generate and participate in some event that I would remember and possibly write about later.

I made my way downhill towards a huge rock with a tree standing atop like a feather in it's cap. Again I could 'feel' the presence of the tree and of the rock!? This is not the case with my 'usual' state of consciousness - whereby I merely notice or do not notice things. I rarely, if ever, 'feel' external things with such emotion.

Common observations of the entheogenic (saintly) experience are noted as: 1. a feeling of being in a wider life than that of the world's selfish little interests and a direct conviction of the existence of an ideal power 2. a sense of the friendly continuity of this power with our life and a willing self-surrender to its control 3. a feeling of elation and freedom resulting from the escape from confining selfhood 4. a shifting of the centre of emotions towards loving and harmonious affections; a move towards yes and away from no Magic, Witchcraft, & Religion: An Anthropological Study of the Supernatural. Lehmann and Myers. Mayfield Books. p130.

It must be noted that there are many ways to encourage such a change in 'being', but none are as fast acting, as profound, or as guaranteed...

I felt the rock -- physically -- for its texture; hugging and expressing amazement at it and at this moment in time!

I put my ear to the rock, and could hear sounds similar to those heard in a seashell when close to the ear - a tunnelled rushing of wind. I loved the rock! Does that sound strange? From there, I went further still down to where I had searched for fire wood earlier. I remembered how earlier I had been absorbed with amusement due to some sheep who had scared so easily as I merely walked within sight of them. I found myself walking across the same dry bracken as I had done earlier, only now I was acutely aware of these fern skeletons as things in themselves. The snap-crackle of dried twigs and the peculiar way in which almost all of them had departed life leaning in the same uphill array fascinated me. I wondered what unseen force had been at work here, and why I had not really noticed these aspects earlier? I could just barely see the rippling folds of the landscape far below - very dark green and almost black layers of shade - like age lines on the forehead of a great beast. These lines struck me as being very similar in style to the landscapes of the animated Beatle's classic: Yellow Submarine.

I was fast absorbing my surroundings like never before. I was again 'seeing as a child and yet being as an adult'. I was permitted to see a bigger pattern to Great Nature - a pattern which hinted strongly that the whole of what we call Earth is in fact one thing, one system, one organism! An organism beyond description. Trapped within our 'usual' mode of perception all things seem separate - just like the spokes of a wheel or the days of the week. We appear separate from it, and we do separate ourselves from it in all but a physical way by our own ignorance and conditioning which causes us to look no further for fear that we may enter into the 'unknowable'. We like to feel that we are the cream of evolution striding around the third rock from the sun with our sights set on other 'rocks'. This is a most comfortable image but it is the antithesis of the truth. We serve life serves us.

The human mind is, and should be, a dynamic, ongoing, eternally flowing process just as the 'cloud-rain-river-sea-cloud' phenomenon we call weather. Our task in life, if we can bear such a task, is to suffer an eternal search for truth while in effect transforming the cloud of observation into the rain of notion into the river of ideas into the sea of consciousness which is our true self... ad infinitum. In this way we contribute to the flow of energy.

S called out to me to check on my OK-Ness. I felt immensely happy - content even. After shouting my reply, I walked further with my arms folded to conserve body heat - it being mighty nippy. Then I remembered the stream where only a few hours earlier we had all filled our canisters and washed, and set myself to find this place alone and in the dark of dark. Walking across the soggy marsh toward where I thought the stream lived was quite hilarious! I felt that at any moment I could be sucked beneath the apparent surface and vanish forever... but I just laughed aloud knowing that this was not my fate.

I arrived at the stream, sat gently on an obliging rock, listened to the water as it disappeared down some form of a hollow, looked up at the night sky as it glistened with countless pinpoints of starlight (again with the burst effect) which seemingly encircled me like a vast domed canopy created especially for this moment....... and I cried. This had an immensely 'purifying' effect on me, and I was not sad - just reflective in the face of things and facts. Again I heard S calling my name and so I started back along the ill defined pathway toward the camp fire. As I walked over the hill I perceived only a torch and two legs coming toward me and, due to the mental ability to fill in missing details, I knew it was S. He spoke, and his voice was calm and, due to the fact that he has lived in London for quite some time, quite cockney in accent.

I related my experiences back at camp - where M was still happily gazing into the fire. I suggested enthusiastically that he go for a wander, to soak in, to mingle and to make memories, but he was not budging an inch. I couldn't resist going for another wander myself, and so I headed towards the space between two huge boulders close by. One boulder was standing upright and shaped like a tooth; the other was laying down and shaped like a wedge. The space between these two was in some way charged! Lordy knows how long they have been in those still postures, or even how they came to be there at all - geographically and philosophically. In the very cold darkness I laid on the wedge shaped boulder looking into outer space. Still every point of light was accompanied by a retina burn-in style streak whenever I blinked or shifted my focus of vision. I saw a shooting star (which was probably just a plane) moving rapidly across the sky and then disappearing from my view behind a cloud formation.

At this point I again received the distinct impression that Earth is an entity with its own lifetime, its own being, and its own environment (not empty space). A second shooting star, but this time so faint as to cause me to strain my focus to see it. It must have been forever away.

(I called out to M and S to look to the sky).

This is what the rock knows and sees year in year out. As I turned my head to the left I was quite shocked to see the well defined outline of a face in the rock - as though carved by the wind. It was peering out into space for all time. It was possibly of African stock, and so my companion in celestial observation reminded me of the Great Sphinx in Egypt - with which I have had the great honour to meet close-up. S eventually came to see what I had shouting for, and I told him; and he told me...

"the skies here are always full of strange and wonderful things".

But the strangest thing of all was that only an hour or so had past since the mushrooms had tuned into my psyche - or vice versa. Time became similar to that of a child - there was none! I could have written a book or created a work of art within 30 usually conceived minutes, and it would have been from the heart too; not forced out like some pretentious factual guide to the already well established delusional myth of life with no rhyme or reason. At least that's how it seemed to me... and to us all.

Back at the ever amazing fire, due to the surrounding darkness and limited glow of the flames it was very easy for me to succumb to the illusion that this was all there was: just we three and the fire. It was only when S turned on his soft diffuse light, illuminating a bigger scenario, that I realised we were atop a hill and surrounded by wide open space. On several occasions, while succumbed to this illusion, I felt as though we three were sitting alongside, or right on top of a path or road, and that something may come along at any moment and try to pass us. I didn't mention this to S or M at the time, but wish that I had. Why a path? Paths, after all, are symbolic!

An interesting observation of the mushroom trip is the widely reported impression that it effects the psyche with wavelike or pulse-like tendencies. At one point I thought the 'trip' was over only to find that it had merely paused, and that the night was still young. I associated this with the 'wave or pulse' theory. I remember thinking that an event (the taking of mushrooms for instance) is like a stone being dropped into the middle of a pool of water, and that the initial 'splash' is the tuning in, and the ripples produced are analogous to the waves. It also seemed to me that events outside of myself, but including myself, were somehow connected with the 'peaks' of the waves? In other words, a small event would end and another would begin just at the point where the waves or pulses seemed to occur. While sitting around the fire talking, one of us would shift our position as we became enthused by the conversation or by anything, and this would alter the dynamic flow of the wind, feeding the flames and causing the path of the smoke to blow towards either one of us; forcing a repositioning around the fire. Juniper wood, when burnt, produces a very fragrant aroma which is quite pleasing in small whiffs but it is smoke non the less... and choke you it will if you just sit there immersed in it. This constituted a small event, and these small events happened many times inside the bigger event of the night. I began to wonder if there was not more to this shared mushroom experience than meets the eye.

The night began slowly to wind down in waves of decreasing bemushroomed inebriation until even the fire was cold and tired. There was only one log left to burn, and it resembled, in a fractal way, a miniature Juniper tree. When the time came to use this log it completely smothered the flames, leaving only random miniature fires struggling to live. "The night is done" I said... "I'm off to slip into my German Army sleeping bag". As I walked toward my tent I overheard S saying "I always feel sad when the trek is over".

All in all this psilocybinetic trek was an immense chapter in my life. Coming back into 'civilisation' after such an experience was, and still is even after two weeks now, like walking out of Eden and into that place where, as Mrs Squadron pointed out to my speechless self, "the trees mess up the cars" !!!

(1). The last time I ingested Psilocybin mushrooms was on an attempted accent of the Watkins Path, Mount Snowdon May 1998 with S - which didn't go exactly to plan, but was nontheless a valuable experience. As Terence McKenna said "a bad trip is when one is forced to learn too quickly".

Other trek accounts: