Hello Everyone.

This is a post that follows a few posts that I made about a month ago. In short, in April of this year I started out on a journey to hike all the way from Mexico to Canada along the Pacific Crest Trail. The journey took me 124 days and covered 2,650 miles. With me on that journey was a virtually unlimited supply of cannabis, DMT, and mushrooms. The following is my write-up of all of the entheogenic experiences that I had while out in the wilderness this summer.

Thank you in advance for your feedback.

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[Introduction]

I want to begin by thanking everyone on this site for your help in getting me started down a path that eventually led me to where I am today. Were it not for the knowledge that I gained from Shroomery and the Nexus (Yes, I know, very different sites, but they both contributed to my journey in their own ways) I would not have had the skill set, the knowledge, or the testicular-fortitude to actually attempt this life changing journey.

I still have to write in somewhat ambiguous terms for a couple of reasons. Firstly, what I did was illegal. That one’s pretty straight forward. It is for that reason that I must emphasize that everything that I’m about to tell you should be read as fiction. If you want to believe that it is all true, then go ahead and do so, but I make no claim that this is actual truth. It’s really much closer to a dream that I had or a story that I developed in a creative writing workshop. Secondly, I want to be sure that those other people who were involved in this journey are not implicated unwillingly. Although I’m somewhat okay with “putting myself out there” by sharing my story, those who were with me through different parts of the journey did not sign up to have their story told to audiences of strangers. So for that sake, I have gone to great length to create composite characters or completely make up characters. While my story is fictional, their involvement in my story is *extremely* fictional.

And finally, before I get going, I’d like to say that I’m still working on how I can best tell my story. I am in the process of trying to write a book about all of these things, but it’s a big story and it’s basically a story about my entire life leading up to a 4-month adventure that very heavily relied on the influence of psychedelic substances—namely psilocybin and DMT. So I am starting by sharing my trip-specific experiences with the communities of the Nexus and the Shroomery who started me down this path in the first place. I don’t really know how this will turn out, but I conceive of the following “trip reports” as a prewriting process that I hope to use to gain perspective on how to tell the greater story at large. So please do not take this text as an example of what I hope my finished product to be; rather, this is a way for me to get ideas on the page. From there I will read through what I have, select what I want to highlight in the finished text, and decide what to avoid writing about in the book.

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“The Back-story”

I have to give a bit of back story to explain how this all came about and hopefully contextualize the 4-month psychedelic experience that I want to share with you all.

I moved from my home state in 2006 to finish my undergraduate degree. Immediately after finishing my bachelor’s I enrolled in a master’s program and also completed that at the same school. Following completion of grad school I went straight into working what basically amounted to a dream job, but before starting that job I took 2 months and went out on a backpacking trip that was 800 miles long. That’s where I first smoked marijuana. I’d been open to smoking weed before then, although I was adamantly opposed to drugs before I was in college, but I was never exposed to people who had access, so I just never tried it. During the 800 mile backpacking trip however I was with a dude who smoked a lot, so he introduced me to it and I became a heavy user of pot after that. Then through the use of pot I was introduced to mushrooms, then LSD, then DMT. Well shoot… I guess pot really is a gateway drug after all.

I found that the psychedelic experience was absolutely amazing when I first took mushrooms and then LSD. I had been an atheist for years before my second LSD trip, and during that trip I went from atheist to pantheist in about 4 hours. It completely changed my life. I started using LSD about once every week or two while I was also starting work in this “dream job” that I mentioned above. It was weird though because my job required that I be pretty straight-laced. I wore a tie to work, sat behind a desk, and was supposed to be an “upstanding citizen.” This sucked though because that’s not who I had really become. Although I did my job well and didn’t mix drugs with work, I was in a small enough community where people would see me outside of work and expect me to be a representation of the guy who wore a tie Monday-Friday when in fact I was the guy who was tripping balls and getting in touch with the universe on Saturday and Sunday. I don’t recall the exact quote, but Terrance McKenna once said that “citizens don’t take psychedelics. Neither do robots.” Psychedelics are for the rule breakers, and even though I disagreed with this cultural stigma around this, I had to acknowledge that I was going against what society and culture told me that I *should* be doing with my time.

This conflict between my two lives gave me a great deal of anxiety… or maybe “anxiety” isn’t the right word, but it made me feel like I was living a double life and the life that really felt more important to me was one that I had to keep hidden from the people in my community.

Now, long story short here, the dream job started to fall apart during the latter half of my third year working in it. I can’t give too many details about this, but basically I started to see the job for what it really was as opposed to the idealized image of what I had thought that it was for so long. A new supervisor came in and started working above me and that person really began manipulating and harassing me for no reason. I was horrified because although I had thought that I’d really “made it” even before turning 30, all the sudden that dream was being taken away from me. I was a hard worker and I genuinely kicked ass at what I did, but now for no reason this other person wanted me out largely because of the good work that I did. She wanted to do things her own way and a subordinate who had his own vision for the company/business wasn’t in line with her ability to do what she wanted. So she really started screwing with me and there was nothing that I could do about it because she was sort of like my supervisor.

When this started happening it caused me to deal with a lot of sever depression. Now I should back up here a bit and explain that I have dealt with depression pretty much my whole life, but I started seeking help for it in college when some really terrible things happened to me (lost my girlfriend of 4 years, lost pretty much all of my friends that same year, and my roommate killed himself in our dorm—all of this happened during my freshman year). It was at this time that I started taking antidepressants (I’ve been on all of them and took them for almost a decade before stopping them after grad school). After grad school however my life started getting a lot better. I had a better understanding of myself and what I wanted from life, I had a solid relationship with a woman who I loved, and I had a killer career set up for me right out of college. So I stopped taking antidepressants and right after that is when I started exploring consciousness with psychedelics. After I started taking psychedelics I had about 2 years where I was in absolute heaven. Life was amazing—the girl, the job, the worldview, everything was just perfect.

But then things started going bad with work for the reasons that I mention above, and I stopped taking the psychedelics because I was worried that the work related depression would bleed over into my trips and I didn’t want to enter the “spirit world” when my life was already in a bad state.

Then sh*t really hit the fan and the supervisor basically took over my work and I learned that my career was done. I wasn’t being fired or anything like that, but she basically rewrote my job and turned my dream-job into a slave-labor position working for her. It was awful. I was so depressed and upset and really pissed off at the world. So I went to visit a therapist.

I should explain here that I have seen a therapist for years and it’s been really helpful, especially after I stopped taking antidepressants. The therapist was very supportive of my choice to use psychedelics and even encouraged me to do so in a safe way. We had a great relationship. But this one day in 2013, things went bad. I was extremely depressed and disappointed in the world and I hadn’t had a psychedelic trip in months. I went into her office in a terrible state and shortly into our meeting I started crying. I just let go and purged my feelings to her… and I said the wrong words.

Basically I said “Sometimes I don’t feel like living.”

She asked me, “Do you feel that way right now?”

And I told her that yeah, I did feel that way right then. I didn’t think that I was going to kill myself or anything like that, but I was severely depressed, I was emotional, and I had said the magic words. From that point forward things got really ugly. (This next part is a book in itself, so I’ll try to keep it short for the time being. Forgive my brevity, but I want to get to the “adventure” part as quickly as I can).

She told me that I had to check myself into an institution or that she was going to force me to be institutionalized. So I went in, hoping that I would get to talk to some really good therapists and that I’d be able to work through my depression. That is not what happened though. What happened is that I was literally locked into a cage, my clothes were taken away along with my dignity and I wasn’t allowed to see a doctor for more than a day. I was completely humiliated and not helped in any way. My time in that institution only lasted for about 36 hours, but during that time I “hit rock bottom.” It was the worst experience of my life *by far*. It was so, so, so terrible.

And so I told myself that whatever it was in my life that had brought me to that place, I had to see that I never ended up there again. So I had to completely let those things out of my life.

I spent a lot of time thinking while I was in there and I realized that it was my job, my relationship with my fiancé (we had been great for one another at first, but we were honestly growing apart with each passing month), and it was my life of consumerism. Or, to put it more simply, everything that made up my life was causing me to feel this way.

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“Birth of The Idea”

I didn’t know immediately what to do to change those things, but one day about a month later, I was out at a lake and I ate some acid with a very close friend of mine. We hadn’t tripped together in awhile, but he was actually the guy who introduced me to psychedelics in the years prior. That night I ate two hits of the LSD and he ate nine… that dude was sort of a professional tripper, if you will. We had an absolutely transformational evening out by the lake and next to the fire. We cried together, we laughter together, we danced around the fire together, and we watched the sun go down and the moon come up. We talked about life and how the world is so rough but also looked for the good parts of reality and what makes life worth living even through the pain. He’d been in the service and he’d seen some really terrible things during his two tours, and he knew of my issues with work.

I still remember it so clearly, sitting there beside the campfire that we had built and overlooking the lake. It was in this moment that I had an idea that would come to completely change my life. I told him about the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s a trail that stretches all the way from the US border with Mexico to the US border with Canada. It’s 2,650 miles long and it had sort of haunted me ever since I had completed that 800 mile trail a few years before. It seemed to me like the ultimate adventure, and ever since I’d hiked the long trail before then, I’d wondered if I had what it would take to hike all the way from Mexico to Canada.

“The problem that we have,” I said, “is that we come out here on the weekend and we have these transcendent experiences, but then on Monday we have to go back to work. We reset ourselves back to culture and civilization instead of ‘coming down’ in nature. But what if we changed that? What if you were to go out into nature, trip you head off, then be out in the woods for two weeks. Then do it again. And again. And again.” I paused and we looked from the fire, then to the moon, and then back to one another. “Imagine if you were to do that along the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail). You walk for 100 miles, then trip, and then just ‘reset’ in nature over the next 100 miles. Every week or two you trip balls and just spend time in nature afterwards. There’d be no society or culture to be your influence; it’d just be nature.”

Well, like so many of the ideas that you get under the influence of LSD, it seemed good at the time, but after we came down the next morning it all just seemed like an acid-fueled fantasy. Sure the idea was romantic, but ultimately it could never really happen. It was just a fantasy.
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“Deciding to Follow Through—The Final Push”
Now fast forward two months. That same friend and I are out in the desert for the weekend for another “psychedelic camping trip.” This time it was mushrooms and it was the first time that I ever ate 5 grams at once. It was one of the top five most intense psychedelic experiences (not counting DMT trips) of my life. In that trip I literally lived every human life that has ever been lived. I saw what it was like to be Hitler AND what it was like to be the people he killed. I saw through the eyes of school shooters AND their victims. I saw the world from the perspective of world-famous authors and philosophers and murderers and philanthropists. I *literally* saw every perspective that ever has existed in human history. I know that this is hard to believe, and it’s even hard for me to believe as I write this, over a year later, but I know that it’s true because I was there. It was an intense evening. It was unlike anything that I’d ever experienced in my entire life and it completely changed the way that I look at the world.

But what really changed me in that experience was that I saw my own life. I saw that even though I had had the experience in the psych-ward some four months before, I still hadn’t removed the destructive forces from my life and I was still on the path that had led me there in the first place. What was so eye opening in this trip however was that I got to see what was actually going to happen to me if I didn’t make a change—I was going to kill myself. I wasn’t going to do it that night, but I saw in absolute clarity that if I didn’t actually do something dramatic to change my life and stop what it was that was causing me to feel depressed and angry towards the world that I would die by my own hand in the next year. I literally witnessed my own suicide that night. I not only witnessed my own suicide, but I witnessed the aftershock of my death. I was able to see what it would do to the people in my life after I had committed the act. I saw how it would affect my mother, my brother, my father, and all of my friends. It was like that cliché story by Charles Dickens called “A Christmas Carol” where the character of Ebenezer Scrooge travels through his future and his past and sees the lives of those who he’s impacted. That new perspective changes Scrooge and he realizes the implications of his actions. That’s what happened to me that night too. It was like I was literally flying over my family in the wake of my suicide.

It was such a traumatic experience! I cried heavily that night, and I was so lucky to have my friend there to support me through the trip. It was definitely the first time that I had a “life changing” experience of such magnitude under the influence of a psychedelic. I’d had my life changed by psychedelics before that night, yes, but never so profoundly.

The next morning we woke up, still in the desert, but no longer tripping like we had been under the stars and the moon the night before. I made a decision right then and there that I wasn’t going to be a passive victim to my circumstances. I was going to do something dramatic. I was going to follow through with that acid-fueled fantasy that I’d dreamed up beside a lake in the months before. I was literally going to quit my job and hike the Pacific Crest Trail and I was going to do it with the help of the entheogenic plant medicines that had given me that insight in the first place.

I couldn’t just do it overnight though. I knew that it would take a lot of preparation, so I made the choice to keep up with that same job that I had started to hate so much for one more full year and get another job on the side. This would allow me to build up enough savings to take 5 months and undertake a hike of 2,650 miles. I also started making preparations to move out of the town house that I was renting with my fiancé and ultimately I prepared to end that relationship altogether.

The following year was challenging. I worked like an animal to build up my savings. I did end my relationship with the woman who I did still love, but towards whom I no longer felt the same as I used to. As much as I wished that she and I could be together forever, it just wasn’t going to be possible, and if I wanted to keep that promise to myself, I needed to let it end, so I bit the bullet and we broke up.

I also learned to extract DMT and made my collection of the molecule in preparation for my journey. I grew enough mushrooms to provide me access throughout the trail and enough to give to all of my friends as well—spread the love kind of thing. Then I also used some of my savings and collected a half a pound of the best marijuana that I could possibly find (which was absolute fire!).

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“And the Story Begins”

And so in the spring of this year (2015), after ending my job, finishing my relationship, and selling almost everything I owned, I had a friend drive me to the start of the Pacific Crest Trail at the US border with Mexico in Campo, California.

In my backpack was 1/2 pound of top-shelf marijuana, 2 ounces of mushrooms that I’d measured into .5g capsule (I was very careful with this, and each gel cap was *exactly* .5g since I didn’t have a scale to measure the dose on trail), 2 grams of crystal white DMT (way more than I’d end up needing for my journey), and 2 grams of 1:1 changa that I’d made personally.

In the following four months I walked all the way to Canada over the course of 124 days and I tripped quite regularly. I write to you today to share those experiences.

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“Going it Alone”

I spent a lot of time mentally and spiritually preparing to spend 4-5 months out in the woods and tripping on psychedelics regularly. That means that I tripped a lot in the months leading up to my separation from civilization in April. Those of you who have followed me on the Nexus or Shroomery may have read my trip reports from that time. I would meticulously document the dose of mushrooms or DMT and how that dose affected me. I’d also try to repeat each dose experiment. So for example, I’d eat 2.5 grams in silent darkness on an empty stomach, then a week later I’d try to replicate those circumstances as closely as possible and try to compare the two experiences as a means by which to know exactly what I could get out of each dose. This was so that when I got on trail I could titrate each individual trip to the conditions that were at hand.

During much of this time I was with my little brother. My little brother and I grew very close during the four or five months leading up to departing for the PCT and we shared a lot of psychedelic experiences during this time. Unfortunately, (and I will remain brief here like I have earlier in this document) we had a severe falling out just before leaving for the trail (about 3 weeks before the trail). In short, he got involved with a girl and he completely turned into a new person. He went out and bought a gun and threatened me with it. I was completely shocked and hurt in a way that few people have ever hurt me before. To make a long story short however, it was decided that I did not feel safe hiking with him anymore and I *certainly* didn’t feel safe having psychedelic experiences with him out in the woods when I now knew that he was capable of such a terrible thing. So I decided that if I was still going to undertake this journey that I’d been preparing for over a year, then I had to do it alone.

This was a challenge of its own because all of the preparation that I’d done in terms of tripping, or at least the majority of it in the preceding 4-5 months had been with the support of my little brother. We were going to do this together. That made a huge difference. Now however I’d be out in nature alone (something that I was comfortable with) but for me to try and go into entheo-space alone while out in the woods was a completely different ballgame. It was going to be a lot more challenging. So this turned out to be a very major variable for why I was not able to trip out on the trail nearly as much as I had wanted to. I had a lot of anxiety whenever I did try tripping because I no longer had his support. I also had a lot of animosity for the betrayal that he showed me and that led me to have anxiety.

During the entire journey however I wore a necklace with a little mushroom on it, and that reminded me of the two online communities that I’ve shared my experiences with (the Nexus and Shroomery). I knew that even though I didn’t have my little brother to go through this with me, at least I had those of you online who I’d be reporting back to once it was done.

And so I must confess that there was never a single time on trail where I tripped without considerable apprehension, anxiety, and… well… fear. It was hard to surrender to the great unknown, but I *knew* that I would be coming back to these online forums with stories to tell, and if all that I did out there was hike the Pacific Crest Trail and carry these entheogenic agents with me the entire time without consuming them that I’d be letting all of you down and that I’d be letting myself down. So what I found myself doing was going as long as I could excusably go and then I’d plan and execute a trip. I wish that I could have had more heavy trips and I wish I could have had more trips all together, but I am grateful for every single one that I did follow through with even if they weren’t as plentiful or as deep as I’d hoped when I sat beside a fire with my friend a year before and planned it out under the influence of LSD.

I envisioned that I might be able to undertake a psychedelic experience once every 7-14 days when I planned everything out before starting the PCT. In the end I was on trail for 124 days and I undertook 15 psychedelic experiences. So I was able to stick with that goal, but most of the time I was not able to go as deep as I would like to be able to report. I did however have some really profound experiences while I was out there though and I came away with some truly incredible insights that apply to my life. And that’s what I want to document in the trip reports that will follow.

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“My First Trip: DMT”

I had been on the PCT for a week when I undertook my first psychedelic experience on trail. From the very first day I knew that it would be more challenging to take psychedelics than I wanted for it to be, but during those first 150 miles the thought of what my backpack contained never left my mind. It sort of became a burden to have been out there for a full 7 days and still I had not entered the spirit world.

An ideal opportunity presented itself at this point on the trail though. Although the PCT starts mostly in the desert, there was a mountain at this point. Also, there was a closure on the trail that required hikers to take one of two options: 1) skip this section by hitchhiking around, which most of the hikers did or 2) hike all the way up this mountain to the closure, then take a detour back down the mountain, road-walk for about 16 miles, then hike back up the other side of the mountain. Obviously option 2 took a lot more work, but I had dedicated myself to walking a 100% continuous path from border to border, so skipping wasn’t an option.

The reason that this became an ideal place for my first psychedelic experience was because firstly it was the first time that the trail really rose up from the desert floor to a point of almost 8,000 feet where it was not only extremely beautiful, but it was also much cooler. The desert heat had become a bother to me in that first week and I could see how it would be possible for me to sit in the southern California sun and shmoalk a bowl of changa up on that mountain for the first time since starting this hike. Secondly this was an ideal place to trip because most of the other trail hikers weren’t on this part of the trail; they just hitched around to the end of the trail closure, so I mostly had the trail to myself.

On the way up the mountain I decided that the top of this mountain would be my first psychedelic experience on trail and that it would be on DMT.

When I arrived at the top there was actually someone there. It was a girl who was laying in the shade of a tree and writing. I found it odd that someone would have been up there, but at the same time, it was quite a scenic place, so I couldn’t blame her much. She told me that she kind of liked hiking until mid day and then taking a nap or a writing for a couple of hours. She didn’t seem like any threat to me, and I told her that I was just going to wander off a little ways and meditate.

For those of you who don’t already use the “Oh, I’m just going to go meditate” excuse when you’re actually going to go trip, it’s a MUST! People will leave you alone and they won’t question why you’re just sitting by yourself off in the woods. And if they do see you shmoalk, unless you’re using a crack-pipe, they’ll think that it’s just bud.

So that’s what I did. I went off the trail a little ways to a place where I was completely isolated. No one would have wandered over there to disturb me unless they were looking for a secluded place to take a dump, but since I knew that most hikers weren’t on this section of trail, I knew that I’d be safe.

I was nervous though. It would be the first time on trail that I had just let go, but I knew that it was also the reason that I’d come out there in the first place, and so I had to follow through.

I sat down in a patch of bushes looking out to the east and I tried to calm myself. I did sort of meditate there for awhile. I closed my eyes and really focused on my breathing. After a few minutes I took out my “equipment” and looked at it for a moment. “Crystal or changa?” I thought. I decided that I’d try to use the crystal. Unfortunately, since I didn’t have a torch lighter, I wasn’t able to get the pipe to melt the product down well enough and so I resorted to packing a small bowl of changa.

I meditated again for a few minutes with the changa pipe in one hand and my lighter in the other. I was extremely nervous… I get anxious/excited just thinking back on it.

After a few minutes I opened my eyes and tried to do a separation-of-body-from-mind sort of thing that I learned works best when I’m about to take a DMT dose. I just broke it down into actions and tried to forget the potential that was in my hands. Pipe to mouth. Lighter to bowl. Flame to product. And just inhale.

I took one hit first and held it in for about seven seconds before letting it out. I closed my eyes and felt that feeling that I had become so used to. I describe it like having a blanket thrown over me from behind. It’s a blanket of anesthetic and sort of numbs away all my anxiety. Colors brightened a bit and I instantly remembered why I had decided to embark on this mission in the first place. I sat with that feeling for a minute or two, and then I took a second hit—this time it was larger and I held it for longer.

When I let out the hit I opened my eyes and watched the smoke as I pushed it out of my lungs and it dissipated in the air in front of me. The world began to change. The colors brightened, and then I could suddenly recognize the alive-ness of the plant life around me. It was like the trees and bushes were no longer plants but watchful animals. I could *feel* their eyes on me, and they changed in their form. They looked and felt different. They didn’t really speak to me as I have had trees sort of do when I have been in deeper DMT states, but I could absolutely feel their awareness of my presence. It was sort of like I was sitting there in this mountain-top shrubbery and all the plants around me were knowing, druid-sorts of creatures. They all looked down at me, not in a condescending way, but in a way that reinforced my connection to all life and reminded me how subjective my perspective in the world really is. It was absolutely a perspective shift and a reaffirmation of why I wanted to come out into the wilderness with entheogenic plant medicines in the first place.

It was such a warm and pleasant experience. There was no element of fear whatsoever after I had taken the hit. It was a welcoming to this place and, like I said, a reminder of why I came out here on this mission to begin with.

I sat there with the trip for about ten minutes. I considered taking more, but in the end decided that this was all that I needed. I had miles to cover still that day before the sun went down, and really the purpose of this first trip was to test the waters. I didn’t need to breakthrough today. I just needed to remind myself what the DMT realm was and that it would be okay.

I accomplished that goal fully.

After coming down over the course of about ten minutes I packed my pipe and equipment away, threw my backpack back on, and made my way back to the trail. I could still feel the spirit molecule flowing through my system, but by the time that I made it back to the trail where that girl had been relaxing and writing I was fully “back” to this reality. I could feel a heavy afterglow though and an immense feeling of gratitude. It was going to be okay; I was going to be okay; the world was a beautiful place.

I talked with the girl a bit more and then headed back down the mountain on the detour trail. Throughout the remainder of that day I could feel a tangible after-glow that I always seem to get from psychedelics—especially from changa.

I camped that night under the stars and slept like a baby.

Continued...

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“My Second DMT Trip”

One thing that really prevented me from tripping as much as I wanted was the fact that the PCT is long. I mean really long. Like longer than anything that I’d even come close to hiking before. It stretches all the way across the United States from Mexico to Canada. That’s 2,650 miles! If you’re going to cover that many miles in a single season (the “season” is roughly April-October, give or take) then you need to cover a lot of miles every day. So as much as I would have liked to just sit down and spend a day eating mushrooms from sun up to sun down, if I wanted to make it to Canada, then miles needed to be my focus, even if I had come out here to eat psychedelics in conjunction with covering the trail. There was also peer pressure associated with that. Many people hike this trail every year, so although I hiked alone, I would see other hikers every day who were doing everything that they could to cover big miles. Most people aimed for around 20-25 miles a day, and with the weight of a backpack and the vertical changes that the trail is made up of, that means waking up before sunrise and basically hiking all day long until after sundown in most cases. There just isn’t time to sit down and trip. And when I would sit down, I was absolutely exhausted and really just needed to catch my breath, eat some food, drink some water, and then get back on the trail. It was hard to prioritize “tripping balls” over water, food, and air when it came to taking a break. Also the desert heat was intense, so I couldn’t really get comfortable enough to surrender to the psychedelic world.

That however is sort of what made DMT an ideal candidate for the desert; a trip didn’t need to be 12 hours like you get from LSD or 5 hours like you find with mushrooms. With DMT/changa I could sit down for a half hour or so and be completely done over the course of that time. So that is largely why I mostly stuck with DMT/changa during the desert portion of the trail. I’d break into the mushroom supply later on, but for the desert it needed to be a shorter trip.

So my second trip on DMT I planned out the day before. This was around mile 350 (give or take). I’d been on trail at this point for exactly two weeks, and it was really beginning to feel like my home.

I set up camp the night before out on a ridge overlooking a large desert stretch. There was a lot of brush all around but I was able to find an opening about 150 yards off trail where I had space to set up my tent, and I decided that first thing the next morning I would smoke changa. I set my alarm to wake up early so that the desert heat wouldn’t be intolerable yet. I also figured that I would have time to break down my camp, get everything ready for the trail, smoke the dose, then just throw my backpack on and start my miles. And that’s exactly what I did.

For this second trip I didn’t bother with the crystal. I knew that my lighter would just go out trying to use the crack-pipe (I’ll call it an “oil burner” from here on out), so I just went straight to the changa.

The desert had become lit by the time I sat down for the dose, but the sun had not yet broken the horizon. It was close though, and so I decided that I’d meditate to calm the butterflies in my stomach until the sun hit the horizon, which I did, although I must admit that it didn’t do much to ease my nervousness. I knew what DMT was capable of and so mostly I just wanted for the sun to hurry up so I could get it over with.

As soon as the bright desert sun peaked at the horizon I took five deep breaths and went to the pipe that was already prepared in my hand. I thought back to the trip that I’d taken a week before and the positive vibes that I’d collected from that experience, and I promised myself that it would be alright. If only I could have had someone there with me it could have been so much easier. The desert is a scary and unforgiving place. It was hard to completely surrender when I was so deep in it for so long.

I took the dose in two hits, breathing it in, holding it for ten or fifteen seconds, and then slowly letting it out of my lungs. This time I had that same “blanket thrown over me” feeling that I get from DMT, but I knew that this would be stronger. I breathed deeply and tried to relax as the trip came on. I closed my eyes and tried futilely to completely relax.

After the “come up” I arrived in a “place” behind my eyelids. I thought of that Shpongle song “Behind Closed Eyelids” as I witnessed an entity before me. This is a “place” that I’ve been before on DMT. One that isn’t fully broken through, but is absolutely in the spirit realm. Before me was what might be called a “gate keeper.” It was in the form of a snake. Not like a realistic snake that you’d see in nature necessarily, but a giant, coiled snake made up of psychedelic coloring and surrounded by blackness… like the blackness of the night sky when it’s filled with stars—not absolute and complete black, but mostly black with little specs of light—glimmering stars.

The entity/snake did not scare or threaten or startle me. Instead, like DMT also does to me, it welcomed me and comforted me. It was like looking into the eyes of an animal with protective glass between us. We both pondered one another and wondered what it all could mean. Who knows even still? What does anything that you experience on DMT mean?

The trip lasted for the predictable 7-10 minutes and just like the “snake/entity” had appeared before me, it dissolved back into the blackness. I opened my eyes and remembered the morning sun which was still not completely revealed over the horizon, but was nearly there. I could already feel the heat of the coming day and the breeze was beginning to pick up.

When the trip was over I smiled and took deep breaths. I silently thanked the molecule and the entity that I had confronted. It had reminded me much of my first DMT experience that had happened about a year before. It was warm, welcoming, real, and protective. This day I also felt tremendous after-glow as I got back on trail. Throughout the remainder of this day I was so grateful for having made the commitment to smoke DMT after my completion of two full weeks on trail.

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“Days on the Trail: Shmoalk *ALL* the Weed”

The desert was probably the hardest part of the four months that I was out there hiking—in other words the beginning. Although there are mountains in southern California, like I’ve discussed above, it’s mostly desert stretches and some of the most monotonous miles of the entire PCT. It has the least water too so hikers have to carry a lot of water from point to point which adds to the weight and foot pressure. There are crowds of other hikers in the first 200 miles to deal with as well. For so many reasons the start of the PCT is the hardest to deal with.

I’d wake up at 5am most mornings and try to have my tent broken down, my gear packed, and be hiking by 6:00. Every morning I’d brew coffee right away, make a small breakfast (usually just oatmeal or something like that), brush my teeth, and as soon everything was packed I’d sit down for just a minute or two to take care of my last piece of business before getting on trail. I’d take the little black bag out of the top of my backpack, look at the glowing horizon, and burn down a bowl of high-quality cannabis. The weed that I brought was the best of the best. I’d specifically saved up my stock for about eight months an I had a collection that amounted to about 90% sativa and then I had a smaller collection that was about 10% of my stock that was indica used exclusively for getting to sleep at night.

I wouldn’t admit this to the world at large, but to the Nexus and Shroomery I don’t mind confessing that I was basically stoned all day, every day for four months. I’d smoke before hitting the trail every morning, and it’d be the last thing that I’d do almost every night before going to bed. Between the start and end of the day I’d smoke roughly 4-8 times. I smoked a lot… but I can’t say that I regret that at all.

I studied Eckhart Tolle a bit in the years before the trail, but the only real piece of his philosophy that I ever held onto was the idea of “now.” You need to live a life that is “in the now” but that is such a difficult thing to do. With weed however I was able to be in the now much more easily. I’d burn down, put in some headphones blasting entheo-tribal-earthy-electronica-psy-trance sorts of music and for the first two hours of my day I’d just float down the trail.

There is a certain simplicity to the life on the trail. It’s not that it’s at all *easier* than “the real world” but it absolutely is simpler. Everything you own fits into your backpack and your only real concerns can be counted on one hand: Food, water, miles, maps, and resupply. That’s basically all that there is to it. Sure there was the pressure of making sure you cover enough miles every day, but I was in good shape even at the start of the trail (trained a lot before starting the PCT), so as long as I didn’t sleep in and I stayed on my feet all day I was able to get the miles I needed.

As long as I woke on the trail, spent the whole day on the trail, and went to sleep on the trail I found that there was no excuse to cover fewer than 30 miles. If I were to resupply that day or if I’d slept in a trail-town the night before, then I usually got later starts or earlier finishes to the day and in those cases I’d only cover around 20 miles. But still, it goes to show that life was simple out there. Just smoke weed and cover miles. I’d always hear Dr.Dre play in my head at the beginning of each day saying “Hey, hey, hey, hey—smoke weed every day.”

There was that documentary called “Super High Me” that was produced around 2010 where a dude smokes weed every day for a month straight. Well I wasn’t ever all that impressed because I knew plenty of people who did that as a part of their every day life. But on the trail it was different. Like I already said, I basically smoked 6-8 bowls of high-potency weed from sun up to sun down. I was literally high every day for 124 days.

Here’s what I found on trail as it specifically applies to weed: Sativa made the hiking very enjoyable, and if I put on the right music with it (Shpongle, Kaminanda, or Plantrae) I could almost produce a psychedelic experience of its own. Hard to explain, but it was definitely kin to tripping. The weed also helped to block the pain in my feet and lower back. When you’re covering that many miles each day the plain and honest truth is that it hurts—a lot. A lot a lot. But the weed helped with that. It also helped keep me “in the moment” like I mentioned earlier rather than worrying about the fact that I’d been on trail for let’s say 20 days and I still had over 2,000 miles of trail ahead of me. That was just too daunting, but when I’d smoke it up I was able to just think about how beautiful everything was around me and not worry about the future.

I also found old Terrence McKenna lectures to be an important part of almost every day that I hiked on trail. I know that many of you are probably familiar with “The Psychedelic Saloon” podcast, but if you’re not, I *must* recommend it! It has hundreds of McKenna lectures for your listening pleasure. I first discovered those podcasts/lectures when I first started taking mushrooms and I loved that Terrence was able to go right past the “hey, let’s get weird and eat some shrooms dude” and go directly to the “Okay, what does this all mean and how can we use these plant teachers to better understand ourselves and the universe?” It was an intellectual approach to psychedelics, and that really resonated with me. In a lot of ways, that’s what led me down this path of undertaking the “Psychedelic Pacific Crest Trail” in the first place.

So I had literally listened to every one of the Terrence McKenna lectures that have been posted into “The Psychedelic Saloon” even before hiking the PCT. That’s literally hundreds of lectures! But I really wanted to listen to them again while I was on the trail. And so that’s what I did. Like I said, I would usually wake up in the morning, eat a light breakfast with coffee, break down my camp, and right before hitting the trail I’d burn some down and turn on some trippy earth-music. I’d hike to that for a few hours usually (two or three) and then stop for a real breakfast to get some calories in my body. THEN I’d usually smoke another bowl and turn on a Terrence McKenna lecture and listen to those until noon or so.

Those McKenna lectures really kept me motivated down the psychedelic path. A lot of times I’d get afraid to stop and have a deep trip or want to put it off or think to myself, “ah, what does the psychedelic thing even matter? Maybe I should just put that aside and cover miles like everyone else who’s out here.” But then I’d listen to McKenna and he really reminded me that this was about self discovery and understanding of the meaning of the universe through the use of plant entheogens. So I found that to be a very useful tool. I guess you could even say that, to put my four-month adventure in a brief synopsis, it was: Hiking 2,650 miles under the influence of psychedelics, cannabis, and Terrence McKenna. That’s how I envisioned it before starting the journey, and that’s really what it turned out to be as well.

The downside of the smoking so much really only came at the end of the trail, and it wasn’t anything long-term. What I found after about 3 months of this smoking all day every day routine was that my memory became absolutely fried. Maybe it had to do with the nature of the trail as well but I would literally forget where I’d started every day. I wrote every single night on the trail (my trail journal became my most prized possession within about a month), so that helped me to track things from day to day, but I would often find myself at around 2:00 in the afternoon just hiking along and I’d say to myself, “hey, where did you wake up this morning?” I would think about it for a moment, then realize that I couldn’t remember. Sometimes it would take up to five minutes for me to really put everything together and remember my campsite and last resupply location. I sort of found that kind of funny in its own way, but I do want it documented here that smoking that much weed for that long of a period of time absolutely had a tangible effect on my memory.

After the trail I stopped smoking weed completely. I had thought about abstaining from time to time on trail, but I had become in such a routine and my backpack was literally filled with weed (always within reach), so I couldn’t bring myself to stopping during the hike. Once I got done with the hike though, I stopped cold turkey. And I had absolutely NO withdrawal effects. If anything, I found stopping the weed smoking to be incredibly easy. It was like I hadn’t been on the “binge” in the first place. Nothing could have been easier.

So my advice to anyone who might be thinking of taking such an adventure for themselves: “Hey, hey, hey, hey—Shmoalk weed er’y day!”

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“The Reset Button: Why I was Doing This”
I had a lot of time on trail to ask myself what the purpose of all this tripping was supposed to be. I knew what it was about when I conceived of it all, but now that I was out there, I had to really think long and hard about it. Was I just out there to have fun? I think the answer to that was pretty clearly “no,” because I never found tripping to be a “pleasurable” thing. In fact, as I’ve briefly discussed already, I would go a week without tripping and only at that point would I say to myself, “Okay, ScientificMethod, you came out here to explore entheo-space, so if you’re going to do it, then you have to actually follow through with it.” And when I did trip, I was never really excited to do it. It felt more like a chore, although “chore” isn’t really the right word either. Instead, it was a mission that I was on, and I didn’t find it to be easy. I sometimes thought about DMT as a sort of Pandora’s Box. Each time I opened it I would learn something about myself and the universe, but consequently, the lid became heavier after each trip. Yeah, the first time I ever tripped on DMT was hard because I knew that it would be the most intense trip of my life, but every time *after* that it just became more difficult. Even to this day I find that every trip I take is more challenging to embark on than the last. You’d think that after getting to know the DMT-realm it would actually become easier to make that trip, but it’s really turned out to be the opposite for me. Each trip is harder to take than the last.

I’ve though long and hard about why that is, and this is my best explanation: There are no words that we can put onto the DMT experience to fully describe it—even to ourselves. Even after we’ve been through many DMT trips, we can’t put words to it accurately enough to know what we’re getting into. I mean, yeah, we can say, “there’s the come-up when things start to get trippy, and there’s a body high, then the energy around us starts to focus, then we reach the ‘chrysanthemum’ then we break through that to this strange chamber of ‘machine elves’” but does that really encompass it? I think not. I think that those are just metaphors. No words can really describe what the psychedelic experience actually is, and so that unknown can be scary. And maybe that’s why the lid of the metaphorical Pandora’s Box that I describe becomes heavier with each trip. Because the more times you’ve had a DMT experience, the more capable you are of recognizing just how intense they can be. But somehow you still can’t know what to expect.

“So what’s the point?” I’d ask myself while I was out there. Why trip again and again and again? Aren’t you just getting the same thing out of it each time? Of course, to those of you familiar with DMT and with mushrooms, you know that it’s not just the same experience every time. Like the saying goes, “you can never swim in the same river twice.” Every time you go into those “places” you see and experience something different. And sometimes it’s *vastly* different.

What I finally settled on as a good explanation for why I was doing all this tripping out in the wilderness was this: DMT allows us to see a reality that we cannot see in the sober state (yes, I know that I’m looking past the argument that you can experience a DMT trip “on the natch,” but I want to try and keep it simple here). Since there are no ways to fully encapsulate the psychedelic experience into words, the memory of the experience fades with time. I’ve had many people in my life who I turned onto DMT who had completely mind blowing experiences, but then a week later they’re able to just sort of shrug it off. They can say, “man, that was just too weird, and I don’t know what to do with it, so I’m just going to pretend that it didn’t happen, or that it wasn’t real, or that it was *just a hallucination*.” I didn’t want that though; I wanted to really solidify the psychedelic experience in my mind.

So by “cleansing the doors of perception” regularly, it kept the realness of the psychedelic experience in my mind.

Consider this: Imagine that you were born blind and lived your whole life up to the age of 30 without ever experiencing sight. Sure, people would tell you that sight is a thing, but what does the blind man really know of sight? I propose that he knows nothing of it at all. But then imagine that you get to “open your eyes” and experience sight for the first time in your entire life. You experience that for 15 minutes, and then you go blind again.

Well, if this were to happen, surely it would be a world-rocking experience. You would understand reality in a completely new way. But if that was it and you never got to *see* again, then you’d probably file that “open eye” experience under the category of “something that happened a long time ago that was completely unbelievable, but ultimately not worth anything to me because it was so long ago and I can’t quite even remember what it was like.”

I feel like this acts as a pretty solid metaphor for the psychedelic experience. And by going out into nature and having these experiences again, and again, and again, and again, it forced me to confront the realness of it. It was like having regular reminders of why I was out on this journey in the first place. I wanted to “hit that button” over and over again to keep it fresh in my mind, and when I wasn’t in the psychedelic state, I wanted to be in nature so that I could try to integrate the experiences into my life while surrounded by what was natural. Remember what Terrence said: He told us that “culture is not your friend.” Well I don’t think that we can 100% eliminate culture from our lives, but by going out into nature on this four-month hike by myself, I was able to get as far away from culture as reasonably possible. And while away from culture, I wanted the psychedelic experience to be my influence.

So I hope that this explains just a bit more of why I wanted to undertake this four-month psychedelic journey. It wasn’t just about “woo, lets have some fun and trip balls!” Rather, it was, “let’s use these entheogenic tools as a means by which to remind myself what brought me out here in the first place.”
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... Continued.

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“Going Deeper: My first ‘Heavy’ Mushroom Trip on Trail”
I had been on trail for a thirty days before my first heavy mushroom trip on the Pacific Crest Trail. At that point I had consumed light doses of mushrooms three times (I only documented one of them above for the time being, but there were two others that I also experienced that largely mimicked the first). The first one had been going into Big Bear city (mile 250), the next was on my first day out of a resupply town called “Wrightwood,” and my third light dose trip was actually in one of the deepest desert section of the trail coming out of “Hiker Town.” I may write about the second and third mushroom trips at a later time, but for now I’m realizing that this text is becoming quite long and it would be best to just skip along to some of the more profound entheogenic experiences that I had during my four months on trail.

Long before this trip occurred I met another hiker who turned out to be the person who I would grow closest to on the entire trail. I want to take this opportunity to remind readers that although I am writing this story about what I did during those four months that the others involved did not sign up for the same confessional. As such, I have to remind readers that this character, like all others involved, is going to be portrayed as a composite. So do not take anything about him too literally. I will say about him what I can though.

His name was Tyler. We met just short of 200 miles into the PCT and although I planned to pass him right by, he quickly caught up with me and we started talking. This was odd because he was the first hiker who had really engaged in conversation with me. At first I thought that it was irritating because I just wanted to be left alone, but I quickly found that Tyler and I seemed to have a few things in common. We hiked together for a couple of hours, talking about this and that, but I was sort of in a rush to make miles that day because I was very close to out of food and I desperately needed to make it to my next resupply point which I intended to reach in the following day. Tyler did eventually catch up to me that evening again though and we started talking a bit more deeply.

He asked me about the glass necklace that I wore and I told him that it was a mushroom.

“A mushroom?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Like a psychedelic mushroom?”

I looked at him sideways and told him that, “Yes. A lot of the philosophies that I profess are a result of some deep psychedelic mushroom experiences that I’ve had in the preceding years.”

At first Tyler was quiet in response, but eventually, as the evening went on and we continued talking, he started alluding that he may have had similar experience with mushrooms. He wasn’t as open about his experience in psychedelics, but I had a feeling that this was just his personality—he wasn’t as open about them, but there was definitely something there below the surface.

Tyler and I did not really hike together much on the trail during that first month, but we did see one another from time to time and some nights we’d end up camping at the same location. As I got to know him a bit better I learned that he had served in the military for two tours, just like the friend who had first introduced me to psychedelics a couple of years before. I told Tyler about my other friend and he told me that he related well to this other friend’s experiences. He said that, like my other friend, he had found psychedelics as a means by which to deal with the terrible things that he’d been exposed to during his service with the military. He told me that after exiting the military he traveled to the Amazon and spent several seasons there. First he had gone to experience an ayahuasca ceremony, and the journey that he’d been through was so profound that he ended up staying in the jungles for quite some time—nearly a year. During that time he participated in many such ceremonies, some of which he felt important to keep to himself, and others he shared with me after we got to know one another a bit better. I got the feeling that he was more comfortable talking to me about these things because I had been so open to him about how psychedelics changed my life.

He ended up being the first (and one of the few) people who I told about the psychedelic contents of my backpack. Tyler told me that before the trips in the Amazon he had some experience with mushrooms, but DMT was another story. He’d never tried it, but he expressed that the trail might be an interesting place to experience such a journey for the first time. I agreed that I would be happy to have him join me for such a trip, although (spoiler alert) as it would turn out he and I would never end up doing so.

I tell you about Tyler however because he was the one person with whom I did have mushroom trips on trail with, and having that person to trip with made me feel a lot more comfortable when it did come time to “go deep” while out in the wilderness. As you’ll recall if you’ve read all of this extremely long text up to this point, the conception of the PCT hike was not to do it as a solo expedition. I intended to hike the trail with my little brother and the practice that I put into tripping before the trail had been with little brother by my side. After we had that falling out before the trail however, this made it where I no longer had someone who could be with me, and this caused me to have a lot of trepidation when it came to attempting to go deep.

I’ve already told you that the PCT starts in the desert. This desert section of southern California stretches all the way to a place called “Kennedy Meadows” where the High Sierra Mountains begin. This is a very major transition point on the trail, and this is where I felt quite obligated to make it a spiritual transition as well. I was hiking with Tyler when I reached a point 4 miles before “Kennedy Meadows.” A river flowed by the trail there, and there was an ideal camping sight just out of line of sight of the trail.

I told Tyler that we should use this location for our trip together and he agreed. So we rested that night and agreed that the next morning we would wake well before the sunrise and it we would both consume a dose of mushrooms. I had never tripped with Tyler before, so I insisted that he take a small dose, but I decided that I would be taking either 2.5 or 3 grams. Up to this point I had only taken ½ gram doses (three of them), and I had found that in all of those cases the mushrooms were much more powerful than I was used to from prior experience. Had it not been for that strength of those earlier trips, I would have gone for 3.5-4 grams, but I didn’t want to overdo it when I was that far out in the wilderness.

The next morning my alarm sounded at 4am. It was still very dark and no moon was in the sky. It was only the stars. Tyler woke at that same time and walked over to my tent.

“If you take one, you’ll probably feel it, but it won’t be that much,” I told him. “If you take two, you should get pretty solid effects from what I’ve found on trail so far.”

“And if I take three?” he asked.

“You have experience?”

“Yes.”

And so I gave him 1.5 grams of mushrooms and I poured five of the half gram tabs for myself.

“Be sure that you dig a cat-hole before they kick in.” I told him.

“Why?”

“Just trust me,” I explained. “You don’t want them to rumble up your stomach and have to go dig a hole to crap in while you’re in the midst of the trip.” Unfortunately, this was a lesson that I’d learned the hard way one too many times in the past.

So Tyler went off to dig a place where he could do his morning business (I did the same about ten minutes later) while I brewed a cup of coffee and used that to wash down the 2.5 gram dose. I also decided that I would eat a Xanax. This was the first time that I’d used Xanax with mushrooms, but I figured that if there was ever a time that I needed to remain calm, this would be that time. It was a .5mg tab of Xanax and this turned out to be quite useful. It helped me with the come-up anxiety that I so often deal with.

For the first half hour or so nothing really happened, but then I could feel the effects begin to take place. I was still laying in my tent at that time and the horizon off in the distance was just beginning to glow with the promise of the morning sun. When I felt the first effects, I decided that I wanted to smoke a bowl to potentiate the dose. I had my morning smoke, and I exited my tent. I looked over to Tyler who was camped nearby, but he didn’t need to say anything. We made eye contact and he spoke telepathically. He was beginning to trip hard. He gave me a light nod of his head, and we both smiled at one another. They were clearly hitting him before they started to take effect on me fully.

I smile now even thinking back on him laying there in his sleeping bag, all curled up on the ground and staring off towards the glowing morning sky. I knew with absolute certainty that he knew how to handle his trip—unlike some people who I’d tripped with in the past, unfortunately—and I was so happy that he was there to give me the bravery to take a heavier dose for the first time on trail.

I walked over to the river that was near both of our tents and I sat beside its flowing waters. I had tripped a time or two beside flowing waters in the past and found that water was one of my favorite things under the psychedelic experience, so I knew that this would be an ideal place for me to let the trip take over.

The air was cold beside the river so I wrapped myself in my sleeping bag. Normally I would have been worried about getting my bag dirty, as it was such an important part of my hiking gear, but as the mushroom started to settle in fully, it felt sort of funny to worry about getting a little bit of dust on some camping gear. I suddenly wondered if this should have been taken as a sign that I wasn’t “seeing things clearly” and that maybe I should just go lay down in my tent lest another hiker off in the distance see me acting strange. It was still so early in the morning however that it seemed unlikely that anyone else would be on trail, so I just settled beside the river and wrapped the sleeping bag around me.

I found the waters to be calming. Tripping next to water is a dangerous thing for someone who is as fond of metaphor and symbolism as I am. I thought about how the waters are like life in their own way, and I wondered if water and time are equally as undividable. This is something that’s worked its way into my mind on a number of occasions—how small a unit time can be divided into. For example, we all are familiar with the medium of film, and that in a movie individual frames (or moments, if you like) are spliced together to produce the illusion of movement. I wondered as I looked down at the flowing waters if time itself can possibly be broken down into individual units or if it is more like the river before me. I mean, I guess that you could go from river to drop to molecule of H2O, so perhaps time is the same? I don’t know—maybe it doesn’t matter at all, but it struck me as weird (and still does even in the sober state) that we are constantly living in this thing called the “present” but that we can’t really say what the present actually is. We know the past and we know the future, but these are really just illusions and the only thing that we can say is real for sure is the present, or what McKenna called “the felt presence of immediate experience.”

After fifteen or twenty minutes I began developing strong visuals as the sun started to come closer to the horizon and illuminate the river rocks. It wasn’t the twisty-bendy visuals that are so commonly associated with the psychedelic trip; rather, I was looking into the river rocks and seeing patterning that could not have been seen in a sober state. The best way that I can describe them would be to say that it was like native American pottery or Egyptian hieroglyphics. They didn’t really move, but they did seem to communicate something. It was as if there was writing carved into the stone of a type that I had never seen before and that it would have been futile to try and decipher. Perhaps the sole purpose of it was to communicate beauty and remind me how beautiful the world can be.

The visuals in the rocks were what I remember most from this mushroom trip, but I could only go so far in pulling “meaning” out of the rock designs. And ultimately that’s what I personally look for in the psychedelic experience—I want to know more about myself and the world around me. One theme that expresses itself in all trips however, especially those in nature, is a connectedness with the natural world. I looked into the flowing water and the rock faces of nearby mountains and felt like this was indeed where I needed to be. I had been on trail for a month at this point and it had felt like such a long time; and during that time there was so much pain and suffering from desert heat, dry stretches, foot pain, exhaustion, hunger, and longing for friends and family. In this moment beside the river however, I felt very at peace with everything and it acted as a strong reminder of why I had come out on this journey. I guess that all of my trips on trail acted as enforcers like that.

The main “theme” that I took out of this trip—it’s hard for me to say that “theme” is the right word here, but it’ll have to suffice for the time being—was about the killing of a police officer near where I lived before the trail. I wrote about this in a previous trip report, but in short, what happened is that a young police officer was shot and killed by a kid who was just as young; then right after the kid had killed the officer, he turned the gun on himself. Both of them were in their mid-twenties and both died that day only about three miles from where I was living at the time. I can’t explain it really, but that killing had a profound effect on me. Not long after, I got a large tattoo on my body that memorialized that event—it isn’t the scene of the murder or anything like that, but it represents that event to me.

I sort of relived that experience while I was beside the river there. It reminded me of the futility of life juxtaposed with the importance, beauty, and (dare I say) necessity of life. Ah--the coincidentia oppositorum! Now *that’s* the meaning of it all. Or at least that’s what the psychedelic experience tells me.

The trip started to get a little heavy at this point. I wasn’t necessarily overwhelmed, but I was starting to get there, and another thing occurred to me, which is that since I was beside a river in such a beautiful place it was likely that other hikers would be coming down to this river here to filter water. And I was *not* in a state where I could be interacting with others on a social level, so I decided that I needed to retreat back to my tent where I felt more safe. At least that way if another hiker saw me laying there they’d just think that I was sleeping.

On my way back to my tent I looked over to Tyler who was still laying in his sleeping bag looking up at the sky and watching the leaves in the trees. His eyes were very wide, but I could see that he was in a pleasant place mentally. We did not share words.

When I went into my tent my experience was a closed-eye journey from that point forward. I was tripping very hard, much harder than I’m used to from that dose, but that seemed to be the case with all the entheogen-experiences that I underwent on the PCT. Behind my eyelids I distinctively remember scenes of shifting machine-like gears and technology. It was a “black” world in terms of color, but not in terms of tone (I mean that it wasn’t foreboding or anything like that). I couldn’t get a lot of meaning from the trip once I went into my tent though. It was just visual hallucination behind my eyelids. That lasted for probably another hour and a half, but I’ll cut short describing it any more fully, as I don’t think that there was much of a takeaway and additionally, it would be hard for me to put words to what I witnessed behind my closed eyes; it was just a world of warping fractals and alien archetypes… impossible to describe in words.

I decided to come out of my tent once I realized that Tyler had gotten out of camp and was making breakfast. When I came out and talked to him he spoke about the trip in past tense, and I took this to mean that he was no longer under its influence. The trip had started faster for him and it had also finished earlier than it had for me. I was still tripping quite a bit, but I could feel that I was coming down mostly, so we collectively decided to break down our camp and hike to “Kennedy Meadows” where we’d stay for the day and rest with some other hikers before starting the Sierra portion of the trail in the coming day.

I must admit that I had trouble with breaking down my camp and packing it all into my backpack. Since I was still tripping everything seemed just a little bit off, so I felt like I was forgetting something or that… I don’t know… just that something wasn’t quite right. I felt much better once I got onto the trail though, because from there all that I had to do was put one foot in front of the other and wander through nature for a couple of hours. It was quite beautiful and I was very pleased with it all.

That was about the end of the experience for me. I will note that Tyler had trouble the rest of the day; he just felt down and groggy. I wasn’t sure that it was from the mushrooms, but he seemed to think that it was and he told me that he felt the same on the following day. For me I just felt a strong afterglow for the rest of the day and into the next.

The next morning I slept in at “Kennedy Meadows,” had an early lunch and then started my hike out of the desert and into the High Sierra Mountains which would not only turn out to be the most beautiful part of the hike, but also the 300-mile stretch where I’d consume the most psychedelics.
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“Full Moon & A Stomach Full of Mushrooms”

The High Sierras were nothing short of beautiful, just like everyone who’d hiked the trail before had told me. Before the Sierras the Pacific Crest Trail is largely composed of desert stretches punctuated by mountains and forests, but after reaching that 700 mile marker, things change quickly. The trail immediately climbs out of the low-lands of southern California and directly up to 8,000 feet elevation. From there it’s mountain pass after mountain pass for several hundred miles. The desert is replaced by snowcapped mountains and jagged highland peaks. To be honest however, it would be silly for me to even try to explain them here. That section of the trail that is collectively known as “the High Sierras” is just beyond what I can explain right now. You really just have to see it for yourself.

It’s a turning point in the trail though, like I mentioned before, and after my first deep mushroom trip just before the Sierras, I was excited for another. I told the other hiker with whom I’d tripped by the Kern River that I was considering tripping under the full moon. He told me that’s only a few days away, and I acknowledged that I already knew that, but that I was ready to actually follow through with my plan of making this summer on the PCT not just about covering miles but also about discovering something deeper and exploring consciousness as much as the trail itself.

Tyler and I separated after Kennedy Meadows though, and I did not see him for a long time after that. In fact, I suspected for some time that we’d never meet again.

I had shoe issues that were causing severe foot problems at this point on the trail, so on my third day in the High Sierras I took a side-trail out of the mountains so that I could get new shoes. I rested in that town for one day, staying at a local hostel, and then headed out. While I was in that town I checked the maps for places that might make for a good location for my next mushroom experience. The full moon would be that night following my rest in the town, so I started out early with my sights set on a place that the map identified as “Chicken Spring Lake.” The name was not all that exciting, but from the maps, it looked to be just far enough off trail that I might be able to find some solitude, and even if there were a few campers, I thought, I could walk around the shore of the lake to find some place without anyone around.

I hiked throughout that day back into the High Sierras and it was absolutely beautiful! My spirit was high, and I even found one meadow where I thought about consuming DMT, but I had decided that I wanted to have an experience under the light of the full moon, and so I waited. I had an experience in the months prior where I smoked a light dose of DMT the night before a mushroom trip and it clearly presented a cross-tolerance issue. As such, I decided to hold off on the spirit molecule and just put my energy into the mushrooms that evening.

When I arrived at Chicken Spring Lake it was even more stunning than I had expected. It was really more like a very large pond, quite circular in shape, and all around it on three sides were these massive cliff faces. They rose up for probably 1,500 feet creating this almost crater-like shape in the mountain, and at the base of those cliffs was the lake itself. The water was crystal clear and barely any wind rolled through that area because of the protection from the cliffs.

To my dismay there were a few other hikers already set up and camped at the lake itself, but as I scanned around the shore, I could see a spot on the far end of the waters that was far away from anyone else. I also figured that if anyone saw my tent set up over there that they’d leave me alone; hopefully they’d be able to see that I walked all that way to get away from the other hikers. Later on in my hike of the PCT I had multiple occasions when I mentioned to people that I spent the night of the full moon beside the shore of Chicken Spring Lake and they’d tell me that they too were at that lake for the full moon but that they don’t remember me being there. I’d smile and tell them that I walked around the back side of the lake and they’d always say, “That was you? We were all wondering who in the f*ck would walk all that way around there for a campsite. No one could figure it out.” And then I’d proceed to say something along the lines of, “Yeah, I wanted some solitude so I could eat psychedelics.” Needless to say, I was fairly open about my mission on this trail after I got to the 700 mile mark. I was still cautious depending on who I was speaking with, but for the most part I wasn’t too worried about people learning that I had a proclivity for tripping fairly often during my months on the Pacific Crest Trail.

I walked around to the back of the lake and set my tent up as far away from the waterline as possible (because of regulation that required all campsites to be at least 100ft away from the water). When I started setting up camp I ate ½ milligram of Xanax. The anxiety medication seemed to have helped me in my last trip, and for this one I knew that I’d be going a bit deeper (or at least trying to do so) and that since I didn’t have anyone with me it might not be a bad idea to have some help in staying chill. I decided that as soon as the Xanax started to take effect that I’d eat my mushroom dose and then eat another ½ milligram of the Xanax to ease with the come-up that I so often struggle with.

This turned out to be an absolutely perfect cocktail and it became probably the most pleasant psychedelic experience of the entire PCT. I won’t say that it was the most profound or meaningful (because that honor goes to a trip that I took almost 1,000 miles later), but it was by far the most pleasant.

I ate the first Xanax at about 5pm, then 20 minutes later I ate a full 3 grams of mushrooms and another ½ milligram of Xanax. The effects of the mushrooms started fairly quickly, but they hit me right as the second Xanax started to chill me out, so I found myself to be very calm. I walked down to the waterline of the lake and sat down with my back up against an old log. There were a few bugs crawling around so I decided to put on some rain pants and my long-sleeved shirt for protection. I didn’t expect that they’d bite me, but they did sort of bother me a bit. I spent that first half hour rolling two joints… or I should say *trying* to roll two joints that turned out to be incredibly terrible, but better than nothing. It turned out to be a good way to pass the time at least. Then when the half hour mark hit, I promptly smoked them both down and from that point forward in the evening I was in a place that can only be called “Wonderland.” The water was so beautiful and clear. I wanted with my all to jump in or at least wade around a little bit, but it was ice cold. There were some people on the other side of the lake who were jumping in, but I think that it was mostly a dare sort of thing because it was barely above freezing temperatures.

Soon after the peak of the mushroom trip began to settle in, the sun started to fade behind the massive cliff walls that I wrote about earlier. It was still well before dark, but the cliff walls were so high that they obscured the view of the late afternoon sun. I hadn’t thought about that before starting my trip and although it caused me a bit of anxiety to be losing that little comfort from the sun’s warmth, I was really calm still because of the Xanax. At this point I also had the brilliant idea to walk around the lake and follow the sun. So I’d walk for five minutes away from the shadow of the cliffs and I’d sit there watching the water and the sand and the birds, and then when the shadow reached me again I’d move another five minutes forward. I did this several times before finally giving up and realizing that the shadow from the cliffs was about to take up the entire area. So I surrendered to the fact that all things are temporary, including this day and the light of the sun on this lake. The William Blake quote that Terrence McKenna so often mentions rang very true for me that day. He said that “Nothing lasts, but nothing is lost.” It’s a simple idea, but it’s so important, and in the midst of that trip, it felt more true and real than anything else in the entire world. I thought back to my last mushroom trip earlier that same week and how I had spent some time contemplating the death of a police officer near my home town. His life had been temporary, but something came of his time on the earth—something unquantifiable, but still as real as the sand and rocks under my shoes that afternoon.

This theme of “nothing lasts” became the defining characteristic of this mushroom trip beside the shore of Chicken Spring Lake. I thought about how the sun couldn’t last today and how the day would turn into tomorrow, and even this long backpacking trip that I was really still only in the beginning of, how it would end too. That was such a shift in perspective because at that point I’d been out on trail for about 40 days and that time felt like an eternity. Any time I would think about being out for 2,650 miles it just overwhelmed me and felt like an impossibility. For the first time however, while under the influence of these mushrooms, I could see with absolute certainty how the hike itself would only be temporary. Nothing would last, but just as importantly, nothing would be lost. Something would come of this experience beside Chicken Spring Lake and something would come of my journey of the PCT as a whole. Sitting there that afternoon, I really couldn’t conceive of what that something might turn out to be, but I knew that it would happen, and in all likelihood it would be bigger than me or my ability to conceive.

After the sun set behind the cliffs there was still about an hour of light before dark, and I spent that time wandering around the lake shore in an absolutely blissful state of mind. The trip wasn’t extremely powerful, but it was undeniably strong and I could tell that it was the strongest that I’d experienced so far on trail. Everything was so unambiguously beautiful! The water, the cliffs, the snow off in the distance, and the trees that scattered the shore of the lake. The trees were all so old and weathered from being up in that cold environment for so long. They were like no trees that I’d ever seen. Many of them had fallen over and looked like driftwood, carved by time and wind and rain. I tried to even conceive how old they must have been before they died and how long they’d rested there after their death before I wandered upon them that evening. “Ah,” I thought to myself, “See—nothing lasts. Not even the oldest of these trees. Not even these mountains will last forever. Everything dies and fades away into something else. Everything is changing, and it’s only our being stuck in our given perspective that prevents us from seeing that temporariality.” I thought about how people identify with what they have and how even our belongings won’t last. Nothing lasts. It all fades away. And with time, even we will fade away; our lives are even temporary.

For some time I laid down on one of those giant fallen trees. I laid down with my back against its trunk and looked directly up at the sky. There were just a couple of wispy clouds against the blue sky and I watched them contently as they morphed and changed from one shape to another. They were so beautiful. Many an hour have I spent under the influence of psychedelics looking up at the clouds in the sky, but it had been a long time since I’d done it like this, and I found myself thinking back to those other trips in my past where the clouds were so beautiful and mystifying.

When it started to get dark I could feel the trip starting to wear off. I still tripped well into the evening, but the peak was subsiding and it was beginning to become cold very quickly, so I wandered back around the lake towards my tent. Near the tent, but closer to the water I had laid out a ground cloth to sprawl out on. I brought my sleeping bag out there and laid down in the bag while I had a small bite of food. I’d been very hungry because I try to make it a point to enter mushroom trips on a fairly empty stomach. Although I’d eaten a few dried bananas with the mushrooms, I needed something more after the whole day of hiking that it took to get to Chicken Spring Lake.

As I was eating something caught my eye off in the distance near the eastern horizon. At first I didn’t know what it was—perhaps someone with a headlamp or the flash of a camera, but I quickly discovered that it was something that I’d completely forgotten about in the preceding hours; it was the rising of the full moon! The whole reason that I’d decided that I was going to trip on this evening was spurred by the fact that the full moon would be filling the night sky. It felt fitting. I remembered Terrence talking about how in ancient civilization (or perhaps I should say “pre-civilization”) people would trip by the full moon, and so it felt so fitting for me to follow in that tradition. I only wish that I could put into words the peace and calm that I felt in that moment as the trip began to subside and the moon rose while I munched on dehydrated food from my backpack stash. I also smoked a bowl when I got back near my camp and it made me feel so wonderful. Body and mind were one and both were in a perfect place.

This ranked amongst the most pleasant psychedelic experiences that I’ve ever had in my entire life. It was meaningful, beautiful, pleasant, peaceful, and it once again solidified why I came out on this backpacking trip in the first place. From time to time on trail I’d start to wonder if this was all really such a good idea, but without fail whenever I completed a trip I knew that it was the right path. Even that day I had hiked with a degree of anxiety on my way to Chicken Spring Lake, but after the trip all was well. I spent some time journaling that night about the trip itself and about my hike.

The next morning I slept in (something that I rarely did on trail) and continued on deeper into the High Sierras towards my next psychedelic experience which would take place three days later—a DMT trip at the very summit of Mt. Whitney, the tallest point in the lower 48 United States.
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... Continued

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“High Up On A Mountain”

The High Sierras were quickly becoming the truly psychedelic portion of my hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. I had the amazing experience (2.5g) beside the Kern River the day before entering the mountains, then five days later at Chicken Spring Lake (3g) I went just a bit deeper and had an experience of beauty and wonder that will be with me for the rest of my life. It was one of those trips that I look back on and remember why I want to stay alive in this world. I think that I’ve already mentioned in this writing (much earlier) that I have historically dealt with severe depression, but through psychedelics I’ve found many reasons to stay alive and really embrace living. This was true to such an extent that I tattooed the psilocybin molecule on my body in a place where I see it every day. It reminds me that even when I’m in dark and depressing places, that I have experienced the beauty in life and that the potential for happiness is real.

Three days after that trip at Chicken Spring Lake I reached the literal high point of the Pacific Crest Trail. The PCT doesn’t actually climb Mt. Whitney, but it does pass about 8 miles from the summit and most thru-hikers take the 16 mile round trip detour so that they can reach the highest point in the lower 48 United States. I knew from even before I started the PCT that I too would be one of the people to take that detour. What I was not sure about however was whether or not I would use that opportunity to consume psychedelics in line with my mission along the trail.

It had only been three days since my trip at Chicken Spring Lake, and I knew very well that I wouldn’t eat mushrooms up there, but there was a part of me that was tempted to bring my DMT with me, and so that’s what I did. I didn’t know for sure if I’d actually use it up on that summit, but I wanted to keep that option open. If nothing else then I at least wanted to say that I carried the stash with me to the mountain top.

I hiked 5 miles in on that side trail and camped at Guitar Lake. Then at 3am the next morning I woke up and started climbing up towards the summit of Mt. Whitney. It was pitch black when I woke, but I wanted to be one of the few who gets to see that high point at sunrise.

So I hiked for several hours until reaching the summit at 14,600 feet. I knew that it would be pretty up there, but I really underestimated just how beautiful it would be. I was stunned. Never in my entire life have I ever seen a sunrise as beautiful as that. It was extremely cold up there and much of the summit was blanketed in snow, but it was still so worth making the extra effort to get up there.

There were a few other hikers at the summit when I reached it—maybe 4 or 5 of them, and so I wasn’t really sure if I’d smoke the DMT, but as I sat up there and took in the view, I started leaning towards taking a toke of my changa. I was hesitant, but I knew that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I thought to myself that I would possibly be the first person in history to consume DMT at that point on the mountain.

Now let me take a moment here to address what is probably an obvious concern for anyone reading this—the danger of what I was getting into. It is really not ever recommended that someone use psychedelics in dangerous settings such as in a river or beside a cliff. I read one story on the Nexus last year (it still haunts me today) about a guy who was vaping DMT while wading through a river one morning by himself and he was found dead by his friends later that morning. Apparently he had passed out (I can see how this could have happened) and drowned before he had an opportunity to regain consciousness. I’ll refrain from going much further into that story now, suffice to say that I was and am very knowledgeable about the risks associated with what I was doing up there on that day, and really the risk at a macroscopic level of attempting to walk from Mexico to Canada and trip as often as I did. I would really never advocate that anyone ever attempt what I did, but I gave it a lot of careful consideration, assessed the risk, and proceeded accordingly.

The dose of changa that I smoked up on that mountain peak was very, very light. It was so light in fact that on my first toke I really didn’t even feel anything. I got a very slight buzz, but it was almost negligible. In hindsight I really think that the fact that I’d tripped on three grams of mushrooms only three days prior probably built up my tolerance to tryptamines. So I took that first toke and there was almost no effect. “Fair enough,” I thought to myself. “At least I can say that I consumed some. I at least did that.” But then as I sat there for a few more moments, I decided that I’d take a slightly bigger hit, and a slightly larger one still after that. I think in total I had 4-5 tokes and each time I increased the size of the hit along with how long I held it in. This allowed me to be extremely careful not to “blast off.” Rather, I reached a point where I felt the calming that so often presents itself when I consume DMT and then a very slight visual distortion of geometric patterns. The sunrise (the sun was now fully above the horizon) glowed much more brightly and what I remember most prominently was how beautiful everything became. The colors all around me glowed, not unlike the first time I consumed the spirit molecule on trail about a month prior.

I remembered the nature of “god” while I was under its influence. I won’t go into an explanation about that right now (I’ll save that for the book that I hope to write about this whole adventure) suffice to say that I believe that all consciousness is a manifestation of god. We are all god. You are god, the plant is god, the dog and cat are god, and in that moment of temporary DMT intoxication on top of Mt. Whitney, I remembered that I too am “god.” I feel a bit like a broken record here, reporting this same thing after each of my psychedelic trips on trail, but that was sort of the plan behind the experience in the first place. I wanted to go out in nature and have repeated reminders of why I had given up so much of my life in the “civilized world” to come out here into nature and explore the outer reaches of consciousness via the influence of entheogenic plant tryptamines. I sat there on top of the mountain, overlooking the beauty before me and I smiled. I closed my eyes and felt inner peace, and then I opened them and saw outer peace. I felt so *right*. Even though this hike was exhausting and painful through each and every day of walking from sun up to sun down, I knew with absolute certainty that out here was where I needed to be, and that even though the trail was probably the hardest thing that I’d ever undertaken in my entire life, it was sort of like my “destiny” (forgive me, because I actually hate that word) to do this walk and then find a way to share it with the world.

I did not encounter any entities in the DMT realm during that trip—like I said, it was a very mellow trip by design—but I did accomplish the task of being able to connect to the beauty of all things, understand my part in the grand scheme of the universe, and solidify my purpose in going on this hike in the first place. It was very pleasant and I’m glad that I decided to “bite the bullet” and “take the leap.”

I realize that I’m being somewhat brief in this trip report, but I’m realizing that if I go into detail on every one of these trip reports, I’m going to have a 1,000 page document just in this prewriting about the trips, and lord knows that no one is going to read all that. Shoot, I doubt that you’re even reading up to here, but at least it’s helpful for me to get these ideas onto the page so that I can start to sort through them and make some choices of how I want to shape my final text that I hope will be in book form.

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“Thousand Island Lake—3.5 Grams of Mushrooms”

Although the beginning of the High Sierras had a lot of psychedelics packed into them (the heaviest frequency of consumption that I’d have on the PCT), I went quite awhile to have my next entheogen experience. I had the 2.5g mushroom trip, then 5 days later I had the 3g mushroom trip, then 3 days later I had the changa experience on top of Mt. Whitney. I would have continued on this trend, but the weather started to shift a bit. The weather up in those mountains can become very dangerous if you’re not careful, so I didn’t want to go into a psychedelic experience and have a massive storm roll into my location and put me in physical danger. So although that was some of the most beautiful trail that I have ever seen in my life, the constant overcast skies made me hesitant to trip.

I wanted to trip, and I’d regularly check the maps every day to see if there were any ideal locations (of which there are MANY), but whenever I got to those spots it would either be a bad time of day to trip or the weather would be too ominous for me to take the leap. I will say in hindsight that there was one location (Rae Lakes) that I *really* wish I could have tripped at, and I really should have done so, but I was focused on making miles at that point so that I could get to my next resupply point. Anyone who ends up hiking the High Sierras should be readily encouraged to eat mushrooms at Rae Lakes though; that was one of the most beautiful locations along the entire PCT!

So it was actually a number of weeks before I got to have another psychedelic experience. I don’t have my trail journal in front of me right now, so I don’t know exactly how long I went between smoking the changa up on Mt. Whitney and my mushroom trip at Thousand Island Lakes that I’m about to write about, but off hand I think that it was 14 or 15 days—quite a departure from the 5, then 3 days that I’d had between trips earlier in the High Sierra.

When I arrived at Mammoth Lakes, CA (one of the possible resupply points in the High Sierras that can be accessed via a short hitchhike) I had some issues come up with my little brother. I’ll spare you the details right now, but basically his girlfriend (the one who got between the two of us and I largely blame for breaking apart our relationship) started contacting me and harassing me. This caused me a lot of anxiety, stress, and anger. I was not in a good place mentally. I was really upset and I even gave some brief consideration into quitting the trail there. But I ultimately decided to continue on. I also knew that I was overdue for a psychedelic experience because it had been so long since my last one. I was hesitant to go into entheo-space when my mind wasn’t 100%, but after I got back on trail following 2 days of rest in Mammoth Lakes, I immediately felt better.

This was a bit of a pattern for me on the PCT; I’d hike for a hundred miles or so, and I’d become pretty much sick of being out in the wilderness; I’d be tired, hurting, hungry, dirty, and just ready to be done with it all. But then I’d go into a trail town, get a nice hot meal, rest for a day, and within 12-24 hours I’d be longing to get back out onto the trail. And the first day following a rest day was always the best. I’d be well fed, clean, resupplied, and just grateful to be out in nature again. So even though I had issues dealing with my brother’s girlfriend (as brief as the interactions may have been), when I got back onto the trail, I knew that I was in a good headspace for my next trip.

I had checked the maps thoroughly when I was in Mammoth Lakes and decided that if everything was feeling right that I’d have my last High Sierra trip at a place called “Thousand Island Lake.” It looked really beautiful on the map, and when I got there it turned out to be exactly that—beautiful. It was really high up in the mountains, so there was snow around (not at the lake itself, but nearby on the cliffs) and… well… you really just need to Google search some photos of the lake because it’s really something to behold.

I arrived at the lake at around 3pm, set up my camp in a place that was as isolated as I could find, although there were other people camping within such a distance that I could hear them talking with one another. I decided that, continuing with my trend of increasing the dose each trip in the Sierras, I would eat 3.5 grams. I also decided that I would *not* eat a Xanax with this dose. I would keep the Xanax on hand in case the trip became rough or something like that, but I wanted to see if I could get through the experience unaided, which I did.

I ate the dose and walked over to the lake (maybe 2 minutes away from where I’d setup my tent). Beside the lake I sat and I meditated for a long time. The mosquitoes were *really* bad out there; that was one of two places on the entire PCT that they were the worst, but they didn’t bother me too much because I put on my down jacket (covered my arms), gloves, hat, and my rain pants. I also applied bug spray so although the mosquitoes swarmed around me, they didn’t land on me or bother me. I also put in headphones so that I couldn’t hear their buzzing. It was probably the first time in my life that I actually found some pleasure from the bugs, because I could watch them swarm in a singular mass; I could watch the bug-mass as it warped and bended with the shifting of the wind that I could also watch as it flowed over the lake’s surface. It was really cool watching the wind like that. I was very much at peace.

It ended up taking awhile for the come up to finish, but once it did hit me I smoked a massive joint that I had rolled in Mammoth Lakes specifically for this evening trip. When I smoked the bud it launched me into the peak of the trip and I was in a pretty good mental space. I will say that this was probably my most challenging trip on the PCT, but it wasn’t characteristically unpleasant. It was just somewhat difficult because I had unresolved issues between myself and my brother that I needed to work through, and that’s exactly what I did.

My first “big” mushroom trip on the PCT was a “now experience.” It was about embracing the moment. Then the second big mushroom trip was about the temporariality of all things and how “nothing lasts.” This trip at Thousand Island Lake was about forgiveness and finding peace with myself and peace with the other people who are in my life. I find it so interesting sitting here today and reflecting back on all these trips how each one was so different in terms of the focal point.

About half way through the peak of this mushroom trip the sun went down and it began to get *very* cold. I was also starting to have some subtle anxiety creep into my system, so I made the executive decision to go back to my tent and wrap up in my sleeping bag. I felt kind of weird about this because I was worried that the other campers in the area might see me getting in my tent before it was completely dark, but I decided that this is what I’d do anyways. I knew that I’d feel safe in my tent and that the bugs wouldn’t be able to bother me. Also it would be warmer in there.

Once in my tent it was very strange to be able to hear other campers off in the distance. This probably gave me the most anxiety of anything in that trip. I laid there and watched a marmot as it scurried around just outside my tent door. It was cool to watch him so close, and under the influence of the mushroom I could literally connect to his consciousness. I could simultaneously watch the marmot and see through the eyes of the marmot! I could understand his perspective and his desires and compare them to my own. It made my human perspective feel so silly.

I laid there in my tent (mesh screen on top, so I could still see the outside world very clearly) and looked up at the clouds. They made a “pound sign” out of kris-cross jet streams that I took a picture of as a means by which to remember them. The next day when I was talking to another hiker he told me about getting super stoned that night and looking up at that same “pound sign” design in the clouds. I was so happy to know that I wasn’t the only one in a special mind-space looking up at those exact clouds.

After the sun completely sank and it became dark I watched the stars come out like I’d never seen them before. I was so high up in the mountains and so far away from civilization and lights that it made the stars glow so brightly! I had never even imagined that the Milky Way could be so clear. I will never forget those stars for as long as I live. I laid there and watched the stars and I thought about my brother and his girlfriend. I went into that day with anger about the two of them, but in that tent I found complete and utter peace. I completely forgave them for the way that they had impacted me and I forgave myself for a lot of things too. Although I had some difficulty after the come up of this particular mushroom trip, by the come down I was in a very positive and very peaceful place. I was very happy that I made the choice to undertake this psychedelic journey on this day.

I would also like to note before finishing my description of this mushroom trip that it lasted much, much longer than my prior mushroom trips on trail. I think that it’s because the dose didn’t fully hit me until I started having some food once I went back into my tent. That seems to have caused the remaining tabs in my stomach to metabolize and so my trip lasted for a very long time. I was actively tripping from probably 5pm until 11pm, and I know that I would have been able to continue to feel the effects for at least two more hours if I hadn’t gone to sleep at around 11:00.

The next day I was in such a peaceful and happy place. It was perfect. I had a classic case of after-glow. That next day is also when I hiked into Yosemite National Park. Although I didn’t enjoy the park for the most part, the beginning of that portion of trail is actually *very* beautiful. It’s called “Tuolumne Meadows.” I highly recommend that you Google it because that meadow is one of the most beautiful places on trail, and carrying an after-glow into there was simply beyond wonderful.
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... Continued.

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“Lake Aloha: Eventually Going Deep”

I feel like I should state at this point in writing about all of these trips that I rather bemoan that it’s feeling like a “then I tripped balls” followed by “then I tripped balls again” and of course later “then I tripped balls again.” I really do want to write a book about all of my experiences leading up to and then including the Pacific Crest Trail, but I absolutely *do not* want it to be what I’ve produced here, which is basically a collection of trip, trip, trip stories. I want to reiterate however that the purpose of these writings in particular are not to document my journey, but to provide some prewriting into the book that I hope to write. I want this particular document to serve as a laid out list of all the trips that I had, and from these I can pick and choose which ones I want to focus on and even within those trips, *what* I want to focus on. Like I don’t want it to just be a list of trips, I also don’t want it to be a series of “and then I came up, then I peaked, then I came down.” Rather, I want the finished text (however far off in the future that happens to be) to look at many of the trips, but each trip I want to focus on the unique insights rather than the up, peak, then down arch. I want to try and transcend the stereotypes of psychedelics and really focus on the realizations that are possible through the use of entheogens, which is something that I don’t feel like I’m really getting across as I look back over this text in particular. Again however, this text is about getting ideas onto the page so that I can pick and choose from them. It’s also (for those of you who have read this far—if you exist at all) so I can get some feedback from the communities of the Nexus and Shroomery. I’m curious to hear your ideas and recommendations about how to make this finished book something that is perhaps “fringe” in its own way, but not just a 200-page trip report.
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Anyways, to get back to the story, I left the last trip at Thousand Island Lake without a feeling that I needed to trip again soon. There are sometimes when I take mushrooms, especially when the trip isn’t quite as profound as I’d hoped, and the next couple of days I’m excited to trip again. I didn’t feel that way after Thousand Island Lake though; rather, I felt like I had accomplished what I hoped to accomplish. I walked out of that lake the following day with an afterglow and a sense of accomplishment. I felt like I had done what was needed and I was glad that I was brave enough to undertake the trip; and make no mistake about it—bravery was absolutely required for all of these trips. Not once on trail did I take a plant entheogen without heavy anxiety or trepidation beforehand. I have been deep enough into the psychedelic realm to know what exists down there, and I always approach a trip with a bit of fear, especially out in nature by myself. Like Terrence McKenna said, “There are old psychedelicists and there are bold psychedelicists… but there are no old, bold psychedelicists.” Although I don’t really consider myself to be “old,” I have had enough experience to know what these plant entheogens are capable of, and so it’s hard for me to be bold about taking mushrooms or DMT anymore.

I walked for a long time after Thousand Island Lake without feeling any urge to trip again. I focused on the hike, the miles, and was really well integrated into nature at this point. I don’t want to give the impression that it ever became easy, but it did reach a point after awhile where it became something like a second nature. You almost get used to it after awhile—you wake early, you walk long miles, you eat a lot of dehydrated fruit and nuts, and then you go to sleep sometime after passing the 30 mile point for the day. It becomes comfortable even through the pain. I suppose that having the weed helped a lot too. It helped me to not focus on the miles ahead but instead to just focus on the moment. If nothing else, those few minutes that I’d take throughout the day to load a bowl would serve as my relaxation even more than the high itself.

And so I walked for quite a long time really without tripping again. Then, I reached a resupply point and turned on my phone. When I did that I received two text messages that informed me that Tyler was in that same town. We’d both walked through the Sierras independently, and now that the Sierras were over we were back in the same place. So I rested in that town (Tahoe City) for two days with Tyler. He indicated that he was interested in tripping with me again and told me about someone else (not a thru hiker) who had offered him DMT in Yosemite National Park. He told me that he’d declined and that he told them that it was because he knew someone else on trail (me) who would set him up if/when the time was right. I thought that was funny because it was in Yosemite that I met two kids who I’m 95% certain were tripping on acid.

Tyler and I talked psychedelics a bit and decided that we’d head back to the trail together. About ten miles beyond the point where we’d rejoin the trail was a place called Lake Aloha, and we decided that we’d go there to trip. Since I had enjoyed tripping with him before, I decided that I would continue my “trend” of gradually increasing my mushroom doses along the trail and that at Lake Aloha I would eat 4 grams. This turned out to be the heaviest experience that I would have on the trail, and it ranks among the most important experiences of my life. I unfortunately do not have access to my notes from that trip (stored on my other computer that is currently being repaired), so I cannot share with you all the details of what happened, but I will give you the main points.

Tyler and I reached Lake Aloha at around 3pm. We walked far around the shore of the lake to get away from the trail and eliminate any possibility that others would come upon our camp. I set up my tent, but Tyler insisted that he’d be fine and that he’d just sleep without a tent that night, which was what he normally did. This however would turn out to be quite a problem later in the evening.

After we became settled (I set up my tent and Tyler dug a small fire pit and collected some wood to light after sundown) we both took our dose. We agreed that we’d spend the trip separate from one another. We would eat our dose and then go opposite directions on the beach, then after the peak was done we could reconvene for the comedown. We were both on a mostly empty stomach.

I ate 4 grams and took a Xanax. Tyler ate 2 or 2.5 grams (I don’t recall off the top of my head). This was a bit more than he’d consumed the last time that I was with him, but he indicated that he was prepared to go a bit deeper. We also ate a small bite of food with the dose to get it moving in our system, but I have reason to believe that we should have eaten a bit more because of things that I will explain here in a minute. Once we had consumed the doses we went separate ways in accordance with our plan.

I walked down to the beach which was only a stone’s throw away from the hill upon which we’d set camp. There I started building a mandala (the second that I’d built on the entire trail) out of some beach wood and stones. The mushroom dose started quite quickly and I sort of struggled to complete the artwork before I needed to go and sit down. In hindsight I almost wonder if it was the Xanax that I was feeling more than the mushroom, but it could have also been both.

At about 20 minutes after I had consumed the dose I walked down to the water’s edge. There was a rock outcropping that created a nice little point to meditate on. It was right at the water’s edge and surrounded me on three sides by the lake. It was so beautiful up there. Readers, you must Google search “Lake Aloha;” it was one of the most beautiful spots that I saw on trail outside of the High Sierras. That first part of the trip was about what you’d expect. There was a fairly heavy body load from the dose, and at the 45 minute mark (I waited as long as I could), I smoked a joint that I had ready to get me to the peak. Once I hit that it helped a bit, but not as much as I expected. For the most part I was really taken aback by the fact that the trip was so light considering the size of the dose. I wondered briefly if it was because something had gone wrong with the mushrooms in my backpack; had they been exposed to air or water or something? I knew that they hadn’t, but it was noticeable how light the dose was coming on.

I remember sitting there cross legged at the water’s edge. Behind my eyelids there was hypnogogia that I felt was very similar to a DMT trip, except it moved more slowly. I very clearly remember seeing some weird creature-esque things that popped out of open doors and then went back in, sort of like a coo-coo clock. I was kind of traveling down a tunnel in a way—like a DMT trip, but it definitely moved slower. I remember clenching my eyelids together to see it a bit more vividly and asking myself, “what’s in there?” referring to my mind. When I would open my eyes and look across the lake at the mountains on the other side I saw movement that I can only describe as being like a neon sign cartoon land. I could simultaneously see the mountain-scape for what it was and see the cartoon-illusion before me. The hallucinations were very clear, but they just weren’t what I was expecting when I consumed the 4 grams an hour before.

I sat there for probably an hour and a half before I decided that I had most definitely given the dose enough time to take effect. I was frustrated that this was all I was going to get out of this committed dose, but it was what it was—there wasn’t anything else that I could do about it. So with a bit of a sigh, I got up and walked over in the direction that Tyler had wandered. I was curious if he had experienced similar effects.

I was certainly tripping at this point, but I would compare the effects to what I would expect from about 1.5 grams of mushrooms. It was absolutely not what I was hoping for by eating almost three times that much. I tried to enjoy it though, and I tried to embrace the connection with nature that still flowed through me.

When I got over to where Tyler was at however (he was sort of wandering the shore slowly), I smiled and sort of raised my eyebrows to ask how he was feeling and he just shook his head. He said that, “nothing happened.”

“Nothing?” I asked, and he repeated it again. Nothing at all.

“I mean, it felt like time was going by really slow, but other than that, nothing happened. I didn’t feel them at all. I don’t feel them now at all either.”

I was really bummed that Tyler wasn’t getting anything out of his trip, and even more bummed that my theory about the mushrooms maybe going bad in my backpack might have some truth to it. That said, I was still having a nice light mushroom trip, so I told Tyler that he should maybe try eating a Snickers or something and drinking some water; maybe that would get the dose to process if it was going to. He did drink some water, but still he said that he didn’t feel anything.

We walked the beach together, but it was hard for me because I could feel that Tyler was disappointed and to be honest, I was disappointed too. It was now 2 hours since we’d consumed the tabs and I was noticeably coming down. I could see patterning in the rocks and colors were brighter, but it just was not a four gram dose of mushrooms. So we collectively decided to call it a day as the sun started to set behind the mountain and we went back to camp where Tyler lit the small fire that he’d put together.

This is when things started to get heavy for us both, and we realized later that it’s because we both gave up on having much of a trip and so we started eating dinner. And when we started eating dinner it caused the mushrooms that had been resting in our stomach to start metabolizing fully and we began to experience exactly what we’d signed up for—a heavy trip.

***
We each had a bite to eat after walking back to camp. Tyler lit the fire and sat down on a rock. About then he started to get a twinkle in his eye as he watched the flame. He looked over to me and said that he felt something happening. “Maybe it was the sun or something,” he said. “I think that maybe the sun was preventing it from starting, because…” he paused for a moment, “I can definitely feel it now.” He smiled and looked over to me. “I feel like I am in the mushroom land; like I’m a little elf or something.” Within five minutes he was grinning from ear to ear.

This also coincided with my starting to feel the effects of the mushroom. It had been at least two and a half hours now since we’d dosed, and we had both concluded that it wasn’t going to come to fruition in the way that we were hoping for, but there was no denying it now; something was happening. I think that it hit Tyler more heavily than it hit me though. In speaking to him that evening and the next day, he really felt next to nothing from the time that he dosed to when he lit the campfire. He remained certain that it was because the direct sunlight was preventing the mushrooms from kicking in, but that didn’t and still doesn’t make any sense to me. I know the substance well enough to be relatively certain that what caused them to kick in was food. I don’t recall what he ate when we got back to camp, but I know that we both started consuming food because we were both very hungry. We’d hike the 10 miles to get to camp and ate as little as possible (operating under Terrence’s theory that mushrooms are best taken on an empty stomach), but I think that hiking complicates the equation a bit. I think that when you eat mushrooms on an empty stomach, it’s important to put something in your stomach to potentiate the dose. At home I usually go for mixing the shroom-dust in a glass of orange juice, and that seems to get things going, but out on the trail I didn’t have orange juice, so I tried having some dried bananas. That said, since we were exercising I think that it caused our system to slow down and even though we put a bit of food in with the dose, it wasn’t enough to get the full dose processed.

So what happened is that the dose *started* to affect me (since I’d eaten almost twice as much as Tyler) and it really just sat in his stomach (causing him only to feel that time was moving a bit more slowly than normal) until he got back to camp two hours later and started eating dinner.

Whatever it was though—time, the sun, or the food—he definitely started tripping at that point. I too started to feel the effects of the dose a lot more at that time, but it was a strange thing. I think that I’d maybe eaten just a bit more than him when we consumed the mushrooms two hours prior, and that made me start to trip more than he did. Like I already explained, when I meditated beside the water side I could see both closed-eye and open-eye hallucinations. They just weren’t as strong as I usually expect from that high of a dose. I also was tripping *a bit* when I was walking around the shore line an hour and a half later. But since I didn’t eat enough, it sort of created a slow release of the dose until we got back to camp and ate dinner; at that time it caused the remainder of my dose, and Tyler’s entire dose, to kick in fully.

First off, let me explain what happened to me (briefly, since this ended up being one of the most profound two or three hours of my entire life). Now keep in mind that at this point I had dosed two and a half hours prior. I had my trip for the most part, and even when I ate food, I didn’t really get heavy hallucinations or anything like that. In fact, I really don’t remember any visuals kicking in. What happened instead was the insight sort of stuff that I really seek when I’m going deep into a mushroom trip, that’s what started to overtake me. I had realizations about my life and the universe and the nature of being without being overwhelmed with warpy-bendy stuff that so often characterizes the psychedelic experience (especially to those who have never tripped before and are just basing their assumptions on what culture tells them).

To me the evening became about destruction and creation and how the two are really just the same—the conincidencia oppositorum. I went down to the beach and destroyed the mandala that I had created earlier that afternoon. Tyler mentioned to me that that was what mandalas were originally intended for. They are about the creation process rather than the finished product. It felt good and it felt meaningful to take the stones and driftwood apart and to throw them into the water. Although it hurt in some way to accept the temporariality of such a piece of art, it also felt good to know that I got to enjoy its creation and its final form and that would be something that would be special to me rather than something that needed to be shared with the world. I realized… god, isn’t that what the psychedelic experience is really all about, those *realizations*? It’s like Bill Hicks said, “Today a young man on acid *realized* that all mater is merely energy condensed into a slow vibration [and] that we are all one consciousness.” I guess it’s hard to explain really because it was such an introspective perspective and had to do with the fact that I (just like everyone else) am the entire universe and that my individual perspective is a representation of “god” placed on this earth to experience some unwordable thing that is beyond even my own grasp. It was a peaceful and calming realization, but it was also very, very heavy.

As the hour progressed the insight from the mushroom became even more heavy. It will be impossible for me to explain all of this on the page right now, but here’s the basic premise: When I was very young (in the first grade) I had a neighbor and her name was Brianna. She was a year older than me, but really we were both just children. We were unequivocally “best friends.” I saw her every single day and we would always play together. She’d come over to my house and I’d go over to hers. We knew one another so well that we didn’t even knock on the door most of the time. She really was my first and best friend that I’ve ever had. Shoot… we were just kids. It was back when trust actually existed; it was before I knew what it felt like to be lied to or hurt or betrayed. It was a pure and simple friendship. She was my best friend.

When I was in first grade my mom came downstairs and told me that Brianna had been killed. Her parents were driving into town with Brianna and her infant sister when the vehicle hit black ice and rolled several times. The parents were very badly injured and both of the kids were killed in the accident. We grew up in a small town, so stuff like that didn’t happen often, and it definitely never happened that close to me personally.

Anyways, like I was saying earlier, as I sat there beside Tyler’s campfire next to the shore of Lake Aloha, I had realizations about the nature of destruction and creation. I couldn’t tell you exactly what it all meant even if I wanted to, but I can summarize it here today. I was able to see for the first time in my entire life how Brianna’s death so heavily affected my own life. That single event that took place when I wasn’t yet even ten years old literally changed me into the adult that I’ve become. I don’t remember her death affecting me that much when I was young, but beside the waters of Lake Aloha and under the influence of the mushroom I was able to see from a new perspective and it showed me the interconnectivity of all the events of my entire life. I could see that single event like a bookmarker in my life. It may not have affected me too much there, but there was absolutely no denying that it affected me in the long run. Maybe it was a repressed memory sort of thing, a bombshell in my past that just never exploded until I was 1,600 miles into the Pacific Crest Trail.

This became one of the most emotional experiences that I’ve had in my entire life. Even when my grandfather died and I processed his passing under the influence of LSD, I don’t know if I was as emotionally moved as I was on this afternoon. I absolutely cried. I talked a lot with Tyler, but for reasons that I’ll explain here shortly, he didn’t have much to say in response. Instead it was like a purging of my emotions.

I could see, in a way that I really can’t explain today, how since Brianna had died before she had the chance to really live it became my responsibility to live fully. I could see how even my choice to hike the PCT was in some large way predicated on her passing. It was a massive responsibility that sat on my shoulders. Even though I dealt with depression and sometimes even suicidal ideation in my past, the mushroom showed me that I couldn’t end my life and that I had so much responsibility to take the experiences that I’d been through (specifically Brianna’s death) and make something special of it. She couldn’t live, so I had to live.

Like I said, the experience beside Lake Aloha was about creation and destruction. Through her “destruction” came the creation of my life. It was because of that terrible thing that happened to her that I was sitting beside that lake shore that night.

God… it was really heavy. Later that night when I sat down to journal at around 10pm, the first thing that I wrote was that “Today was the most important day of my entire life.” I didn’t say that lightly. I really meant that the realizations that I’d come upon were some of the most significant that I’d ever been through. And for that reason, I spent several hours journaling that night; it was so important for me to document what had happened and try to hold onto it before it slipped away like so many of the DMT experiences that I’ve been through. I literally spent three hours journaling that night. For the first time on the PCT I used my phone to type out my notes because I had so much to write. I wrote 9 full pages of text that maybe someday I can share with you all. And unlike other mushroom experiences that I’ve had in the past, the next day I felt absolutely no need to go back into entheo-space. I had achieved a full realization of my place in the universe. I had truly reached “Christ-consciousness.”
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Alright; that’s enough about my trip that night. Like most of my writing that I’m doing here, it barely begins to scratch the surface of what happened and is probably a representation of 5% of what actually took place, but hopefully it starts to get the picture across. I’ll hopefully explore it a lot deeper in the final text of the project that I’m trying to put together. Now however I want to talk about what happened to Tyler that evening and how it related to me and created one of the most unexplainable things that I’ve ever seen while under the influence of mushrooms.

Like I was explaining earlier, Tyler started feeling the mushroom dose right after he lit the fire (and when the sun went down) and when he ate a bite of food. I can remember the sh*t-eating grin on his face still today. He looked over to me with that giant smile and giggled, saying that he was definitely in the mushroom world. He sort of did this little dance/jig around the fire and was just bleeding glee. I was so happy for him because it had sort of bummed me out when he told me an hour and a half into the dose that he wasn’t getting any effects.

Tyler was having a really good time, and this was just a little bit before the wave of heavy emotion overcame me. We were sitting there beside the fire and Tyler asked me something that I wouldn’t have expected from him; he asked me for a toke of weed. I mentioned earlier that Tyler used to be a heavy smoker when he was in his early and mid-twenties. When he got closer to thirty however he gave it up altogether and I think he had only smoked one time in the preceding five years. I told him that if he ever wanted some that all he needed to do was ask, but he said that it was unlikely. Beside the fire however, he looked over to me and said, “ScientificMethod, can I ask you something?” I told him that he could. “Could I have some weed?”

I smiled as largely as I could and told him that of course he could. In fact, I thought to myself, some weed right then sounded like a *great* idea—and it just so happened that I had my last rolled joint in the pocket of the jacket that I was wearing. I took it out and handed it to him along with a lighter.

“This is rolled terribly.” He said, and continued to tell me that I’d packed it too loosely. Truth be told however, I almost never smoke joints; I almost exclusively smoke bowls, but I found that sometimes on psychedelics it was nice to have a joint because that kept me from having to load bowl after bowl and it also gave me something to keep in my hand. I can’t explain it really, but it’s just nice to have something in my hand when I’m tripping, and a joint became my favorite thing to fill that need.

Tyler ripped the twisted tip off the joint and lit it. He took two tokes, and something occurred to me (I’m curious if anyone reading this has had the same experience). This has happened to me several times, but never was it so powerful as this time. It goes like this: I’m *very* familiar with the smell of weed, as I’ve been basically a daily smoker for the last five years or so, and on the PCT I was smoking 4-8 bowls a day. But long ago I discovered that when someone else is smoking weed (and I am not) that it smells *completely* different to me. I cannot explain it, but it’s happened to me enough times that I know it’s not just a one-time hallucination. But it occurred to me on this occasion that I wondered when that changes. I knew that it smelled completely different than when I smoke it, but I wanted to see when the smell changed, so I was very observant as Tyler handed the joint over to me. I expected that the moment that I inhaled the smoke it would start to smell like I’m used to, but that’s not what happened. Instead, *THE MOMENT* that the joint reached my hand, it started to smell the way that I’m used to it smelling. Remember now that I was indeed under the influence of a psychedelic, but I really think that intensified the experience more than it caused it to be a hallucination. I haven’t had the opportunity to repeat that experiment again since that evening by Lake Aloha, but it was really mind blowing. I mean, the exact moment that Tyler passed me the joint its smell completely changed to that familiar odor of burned bud that I smelled every day. To this day, I still can’t explain it. I guess that it’s just a cognitive hallucination, but it felt and still feels like so much more. It was such a strange experience, although I don’t know if it had any real meaning other than providing me with a mind-f*ck.

Tyler took his two tokes, and it was a bit more than I expected he’d smoke. I warned him before he hit it that I don’t carry ditch-weed and that he was toking top-shelf medical bud, so he needed to be careful. He told me that he’d be fine, but with one caveat. He said, “Just so you know, I might not be able to talk after smoking that. Sometimes I just get too stoned.” Even with that warning however, he was still engaged with conversation with me for awhile. We sat there by the fire and made small talk, from moment to moment there’d be quite between us. This was around the time that the really heavy, emotional, profound realizations started sinking in for me, and I spoke through them. I started to tell Tyler about Brianna and her death. I also tried to relate her death to the destruction of the mandala. It took me a few minutes of talking to him before I realized that he was no longer speaking. Just like he warned, he had gone radio-silent. It took about five minutes for the weed to really hit him, I guess, but it had indeed put him in a mute-state. He was looking at the fire for awhile while I spoke with him, and then he moved over and leaned against a rock, looking up at the clouds.

At this point I was in a very emotional state. I was on the verge of tears, and so I also stepped away from the fire and sat on a rock about 20 feet away from where Tyler was leaned back in mushroom/weed trance. When I sat there I looked out to the water and I cried heavily. It was a really heavy purge for me. I just let it all out, and it was the first time on trail that I’d really cried like that. It felt good to let it go like that. It felt necessary. I used to say (and I guess that I still do) that if I don’t cry during a mushroom trip, then I’m not getting what I’m looking for. When I eat mushrooms I really want those deep realizations and life-shifting things to sink into me. I want to cry when I eat mushrooms, and on this night I really let it all out. It was really powerful.

Then I heard a sound off in the distance. At first I didn’t know what it was, but then I realized that it was a helicopter. That wasn’t too unheard of, so I didn’t think too much of it until it continued coming closer, then closer, then closer still. It got really close, to the point that I started to wonder if it was specifically coming to where we were, and that’s exactly what it did. I looked back over my shoulder and asked Tyler if he was sure that we were allowed to have fires out here. There had been a fire ban in Southern California, so I knew that wasn’t allowed, but we were near water sources now, so I was pretty sure that fires were okay. That said, I never build campfires; Tyler was different though. He built them almost every night, so I looked to him and asked again (since he didn’t respond the first time), “Tyler, you sure we can have a fire here?”

The helicopter flew directly over us and was not high up; it was so close that I even took the joint that was in my hand and tucked it away. If they were looking down at us with binoculars then they definitely would have been able to see it, and I was in California where recreational bud was indeed illegal. I’m telling you man—that helicopter was *close*; I’ve never been buzzed like that before.

Then it occurred to me that Tyler still hadn’t responded, so I turned around to get a better look at him. That’s when I started to get a little alarmed. Tyler was still leaned up against that rock, but his head was cocked back and he didn’t appear to be conscious. It looked like he was completely passed out.

So dear reader, I want to push pause here and have you imagine the scene that the helicopter pilot and his passenger saw (I still have absolutely no idea why they buzzed us like that): They saw person #1 (me) sitting on a rock looking out towards the lake crying, tears flowing heavily down my face and person #2 (Tyler) reclined against a rock about 20 feet away, completely unconscious. I can only imagine that it looked like a murder scene. Much to my surprise (even today I’m extremely surprised by this) the chopper never circled back around to check out the scene. Even if they weren’t concerned with what we were doing, the scene *must* have looked like I’d just killed Tyler.

As soon as the chopper passed and I realized the state that Tyler was in I walked over to him to see if he was okay. He wasn’t “okay” though. He was breathing, but he looked like what you’d expect from someone who’d slammed 14 beers and 2 shots of whiskey. He was totally out of commission. His mouth hung open, his eyes were sunk into the back of his head, and his skin was really pale. I’d never seen something like that. I tried to speak to him, but he couldn’t communicate. All he could do was lightly mumble. It was the complexion of his skin that really worried me. I was pretty sure that he’d be okay because if he was in danger then he’d probably be the first person to ever die from 2.5 grams of mushrooms and 2 tokes of bud. Still, I was primarily concerned that the helicopter was going to circle back around or call for help.

I cursed Tyler’s decision to not set up his tent before our trip. If he’d had his tent setup at least I could put him in his tent so that it didn’t look like he needed help, but he hadn’t even gone to the trouble of laying out his sleeping bag. As such, I had to walk over to where he’d placed his bag and I dug through it to find his sleeping gear. I felt weird going through his stuff, so I said to him “Tyler, I know you probably can’t hear or understand me right now, but I just want you to know that I’m looking for your sleeping bag. We need to keep you warm...

... Continued.

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I cursed Tyler’s decision to not set up his tent before our trip. If he’d had his tent setup at least I could put him in his tent so that it didn’t look like he needed help, but he hadn’t even gone to the trouble of laying out his sleeping bag. As such, I had to walk over to where he’d placed his bag and I dug through it to find his sleeping gear. I felt weird going through his stuff, so I said to him “Tyler, I know you probably can’t hear or understand me right now, but I just want you to know that I’m looking for your sleeping bag. We need to keep you warm man.” I then mumbled to myself, “we also need to make it look like you’re not f*cking dead here man…”

I found the sleeping bag and laid it over him. The scene still looked strange, but at least if the helicopter circled back around they wouldn’t think that he was in need of help. Maybe, I hoped, it would just look like he’s asleep.

With that concern out of the way however, I started to sort of worry about Tyler in a real way. I’d been with enough people on psychedelics before to know that sometimes people go into “fugue states” where they’re completely unresponsive, and they always returned to normal after some time has passed. But I’d never seen someone in that state who had pale skin and sunken eyes. At least he was breathing, but something definitely needed to be done. I asked Tyler if I could get him some food and he just mumbled to me. I could barely make out his words when he managed to spit out, “I’m sorry… I just… I just need several moments… several moments.” I took the fact that he could at least speak as a good indication, but he was clearly f*cked and needed help getting out of the void.

I went into my food stash and found a caramel hard candy. For about two minutes here I was legitimately worried about Tyler. Like I said, it didn’t make sense that anything serious was wrong with him, but I’d just never seen someone with their skin pale and their eyes sunken into the back of their head like that. My best guess however was just that he needed some sugar. It sort of reminded me of someone who was having a blood sugar drop. Maybe, I figured, if I could get some sugar into him he might feel better.

I unwrapped the hard candy and was about to drop it into his mouth. “Now you’re not going to f*cking choke to death on me now, are you?” He shook his head and sort of sat up in his zombie-fied state. I dropped the candy in his mouth and he started to show the first sign of coming back to life. Instantly the sugar seemed to wake him up and he smiled again. “Do you need some more?” I asked, and he nodded. So I went over to my food bag again and pulled out a snickers bar. I unwrapped it and handed it to him. I took it as a good sign that he was at least capable of grasping it with his hand. From that point forward, I knew that he was okay. Within the span of fifteen minutes he came back to reality and was able to communicate again.

When he came back he asked how long he’d been “out” and I told him that it was for about 20 minutes, but that I couldn’t really be sure because I wasn’t watching him until after the helicopter flew overhead. He reported that he sort of remembered hearing the roar of the helicopter blades, but that he didn’t know what it was. He said that he had completely experienced death and that it was not a pleasant experience, but that it also wasn’t painful. He’s a bit more reserved in describing his experience than I tend to be, so I can’t really be 100% sure what happened behind his closed eyes, but whatever it was I know that it was profound. He told me however that when he returned he was really bummed that he had smoked the weed and wished that it hadn’t happened. He was very certain that it was the weed that knocked him out, but I don’t think that’s fully accurate. Although the weed was strong, I think that it was the fact that his mushroom dose hit his stomach right as he decided to take two puffs of top shelf medical bud. The combination caused him to pass out, but it was the mushrooms that caused the “death experience.”

He went to sleep a little while after that and I stayed up for the next three hours writing about my experience. I was very glad that Tyler was okay, and that he’d been able to reach a state of mushroom intoxication. I was also glad that the mushrooms had taught me so much about myself and about my past. It was hard for me to take so much in that evening, but it had really meant a lot to me.

The first thing that I wrote in my journal that night was something along the line of “today was the most important day of my life.” I spent the next three hours laying awake and writing about the trip. Someday, maybe, I’ll share those notes that I wrote with you all. For the time being however, that’s all that I should say about my trip at Lake Aloha.
***
The next morning Tyler and I both woke to a beautiful sunrise and calm waters over Lake Aloha. Some of the most beautiful pictures that I took on the entire trail were from that morning.

Tyler and I didn’t talk all that much in the morning, but I know that we both were very reflective on our experiences from the night before. He told me that he was upset that he’d smoked the bud because he was fairly confident that his issues in blacking out and what not were because of the marijuana. He was sure that if he’d refrained from that then he would have just had a nice mushroom trip and nothing else. He felt like a lot of the potential had been wasted. At the same time however, he felt that the death experience that he’d gone through was really special and magical. He told me that it was one of two or three times in his life that he felt that he’d experienced complete ego death. I was sort of envious that he’d reached such a state out on the trail, but at the same time I knew that I’d had my time with ego death and that I’d have that time in the future whether it was on the Pacific Crest Trail or after.

Before we started hiking out from the lake that morning Tyler gave me a “prayer card.” He’d told me about it before—when we’d met in Lake Tahoe a few days prior. He told me that it was given to him when he had a similar experience with someone in another state some five years prior. He said that it was with hash, but that the person who he was with experienced something akin to ego death and felt like Tyler had saved his life by pulling him out of the state. That person gave the prayer card to Tyler, and even though Tyler mostly identified as an agnostic/atheist, he still carried the card to remind him of the good that humans are capable of.

Then, that morning, before we were getting ready to hike, Tyler told me that he wanted me to take the prayer card. It was something that he’d carried with him for five years, but he was done with it. “It’s meaningless to me now.” He said. “I want you to have it. You saved my life last night as much as I saved his life those years ago. For what it’s worth, I want you to have it.” And so I gladly accepted. I asked Tyler if he was sure that he wanted me to have it and he said that he was. He said that he’d carried it far enough and that it was time for someone else to take it. I thanked him and I carried that little piece of cardboard with prayers scrawled across it, front and back, all the way to Canada. Although I didn’t believe in the religious beliefs professed by the card, I felt like it was a symbol of our friendship and it became one of my most valued possessions. It’s funny how being out on the trail changed my priorities like that. I didn’t want a house or a car anymore; I just wanted things that meant something to me, and some of the most important things that I carried were that prayer card, a laser-cut flower of life that was made of wood, and a little pinecone that I picked up near Big Bear, California when I was having my first mushroom trip on the PCT.

Although I hoped that Tyler and I would have more trips together after that experience on Lake Aloha, it would turn out to be our last. We would spend a the next few days hiking with one another on and off and we camped with one another a few times as well, but looking back on the trail now, I realize that the closest I came with another human on the PCT was that night beside Lake Aloha. I made a friend in Tyler that night, but it was also the last night that we really had together where we got to talk and share our perspective on the world with one another.

After that it would be a long time before I took psychedelics on the PCT again. I just had so much to process after that night, and I didn’t feel like jumping back into the waters of entheo-space was really necessary any time soon. With only one small exception, that would be my last psychedelic experience in California.

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“Goodbye California: My Last California DMT Experience”

Several hundred miles later I found myself in a small town called “Seiad Valley.” There I met another hiker who I sort of connected with on a few topics. We’d actually met about 500 miles prior, but we didn’t get to know one another at all. At best, I think that we’d exchanged pleasantries. I liked his approach to hiking though. He was into doing big mile days and he really pushed himself to go a lot farther than a lot of the other people whom I met on the trail.

We shared a few drinks in Seiad Valley, but he decided that he wanted to start hiking out of town that night. I told him that I’d probably not see him again because he hiked so fast, but as it turned out he only hiked about a mile out of town beyond there. I on the other hand decided to pay the $15 that it cost to camp in town and then at 4am the next morning I started hiking out. It was just so hot in Seiad Valley (had been 110 degrees the previous day) that I wanted to get as early a start as I possibly could. So I woke well before sunrise and started hiking out. As I was hiking that morning I met back up with this hiker (I’ll call him “Billy”) and we decided to hike together for the remainder of the day. It was funny because we’d both started so early that day that we were able to cover 33 miles with some really heavy climbs in between. We even realized that if we’d really wanted to that we would have been able to cross the California/Oregon border that night, which would have been a really major accomplishment. However, we were both tired by the end of the evening and we decided that if we found a good place to camp that we should set up south of the state border, which is what happened.

Billy mentioned that he was somewhat interested in trying DMT. Since we’d talked for most of the day I told him that I was considering stopping south of the state border because I sort of wanted to have just one more psychedelic trip before leaving California. I had had a lot of trips in California, but it had been several hundred miles since my experience at Lake Aloha, and it just felt *right* to go out once more into entho-space before the state was done. Billy told me that although he’d never tried DMT, he was very interested and that if it was possible to join that night that he’d like to.

Much to our fortune we came to a meadow that was only about a mile south of the Oregon border. We wandered around in the field for awhile looking for an ideal place to camp and found a spot that was tucked far enough into the woods to provide some privacy, but that also wasn’t too far from the trail. The campsite was tucked into the woods, but it was right at the edge of them so we looked out towards the meadow and to the east where the sun would be rising the next morning.

Billy and I hadn’t talked about the DMT possibility for a couple of hours leading up to setting up camp, but it was very much at the front of my mind still. I was actually quite nervous because I hadn’t used DMT since my trip up on top of Mt. Whitney, and that had been around 1,000 miles prior. I find it interesting that the further away from a psychedelic experience I am, the harder it is for me to have my next trip. For example, if I’m tripping regularly (every week or two), it’s still not easy for me to hit DMT or eat mushrooms, but it’s a lot easier than if I wait for two or three months between trips. The theory that I’ve developed around this is because there is no way to put words to the DMT experience. All that you can do is say that it’s extremely intense and out of this world. And so if you’ve done it, you know firsthand that it’s going to be wild, but you really can’t know what to expect. That was my “problem” that evening because I hadn’t taken DMT in so long, but I felt that it was important to have just one more trip on the spirit molecule before California was done. A lot of my reasoning for it was because I thought about the Shroomery and DMT Nexus communities; I knew that I’d be reporting back and that my mission had been planned as a psychedelic one, so I didn’t want to disappoint the others and I didn’t want to disappoint myself. For all I knew this would be the only time in my life when I’d do something like this or even have the opportunity, so as hard as it was for me to take a DMT trip that night, I still knew that it was for the best, and as I sit here writing this tonight, I’m so grateful that I decided to follow through with the plan.

Billy and I both set up our tents and made dinner. He went into his tent and was reading, I think, and that’s when I decided to first walk into the meadow and see if I could find a good place. It was a really beautiful place; it was peaceful, there were trees all around in the distance, the weather was ideal, and I just *felt* like the pieces were in place. “Feel the waters” I like to say before deciding to take a psychedelic journey; if the waters are right, then it’s time to take the leap, but if it doesn’t feel right, then you shouldn’t. This night they felt good though, and so I went back to camp, and without saying anything to Billy I grabbed my sleeping bag liner, my foam sleeping pad, my jacket, and my DMT bag that most importantly contained a small glass pipe, a lighter, and my changa—by this point I’d pretty well done away with the idea of using the crystal on trail, but it was still nice to have it there with me at least as a symbol of the journey that I’d undertaken as well as the spiritual experiences with DMT and psilocybin that had brought me there in the first place.

Like I normally did when smoking changa on the trail, I didn’t just take a massive hit and hold it for as long as I could; instead, I took a small puff, to get to threshold effects, then a minute later I had a little more, then a little more, and a little more still until I was where I wanted to be. I ended up smoking three bowls of the changa sitting there. I did not leave my body or even get anywhere near there. Instead I let the molecule fill me with warmth and I felt the connectivity with my surroundings. I felt at peace in a way that is completely impossible to explain without having experienced it firsthand. I looked up at the sky and the few wispy clouds and I smiled. I felt a sense of rising, like my spirit/soul/consciousness/whatever-you-want-to-call-it going upward. I felt like if I would have taken a bigger dose that I could have risen so far out of myself that I would have been able to look down on my body. It was a peaceful experience—not at all jarring like smoking a full dose of crystal DMT. It was exactly what I needed and I was so happy that I’d taken the dose.

After I came down in fifteen or twenty minutes, I started to think back to Billy. He surely noticed that I’d stepped away, but the grass around where I’d smoked the changa was very high, and so he wouldn’t have been able to see me there. I decided however that the experience had been so pleasant for me that I wanted to share it with him if he was still interested. So I walked back to camp and subtly told him that if he was still interested in trying DMT I’d be more than happy to offer him the opportunity. I expected that he might have decided against it in the time since we’d talked about it earlier in the day, but to my surprise, he was very enthusiastic.

So Billy followed me back out into the meadow with his own sleeping pad and I loaded him a bowl of changa. I told him sort of what to expect and that it wouldn’t likely be like a full DMT trip in which reality is completely ripped away to expose the nature of “elf machines” or anything like that, but ultimately I explained that it would be something that he’d just have to experience to understand. He understood, and I explained how to hit the bowl. He smoked weed, so it wasn’t too difficult for him to figure it out. Like I’d done before him, he started with a few small puffs, then gradually worked his way up. When he’d exhausted the first bowl, I offered that if he wanted a second I could provide him with that and he said that he would. On the second he took most of the bowl in two hits and handed me the pipe. He closed his eyes after handing me the pipe and I took the last bit that remained in the pipe for myself. It was nice sharing a DMT experience with someone on the trail, and this would end up being the one time on the entire journey that I’d do so.

After five minutes or so, Billy opened his eyes and looked up at the sky. He smiled and told me that it reminded him of the first time that he’d taken mushrooms. I agreed that they are indeed similar in many ways and that even the molecular structure of DMT is strikingly similar to the active ingredient in mushrooms.

We meditated there in the meadow for another twenty minutes or so before retiring back to camp. I felt good about having made the choice to smoke that night and I was happy that I was able to share it with someone too. I thought that it was sort of special to have a first time DMT experience while out on this epic hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. I looked back on my first DMT trip and thought that although that was pretty much ideal, the fact that Billy got to try the molecule on the trail would likely be something that he’d talk about from time to time for years to come.

In the following morning Billy hiked out before me, much like Tyler had done at Lake Aloha, and this would end up being one of the last times I’d ever see him—but with one exception. And that exception would turn out to be something that I’d looked forward to since well before I stated hiking the trail. That exception would be Crater Lake.

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... Continued.

***************
“The Mushroom Adventure of Crater Lake”
I had been conceiving of a psychedelic adventure at Crater Lake since well before the start of the trail. In fact, it started coming into formation as an idea when my little brother and I were heavily training for the PCT by regularly using entheogenic substances to build comfort in the psychedelic realm and hiking a lot of miles together every week. Of course I knew of Crater Lake peripherally before I even looked into hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, but when I saw that the trail goes beside it, I started thinking of it as being a potentially cool place to trip. Then my little brother started really looking into it and he showed me some pictures. That’s when I really set my psychedelic sights on Crater Lake.

I first thought that it would be a really good place to drop acid. Back before the falling out between my little brother and I, the plan had been to bring a lot more than just DMT and mushrooms on the trail. I had thought of it sort of like the opening scene of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” I imagined having a supply of pot to last two heavy stoners for five months, about two ounces of mushrooms each, a few tabs of acid for special occasions, plenty of crystal DMT and changa, and then maybe even a bit of mescaline even though I’d never used cactus before. At least my brother had had experience in extracting from San Pedro, so I thought that even if we didn’t use it, at least it’d be cool to bring along. When the sh*t went down between us before the start of the PCT however, things changed. I realized that I’d been “practicing” with my brother by my side for five months, and now that I’d be hiking the trail alone, it just wasn’t reasonable to go so deep. On the one hand this was okay, because looking back on it now, I’m glad that I spent that time with plant medicines rather than bringing the chemical cousin, LSD; at the same time however, it sucked to have to change plans so close to starting the PCT.

Anyways, the point that I’m trying to get at is that as soon as my little brother got into research about Crater Lake, he showed me pictures of the area and the very first thing that I said was, “Now *that’s* a place where we are going to eat some acid!” Then from that point forward it was generally agreed that Crater Lake could not go to waste. Even after the falling out between little brother and I, this really didn’t change. For all I knew, I might never revisit Crater Lake National Park for the rest of my life, so I absolutely had to use that place as an opportunity to eat mushrooms. And it couldn’t just be a one gram dose or anything like that. I needed to follow through with my plan for myself, for the people on the DMT Nexus and Shroomery, and for anyone else who would ever learn about my adventures in the future. Simply put, it was easy to propose it as an idea, but now here I was and I had to actually do it.

When I arrived in the National Park, I immediately received some bad news, and that’s that it wasn’t really possible to camp at the rim of Crater Lake. In hindsight, I probably could have gotten away with it and there might have even been a place where it was technically allowed, but there was a lot of mixed information about it, and ultimately I decided that my first choice on how to trip there wouldn’t work. My ideal choice would have been to set up camp somewhere isolated near the rim of the lake, looking down over the waters, and then trip right at sunset and meditate by the cliff edge, but since I couldn’t do that, I realized that if I was going to trip in a place where I could see the marvel of the lake itself, I was going to need to do it while I hiked along the rim trail.

What’s funny is that the main camping area for Crater Lake National Park is below the rim on the opposite side of the water. So I walked into that area with all the other PCT hikers and I ended up resting there for an entire day to prepare for the mushroom trip, but at that point I’d never actually seen the rim of Crater Lake; I’d never looked down into the waters, and I’d not seen the views that were so popular on the Internet. I had dreamed of reaching Crater Lake for months now, and here I was spending a full day just resting with other hikers, and we were within three miles of the rim, but I still hadn’t seen it. It seemed funny to me then, and it feels funny to me now. During my day’s rest there someone offered me a ride up to the rim so that I could see it, but I declined and insisted that I wanted to walk there and see it for the first time having traveled by foot from Mexico. And that’s what I did.

I made my plan to take a day’s rest at the campground there following a 40 mile day and a 38 mile day before that (my two heaviest on the trail up to that point). Then the next day I’d walk the rim and I’d trip on mushrooms. But the only way that I could assure myself that I’d be isolated from the crowds of tourists would be to rise early and hike up there for the sunrise before any other hikers were up. So I set my alarm for 3:30 am, broke down camp in the dark, and hiked in the pitch-darkness for two and a half hours before the horizon started to glow. Right before the sun broke the horizon, I reached the rim of Crater Lake and looked down on one of the most spectacular sights that I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life. It was just breathtaking. And so with a bit of anxiety and some honest hesitation, I reached into my backpack at sun-up and ate 2.5 grams of mushroom tablets along with 1mg of Xanax to hopefully calm my nerves. What followed was possibly one of the most pleasant mushroom experiences of my entire life.
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Word around camp was that there was going to be a big breakfast offered for free to all the PCT hikers who had been staying at the Mazama Village campground. I was included in that group, but I was excited to skip out and execute my mushroom plan. I’d been dreaming about Crater Lake for so long, but now it was finally here. Since everyone else from the trail would undoubtedly be imbibing on free pancakes at 7:00 am, I figured that the trail would be comparably isolated for that time of year. Sure, there would be a lot of people on trail later in the morning, but if I got an early enough start then I’d have it mostly to myself. And since I couldn’t camp on the rim and enjoy a mushroom sunset, this would be the next best option.

I set my alarm for 3:30 that morning. The night prior I also measured out 3 grams of mushroom tabs (six .5g tabs total) as well as two .5mg Xanax tabs. I put the two medicines into a small Ziploc bag, said a little “prayer” to myself, and went to sleep early that night. I thought to myself before going to bed how Terrence said that “there are bold psychedelicists and there are old psychedelicists, but there are no old, bold psychedelicists.” I know I’ve quoted that before in the aforementioned pages, but it seems that every time I stand at the edge of starting a psychedelic experience it rang true. It’s just so much easier to talk about tripping than to actually do it. It’s easier to be excited about a heavy psychedelic dose at Crater Lake when getting there is months off in the future, but when it’s only a night’s sleep away, the anxiety of it holds tight. But I hoped that by measuring out the dose that evening, it would be possible for me to hold my promise to myself in the next morning and really follow through. After all, this might be a once in a lifetime opportunity, so I couldn’t let it just slip by.

When my alarm sounded that morning I was crazy tired. I still remember turning it off and looking up through the mesh ceiling of my tent at the glowing stars; there was no moon in sight, just the bright twinkle of far off galaxies. It would have been so easy to just go back to sleep. It was 3:30 in the morning! No one in their right mind would be waking up at such an hour to go and eat mushrooms. As such, I knew that I needed to wake up and eat some mushrooms.

I tried to be as quiet as I could as I broke down my tent because I was in the midst of so many other PCT hikers, but I couldn’t help but wake a few people up. One guy turned on his headlamp and shined it over at me, undoubtedly wondering what the f*ck I was doing breaking down camp at such an ungodly hour. I sort of got the idea that he suspected that I was snooping around and maybe stealing someone else’s camp gear. But he went back to sleep and I continued to quietly break down my tent and stuff everything into my sleeping bag. I made coffee, drank it down with a little bit of dry oatmeal (you get used to eating dry oatmeal after that many days on the trail).

I was on trail by 4am and it was about a two hour hike in absolute darkness to get to the canyon rim. Once I arrived it was one of the most beautiful sights that I’d ever beheld. It was absolutely as magnificent as all the photos that I’d seen online and I was completely excited to enter entheo-space. Of course, I was also very nervous/anxious/hesitant. It is hard for me to fully explain the feelings I get going into such a trip. There was a lodge up at the rim and I walked into the restroom. I remember looking in the mirror and sort of psyching myself up. I filled up my water bottles, ate my first .5mg Xanax, and walked back out to watch the sun just as it broke the crater’s horizon off in the distance.

God! That lake is so big! I’ve spent a lot of time at Grand Canyon National Park (both under the influence of psychedelics and sober), and that’s really the only thing that I can compare Crater Lake to. They’re both these incomprehensibly massive holes in the earth, only Crater Lake happens to be filled with water unlike the Grand Canyon. This gives it a special something that really wowed me. It took about 10 minutes before I could start to feel the Xanax’s calming effect, and as soon as I did I sat my backpack down and reached into the top pocket of my backpack where I’d stuffed the mushroom tabs away. I have to be honest though—I was still really nervous. I should also add that up ahead was a 30 mile stretch where there’d be no access to water, so I needed to be really careful not to become dehydrated or drink all my water. I needed to keep my senses about me. And as such, I decided to eat only 2.5 grams of the 3 that I’d measured out. I also ate my second .5mg of Xanax at that point. If I hadn’t gone to the trouble of measuring out the doses beforehand however, I think that I would have maybe taken even less, so I’m grateful that I had taken that preparation.

A half hour later I was still hiking along the rim with my heavy backpack (loaded down with an especially large load of water) when I started wondering if it was the Xanax that was hitting me so hard or if it was the mushroom’s body load. They both felt sort of similar, and I suppose in looking back on it now that it was a little bit of both. I wish that I could show you all how beautiful the scene was. Of course the lake itself and the crater rim are absolutely marvelous, but on top of it all there was the sunrise added to it as well as clouds rushing over the rim into the crater. The temperature shift caused by the rising sun caused pressure to change such that the fog that had settled around the outside of the crater was rapidly sucked up the walls and in towards the lake. It was like I was up in the clouds and they were rushing by at a speed that must have been around 25 or 30 miles per hour. This means that there was indeed a bit of a breeze, but that didn’t bother me much. Moreover, I was just really in awe by the scene. The crater, the lighting, the rushing clouds, and the mushroom “high” that was starting to settle into my system—it was all so beautiful.

By about a half hour after I’d eaten the mushroom dose I was unquestionably under its influence. I wasn’t really “tripping balls” at that point, but I could not deny that I was starting to be under the mushroom spell. I will go ahead and say that I had a good bit of anxiety still despite the Xanax, but this was because I was hiking through a place where I’d never been before, and like I’ve mentioned, a long dry section of trail was up ahead. I knew that I needed to be careful with myself so as not to get in trouble with dehydration, but I also needed to listen to my body and drink during the trip itself.

By a quarter to seven it was time to surrender. I realized, as I climbed up a little knoll that overlooked the crater that I needed to sit down. It was probably the mushroom as well as the Xanax that made me feel that need, but the Xanax certainly had the biggest effect on me at that point. So I found a nice place that was just a few yards off the trail and next to a drop that I can only guess would have been around 1,000 feet that went all the way down to the lake shore from the crater’s rim. I must emphasize here, like I did when I wrote about my DMT trip on top of Mt. Whitney, that this isn’t something that I recommend anyone else attempt. I am a firm believer that psychedelics and dangerous physical settings do not mix well, but I had experience with tripping and I had experience in hiking. I was confident in my ability to sit tight and not fall of the edge of the cliff. After all, I would have had to actively get up, walk forward 10 feet or so, and then jump in order for it to go wrong, and I knew that I could keep good enough control of myself that this wouldn’t be a problem.

And so I sat down. I sat down at the edge of Crater Lake right as 2.5 grams of mushroom dust began to really grab a hold of my ego and let it dissolve. What followed was about an hour of absolute peace, bliss, understanding, beauty, and overall oneness with the universe. I know, I know… all cliché, but what more can I report? I want to tell you what happened, and that’s what happened. Clouds continued to rush over the crater rim and into the lake and birds flew about in front of me in a sort of aerial dance. I became convinced that they were connecting with me as much as I was connecting with them. It was really magical; they flew about and played with one another in the air just 30 feet in front of me, and below them was a 1,000 foot void that dropped down to the bottom of Crater Lake. It was funny to think that they had no concern for all that distance. If only we (people) could fly maybe our fear of falling to our death would be gone and we could be free. Freedom—maybe there’s a correlation between freedom and absence of fear.

The defining quality of this trip was about beauty and calming. I’m sure that the Xanax had to do with this, but even more, I think that the setting was equally as important. It sort of made me want to someday go back to the Grand Canyon and sit at its rim throughout the arch of a trip. The only tripping that I’d really done in the Grand Canyon had always been during the process of hiking.

I thought back on my life before the trail and how perfect it was that I was out here. I had dreamed about this moment for so long, and here I was—finally doing it. It was so beautiful. It would have been beautiful even without the mushrooms, but with them, my appreciation for beauty was “turned up to eleven.” I did experience visual distortion, as you’d probably expect from 2.5 grams, but the visuals were not overwhelming. I also should note, since I’m intending this specific piece of writing to be about documentation of what happened, that I do not recall any closed-eye visuals. I only recall open-eye visuals and a ramping up of the bright colors of the sunrise that accompanied my connectedness with the surrounding majesty of Crater Lake and the birds that flew about in front of me.

I sat there peacefully and alone for 45 minutes without any other hikers wandering by me. I was actually sort of surprised, because this was such a popular hiking trail, but again—it was very early in the morning, so although I sort of expected to see a few people hike by me, it seemed that they’d leave me alone if they saw me sitting there by the rim. I mean it was beautiful—why wouldn’t someone just sit there and watch the sunrise? And like I learned before, if anyone does come and wonder what I’m doing sitting there in a psychedelic state, I just tell them that I’m meditating. It works every time.

But 45 minutes after I’d sat there alone, someone did come up the trail, and that person just happened to be the only person who I would have welcomed; it was Billy—the same guy who I’d shared a changa session with just south of the Oregon border. The day prior I had alluded to the fact that I’d be tripping at the Crater Rim that morning, and he flashed a smile at me. “ScientificMethod!” he exclaimed. “Did you start already?” In response I just smiled, and that was all he needed to know what I was up to.

I asked him if he wanted to come and sit down with me, and he gladly joined. We made small talk about how beautiful Crater Lake was, and I asked him if he wanted to smoke a bowl. Up to that point in the day I’d refrained from smoking any weed, as I’d decided that it’s better to go into a mushroom trip relatively sober rather than having to try and differentiate between the weed and the psilocybin when the dose starts kicking in. I like to be able to track where I am in the mushroom trip, so taking weed out of the equation just makes things easier. By that point however, I could feel the mushrooms peaking and I was comfortable calling myself good. It was time for weed and Billy couldn’t have showed up at a better time. He told me that he’d be happy to share a smoke.

I handed him my black velvet bag where I kept my weed and told him to pick out a strain. He settled on chocolope and loaded it heavy. We both sat there and toked for about ten minutes. He didn’t smoke as much as I did on trail, so I could immediately tell that he was stoned as much as I’m sure he could tell that I was tripping, but to the two other hikers who walked by us after he arrived, we probably just looked like two guys sitting there enjoying the scenery together. No one even said a word.

I talked to Billy and told him about the gnosis that came with the mushrooms that day and how perfect everything seemed. It was nice, I explained, to see the pieces of the puzzle fitting together when, so often, we only see the world from our blinded, individual perspective. He agreed, and I sort of got the sense that he wished that he could be tripping too. He had told me in the day that we hiked out toward that meadow some week or two prior that he had enjoyed a few mushroom trips during his college years and that it was something that he really looked forward to doing again. And so I asked him if he wanted a tab of the mushrooms. I’d prepared 3 grams, but only eaten 2.5, so I still had one tab in the top of my backpack if he wanted it. Just like the DMT blend that he’d accepted in our prior run-in, he happily told me that he would love a mushroom tab, and so I gave it to him. Then, after about five more minutes of sitting there together, we both got up and started hiking. He however hiked at about twice the rate that the 2.5 grams of mushrooms would allow me to move, and before I knew it he was basically gone. I wondered if I’d ever see him again.

For the next hour or two I was in a state of incomprehensible bliss. The Xanax had worn off by that point, so I no longer felt as weak and I could hike without issue, and the mushroom trip had settled past its peak to allow me to just enjoy it. Really, I thought to myself, the only anxiety that I ever get from a mushroom trip is before the peak starts to wear off. And after the peak, I know that I’ll be all good. It’s just the come-up that bothers me because when you’re coming up on mushrooms you really don’t have any way of knowing how high you’re going to get. And that can suck. Once you’re there however, you have nothing more to fear. “It’s all downhill from there,” as they say.

For the most part I had the entire trail to myself that day. I saw a few tourists who had accessed the crater rim by driving to it, but they gave me plenty of space. I mean, I just looked different than them (my giant backpack and smelly hiker clothes as compared to their vacation attire). I smiled so big thinking about it—how I’d walked there all the way from the US border with Mexico and how I’d actually followed through with my plan to eat psychedelics at such a beautiful place. I mean it with absolute sincerity when I write today that walking along the rim of Crater Lake was perhaps the most beautiful experience of my life. I was in absolute ecstasy—not like physical bliss, but in emotional bliss. There was nowhere else in the entire universe that I’d rather have been. I had brought a perfect moment into fruition.

I could go into more detail about that mushroom trip at Crater Lake, and perhaps I will when I finally get around to writing a book about the experience. For the time being however, I just want to leave things here, because I feel that I’ve said what needs to be said for the time being. It was a day of beauty and contentedness. I had reached nirvana, and in another month or so I’d reach Canada. Between Crater Lake and Canada there were a lot of miles though, and so I decided that I needed to hike on. I was a bit saddened when I peaked over the crater edge for the last time, but like I’d learned under the mushroom’s influence at Chicken Spring Lake, there really is nothing that lasts, and the best we can do is try to embrace the moments of beauty when they come. And to that end, I accomplished absolute success that day. I had met beauty face-to-face, and I still can’t imagine what a more perfect moment would have looked like.
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“The Last Full Moon & The Last DMT Trip”

Full moons felt special to me while I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. I wish that I could tell everyone reading this that I tripped under each of the five full moons that I observed on the trail, but that unfortunately wouldn’t be true. What I can say however is that some of the best trips that I had on trail were under the glow of the full moon, and they were inspired by the full moons. My first full moon was not long after I started the trail, and I just wasn’t comfortable enough yet to enter entheo-space at that point. On the second full moon however, I decided that it was important to follow McKenna’s advice and eat mushrooms. Terrence often said during his lectures that ancient peoples would have eaten psychedelics under each full moon, and perhaps oftener, and although I have gone back and forth as to whether or not the full moon really has an effect on people’s physiology or psychology, if nothing else, it made for a nice symbolic justification to eat mushrooms.

I honestly don’t recall the third full moon that I witnessed on the trail; I’m sure that I wrote about it in my journal, but I know that I didn’t trip. The fourth however, I felt overdue in my consumption of DMT. I had consumed that light dose of changa just south of Oregon with Billy, but I felt like it was important to make the most of this fourth full moon. Perhaps even more importantly, this was the only Blue Moon that I’d see on the trail. It was the second full moon in the month of July—it had some extra significance to it for that reason. So after taking a rest in Bend, Oregon (Good lord I loved that town! It was probably my favorite on the entire Pacific Crest Trail!) I left and decided that I would smoke DMT at the rising of the blue moon.

I looked at the maps before leaving Bend and saw that there were a few lakes about six miles outside of where I’d reconnect with the trail. They weren’t huge lakes, but they looked big enough that I should be able to find a cool place to camp in isolation, which turned out to be true. I must say that it’s a lot different looking at a lake on a map versus seeing it in person though. A lot of times I’d see a place on the map that looked beautiful but when I arrived there it would be a marshy bog or completely covered in trees without any beaches. That said, when I made it six miles down the trail that day, I came to a place called “Sisters Mirror Lake.” I was just a bit disappointed, although not at all surprised, to find that that there were other campers on the lake, but it didn’t take me too long to find a place where there was a nice isolated campsite. I reasoned that after the sunset I would walk down to the waterline to meditate and no one would be able to see me. Although it would have been nice to trip on mushrooms that night, I just couldn’t dedicate myself to such a long entheogenic experience, and so I decided that DMT would be the way to go.

So I set up my camp and explored around the beach just a bit to see if there would be any good places to meditate after the sunset. I found that there were quite a few, so after I ate dinner, I brought my sleeping pad and sleeping bag liner down to the waterline where a large rock positioned itself in such a way that I could lean back against it and be about a foot away from the water. It was perfect.

Once the darkness fully set in I was completely hidden by the night and the only time that anyone else camping on the lake could have seen me was when I lit my lighter. I meditated there for about five or ten minutes as the sun’s glow diminished into absolute darkness and I loaded my changa bowl. I decided that I would hit the pipe as soon as the moon reached up over the tree line to my right. I often liked to have these arbitrary moments to help me decide exactly when to take a dose. For example, sometimes when I’m all set to smoke DMT I’ll do some deep breathing exercises and tell myself, “okay, on the tenth breath you’ll let it out and then your next will be the DMT toke.” So it was nice to have the full moon as that arbitrary line. That took the backing-out possibility out of the equation.

For quite some time the top of the tree line glowed as the moon approached. It actually surprised me how long it glowed before the moon actually tipped up between the trees. When it did, it was like a cherry-red ball of light. You see, at that time there were a lot of forest fires throughout Oregon and some of them were quite close to the trail. This caused the sun to glow red rather than white/orange/yellow, and it had the same effect on the moon once it broke the tree line. It was not like a yellow/white moon at all; it was a bright, almost florescent, red.

As soon as the bright red ball first peered over the tree line I took two deep breaths, and on the third I took the largest dose of DMT that I’d had on trail. I dosed the entire bowl of changa and held the hit for ten seconds. As I held the dose I closed my eyes and watched the familiar DMT patterns form behind my eyelids. It started as spinning, soft fractal patterns that then gave way to the red chrysanthemum that so commonly characterizes DMT come-ups. Then that red gave way to white. I watched as the shapes and patterns warped and bended before me. I felt the body load and let go of all my fear as I broke through the flower patterning and into a world like one that I have never witnessed before. I’ve smoked DMT literally 40-50 times, but I have never been thrust into the place that this dose brought me. My best theory is this: Although most of my heavy DMT blasts have been with pure crystal, up to that moment I had never tried to push the envelope with changa. I had never really taken in a full capacity hit and used it to thrust me as far as I could reach. And when I made the choice to do so on this evening, I was presented with something different than anything else that DMT had ever presented me.

It was a “world” not completely different from where I was resting before the dose. I remember it so vividly. It was a lakeshore with little elf people (not the DMT “machine elves” that McKenna talks about or anything like them). These elf people were very similar to what I remember of the Smurfs as a child. They weren’t blue, as I recall, but they were small anthropoid creatures going about their evening beside their mushroom homes. The lighting was that of a sunset. It was red and purple with a black backdrop. The scene was sort of bifurcated in that the sky was purple/black and the ground glowed red. Sh*t… I feel like I’m not doing justice in describing this. Words are so inadequate.

But what it was, at its essence, was just what I explain here—it was a literal place with literal “people” and mushroom huts with peculiar, but spectacularly beautiful lighting. I clenched my eyes together in an attempt to bring the scene into clearer picture, but I really couldn’t make any more sense of it than that. The “Smurf-people” did not interact with me or even seem to notice me. Rather, it was like I was watching them from a distance—quite literally across the water from them. It was such a beautiful scene, but with time it faded, just like DMT does. I was so mystified however that before even opening my eyes at the end of the trip I decided that I would load another bowl. When I did open my eyes to load the second bowl I was almost startled by the bright glowing ball at the tree line. In my DMT trance I had completely forgotten about the full moon that was now almost completely risen into visibility. I had been so deep in the DMT state, but it had only lasted a few minutes, and here I was, back in reality. I looked at the moon, the most beautiful that I’d ever seen it, and then up at the stars in the sky that streaked across like LSD tracers. It was such a magical scene! What hurt was that I was the only one witnessing it that night. I wished with all my being that I could have someone to share this moment with. I wished that I could go to the camp next to me and show them this magic, but alas—life just doesn’t work that way. And so with resignation that I had to go this alone, I loaded a second bowl of changa, traveled back into entheo-space behind my closed eyes, and then did so again with a third bowl. It was an experience that I could have repeated again and again through the night, but I had to retire after the third bowl. I’d been sitting there for almost a half hour at that point. It was beginning to get cold. I was beginning to become tired. The following day would be another day of 30 miles if I wanted to stay on schedule, and so after my third bowl, I tapped out the pipe, packed away my smoking tools and herb, and headed back to camp for a peaceful night’s sleep.

***

That would end up being my last experience with DMT on the Pacific Crest Trail, and I suppose an ideal opportunity to ask “so what?”. To that, I really don’t have a solid answer. So I saw some really beautiful patterns and places in the inner-reaches of my mind. So what? So I felt my connection to the natural surroundings of the trail and to the universe. So what? So I managed to build up my courage and let go of fear enough to transcend this reality. So what?

I had a teacher in college who told me that there always needs to be a “so what?” at the end of any good writing, and I feel at a loss writing here without the answer. To some extent I feel like the “so what?” is self evident just from the experiences themselves, but perhaps that’s easy for me to say because I actually had the experience and it wasn’t just a set of words laid out on a page. In trying to put words to it, maybe it takes the answer to “so what?” away. Maybe it just needs to remain an experience and nothing more. If that’s true, then I can only hope that someone will let their eyes flow across the pages that I’ve written and say to themselves that it’s time that they sign up for the ride too. If that’s the “so what?” and someone goes out to experience DMT for themselves, then I think that I can sleep with that. It might be enough in itself, and I that’s probably as close to an answer as I can get. Because the fact of the matter is that if I’ve learned anything from the psychedelic experience, it’s that it is intensely introspective and personal to the experiencer. It really isn’t something that can be put into words; at best it can be described through metaphor as a means by which to almost come close to brushing against its superficiality. But it’s so much more than words and metaphors. It’s about understanding ourselves, traveling within ourselves, and discovering a truth that is more self evident than vision can provide us.

Was it really necessary for me to use DMT as often as I did on the trail? Probably not. Am I glad that I did? Yes. Did I need to bring as much as I brought?...

... Continued.

*********************
Was it really necessary for me to use DMT as often as I did on the trail? Probably not. Am I glad that I did? Yes. Did I need to bring as much as I brought? Absolutely not. Would I have brought less if I’d known? No. I did this because someone had to, and I’m glad that I got to be the guy who did. I really think that it would have been amazing if I could tell you that I smoked DMT every day on the trail (there was a moment or two in my conceptualization of the PCT where I considered this), but I just couldn’t have done it the way that I was undertaking the trail. As I write this I do have fantasies of going on a shorter trip—who knows how long, but probably under 1000 miles—and smoking it every day or so, but I really do not know if there would be some magical revelation through it all. Really what it was about was just doing it so that it could be done, and I’m grateful that I did that.

Since the PCT I’ve blasted DMT once, and I’ve yet to touch changa since (solely because I don’t have any made, although I plan to make up a batch tomorrow or the next day with a friend). I found blasting to be a lot different than the changa experiences that I had on trail. It was like visiting a place that I hadn’t been to since April when I started hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Part of me had the urge to write a trip report immediately after it happened, but the other parts of me wanted to let it just be an experience. “Haven’t you shared enough of them?” I wondered. “Isn’t it just time to let the experience just be an experience and not try and lay words over the top of it?” Well now that the trail is done, I think that’s where I’m at. I’m grateful for the psychedelic experiences that I had on trail, but particularly the DMT experiences were hard to give much meaning to. All that aside however, I have no regrets and I’m glad that I’m now in the process of trying to find a way to share my hike and my psychedelic journeys on the PCT with others.
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“Looking into the Universe: My Last PCT Mushroom Trip”

I didn’t know that I’d be tripping on mushrooms when I woke up that day, nor did I know that it would be my last mushroom trip of the Pacific Crest Trail. I had been under a lot of stress though, and unfortunately that stress wasn’t going to recede until I reached the border of Canada which was still an entire state away. I woke up just south of the Oregon/Washington border. There was about 30 miles to go before I’d reach a place called “Bridge of the Gods.” That’s where Oregon ends and the final state of the PCT begins.

My stress had largely revolved around the fires that had engulfed Washington this summer though. I had been worried about forest fires throughout my entire hike of the trail. Although I could control my miles, and my strength, and my will, and all that sort of stuff, there was nothing that I could do to control forest fires, and the fact remained that if there was a forest fire along the trail ahead of me, that might be the only thing that would prevent me from accomplishing my goal of walking from Mexico to Canada. Already by that point on the trail the vast majority of people had skipped sections of trail for one reason or another. Mostly people skipped pieces of the path because of fires that had burned through the trail in the years prior. Those fires were no longer burning, but they’d done such severe damage to the trail itself that it was officially closed and severely punishable to trespass on the closed land. On top of that, it was potentially dangerous to walk through a closed area that had been affected by fire. That however did not stop me from walking a continuous path; whenever I reached sections of trail that were closed, I didn’t walk *through* them, but I did walk *around* them. I tagged a lot of extra miles onto my 2,650 mile journey between the Mexico and Canada border by walking side trails and highways so as to maintain an unbroken set of tracks from one border to the next. Like I said though, I was the minority in taking this approach. The majority of PCT hikers just hitch hiked around the closures, which I thought was a weird thing to do if they were really attempting a “thru hike,” but I learned quickly that the trail culture doesn’t really care if someone walks a continuous path or an unbroken path. In fact, I even met some people who argued that a “thru hike” just means walking on the trail for 500 miles in one season… where they got that definition, I just don’t know, but there is no official definition for a “thru hike” so ultimately it comes down to each hiker defining it for themselves.

The way that I’d defined a thru hike for myself however was a continuous set of unbroken tracks from Mexico to Canada. If there was a closure, then I walked around it. It wasn’t fun walking the highways, but in my mind the extra work was worth it. I had set a goal for myself, and so I had to stick to it. Unfortunately, this year Washington had become engulfed in flames. It turned out to be one of the worst fire years that the state had ever seen. Although California and Oregon are usually the states that hikers need to worry about fires the most, I made it through them without any active burns affecting the trail. There were a couple of fires that started just after I passed through the area, but none that started up ahead of me. I was blessed in that way I guess, but at some point in Oregon word started getting out to the trail that there were some really severe fires on the trail in northern Washington. Rumors spread that it wasn’t even possible to hike around them.

This is what was causing my stress and this would be one of the primary reasons that my mushroom trip just south of the Oregon/Washington border would be my last of the PCT. I was worried every waking moment that I would walk for 2,300 or 2,400 miles on an unbroken path and then be forced to either abandon the hike at that point or skip around a section of fire by hitchhiking. That’s what most hikers were being forced to do at that point, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was scared that I would see myself as a failure for the rest of my life if I had to give up on my goal like that. And so even though this hike was conceived as a psychedelic journey, foremost I had to prioritize completing the miles. There were other things that caused me stress and anxiety as well, but without exception, the fires were the top stressors.

***

I honestly cannot tell you when I decided that I would trip on my last day in Oregon. I guess that the idea had been presented to me long before when someone mentioned a place called “Tunnel Falls” but I had no real idea where that location actually was. I was pretty sure that it was in northern California, but as it turned out it was the very last segment of the trail before crossing the Columbia River into Washington. Word on the trail was that it was this really green, lush river valley where the trail literally passes under a waterfall via a cave. Around 800 miles into the PCT I was telling someone that I came out to the trail to eat psychedelics as often as possible and they asked if I’d be eating them when I got to Tunnel Falls. It was easy back that far to say “oh, of course I will be,” but now I was actually approaching that place and I had to make the choice of whether or not I’d actually follow through.

To be candid, it was sort of against my best judgment to trip that day because of the stress and anxiety I was feeling about things, but two things made me take the leap and trip that day—one, I had told someone (whom I’d never meet again, so what did it *really* matter?) that I’d do it, and two, I sort of had a vague feeling that if I were to take a psychedelic dose at that point that it could knock me out of the mental funk that I’d been going through in the preceding week or so. But I honestly did not decide that I’d do it until right before swallowing the tabs.

I started descending into the valley and I looked at a map. It showed that I was 4 miles from the actual tunnel that passes under the waterfall, and so I sat down for a small bite to eat and to think things through. The answer was self-evident to me though. This was likely the only opportunity in my entire life that I’d have to eat psychedelics in this place that people had told me was so incredibly beautiful, and so I did it.

Being that I was feeling a bit “off,” I decided to take caution and only consume 1.5 grams. I had considered two grams, but settled on the lighter dose because of the risk of it potentially being a bad trip, and I am so grateful that I stuck with just the three mushroom tabs. It didn’t become a bad trip at all, but I can say that it ended up being a lot stronger than I was anticipating.

I at the three mushroom tabs and started hiking. The trail led into a really deep jungle and it sort of felt like Jurassic Park. You couldn’t even see the sky through all the thick trees and greenery. At one hour after I’d eaten the tabs I was *barely* feeling the dose, but by this point on the trail I’d learned that the trick of potentiating a dose was to eat a little bit more food, so at about 50 minutes into the dose I ate a Snickers bar, and ten minutes later I was thrust into the entheo-space. It hit me pretty hard to be honest. The body load was quite heavy, and I felt my anxiety building to a point. I was able to keep my feet under me and remain emotionally stable, but there was a building sense of “wow, this might be a bit much” when I reached Tunnel Falls itself right as the mushroom peak set in. What I hadn’t anticipated was that the trail walked right along some really steep cliffs. In the entire 2,650 miles of the PCT, this ended up being the only place that there were literally chains bolted into the side of the cliff wall so that you could hold onto them as you walked along. The trail was literally cut into the side of the cliffs. I wondered, as the mushrooms warped my vision and caused everything to breath, whether I would have taken mushrooms if I’d known that I’d be walking along such steep cliff faces that were literally a bad step away from falling to my death—who knows; maybe I would have, and maybe I wouldn’t, but I’m glad that I did because this turned out to be one of the more meaningful mushroom trips that I underwent on the trail.

I will say that after the immediate come-up, I had some really serious doubts about my choice to ingest the entheogen that day and at that place. It was very anxiety-ridden and the mushroom spoke directly to me in a way that can only be compared to telepathic English, although I didn’t *hear* the communication so much as I just knew it to be. As I reached the peak of the experience, the mushroom said to me, “why have you come here? What more did you need to know? I’ve shown you the nature of time [referring to Chicken Spring Lake], I’ve explained your relationship to your past events [the trip at Lake Aloha], I’ve taught you about forgiveness and acceptance [my mushroom experience at Thousand Island Lake], and I’ve shown you how you are all and all is you [tripping the day before Kennedy Meadows at the Kern River]. So what more do you want?” It was a very confrontational voice. Only once before in my experience with mushrooms had I felt so small and that the mushroom was so big. It was like being a child again and being scolded for always reaching into the cookie jar even when I wasn’t hungry. What was hard was that I didn’t have an answer for these questions. I didn’t know what more I was looking for. I thought about the quote (I think it’s from Alan Watts) that goes (and I’m paraphrasing more than quoting here) that “once you’ve received the message, hand up the phone.” In other words, it’s not necessary to trip on psychedelics every day. Really psychedelics are supposed to be a key into the door of understanding, and once you’ve walked through that door it’s no longer necessary to possess the key. You shouldn’t need to trip again and again after the message has been given; rather, you should try to integrate that information into your life from a “sober” perspective. I wondered if that was finally coming true for me. I wondered why I had eaten mushrooms on this day. I guess that the answer was because I told myself that I’d do it and I’d conceived of this hike of the Pacific Crest Trail as a psychedelic journey. But so what? The psychedelic experience, maybe it isn’t a button that needs to be hit again and again. Maybe it is something that you need to take in, learn from, and walk away from.

I felt almost ashamed as the mushroom looked down at me and asked “what more do you want?”. I even considered that maybe this would be the trip that I never speak of. Maybe I never should have journeyed into entheo-space if I was feeling anxious about the fires north of here or my purpose for the hike in the first place. Maybe this was what a “bad trip” looks like.

That said, I feel it important to say that the dose was light enough that I could still work through these feelings. I did sort of get lost for about five minutes on the trail in the midst of the peak when I took a wrong side path, and that caused me to *really* question whether or not I should have been tripping, but after I got back on the right path, I can say with sincerity that things started to get better. I started to feel the peak rounding off and I knew that at that point I’d made it through the more challenging part of the trip. I was however still tripping very heavily (well, “very heavily” considering the dose).

The trail really was beautiful in that area. It is a place called “Eagle Creek” and it is a deep, green, and luscious canyon carved out by the creek with steep canyon walls on both sides. So it brings you along this beautiful river with waterfalls and vegetation everywhere. It’s a really magical place, I’m sure even without psychedelics. But with the mushroom it just turned the beauty up all the more. I did bemoan the fact that there were a lot of other hikers in the area because of the fact that the trailhead can be accessed by road some 6 miles below where the waterfall passes over the trail, but they didn’t bother me as much as I expected that they would. Without exception really the other hikers were all just out for the day, and when they saw this guy walking along at twice their speed and with a backpack big enough to carry a week’s worth of supplies, they just stepped aside and let me through. Every now and again I’d get a look from them, but they never caused me the social anxiety that I was so worried about when I considered tripping that day.

At the two-hour mark I was far enough down from the peak that I was in absolute bliss and knew that tripping that day had been a good choice. I was no longer anxious or nervous or afraid at all. I felt completely at one with myself and my surroundings. I thought a lot about the journey that I’d been through to bring me to this place. By then I’d hiked more than 2,000 miles, and so I had a lot to reflect back on, and the mushroom made looking back on those past experiences of 3 months quite pleasurable and meaningful.

Strangely, the most profound moment of this mushroom trip is quite difficult for me to put into words… well, perhaps I should reword that. It’s not at all weird that the most profound moment is hard to put into words; that should be expected. What’s strange is how and where it came from and what it meant to me. I was continuing down this trail and really enjoying the psychedelic journey along the river, almost in awe of all the other people in the area. Like I said, there were many day hikers, and the further down the trail I went the more there were. I would venture to guess that I probably walked by a hundred people that day, but without exception, they completely left me alone and didn’t say a word. But surrounded by all this natural beauty, the thing that I most remember from the experience wasn’t a part of the nature, but it was in crossing paths with another hiker.

She was young—probably around 16 or 17 years old. She was hiking with some of her friends who were also in that same age group. They were all giggly and “cutsie” like you’d expect from a group of a half dozen middle-school girls, and as I walked by them, I turned to my right and made eye contact with one of them. I barely remember the girl. I remember that she had brown hair and that it was sort of long, but besides that I don’t recall her physical features. What I remember are her eyes. We locked eyes for what couldn’t have been longer than a second, and in her eyes I saw the entire universe. God—I feel silly even writing that now, and I’m at a complete loss for explaining how it happened, but simultaneously a single second elapsed and I was also there for an eternity. I looked into her eyes for a second, but I saw the universe for infinity. In her eyes I saw galaxies, planets, stars, the beginning and end of time, the “big bang,” and the death of the universe. It was a moment of absolute understanding of my world and the universe around me. It was a moment where everything fit into place, and it was all in looking into the eyes of a stranger for a passing moment that couldn’t have been longer than a second. I wondered what she saw in my eyes at that moment, but was willing to bet that it wasn’t nearly as profound. I wished that I could have stopped and talked with her. I wished that I could have looked deeper and maybe seen past even the universe. Maybe there was something larger in there still, or maybe that was just the nature of the experience.

It was funny, although the mushroom had been sort of harsh to me in the beginning of the trip, here I was 2 hours into it and I had been given this beautiful vision of understanding and peace. It was so beautiful. Like the mushroom scolded me for not coming with a question or a specific thing that I was seeking, but after giving me a brief punishment at the start of the trip, its loving side had ultimately prevailed and it embraced me once again.

From that moment on in the trip I came down substantially, but I still sort of tripped for the next couple of hours. In total I would guess that I was tripping for about 5 hours after consuming the dose. It was kind of special because after getting to the bottom of that canyon, the trail sort of just follows the highway for awhile, but it’s tucked away in the woods a bit, and when I arrived at that point I was in this perfect after-glow state of reflection and awe. I thought so much about the 2,000 miles that were behind me at that point and I thought about looking into the eyes of that young girl. It all meant so much to me. I even cried briefly as I walked along in the woods there; luckily I was alone from that point, as people were really only hiking up that canyon towards the waterfalls, and after I got to the bottom of the canyon that’s where most of them had parked and no one was taking the trail between that point and where I’d end up for the evening.

At the very end of my trip my eyes landed on The Bridge of the Gods. It was a special moment for me. It was one of the last great markers that I’d been looking forward to on the PCT. It was the point where the trail crossed the Columbia River into Washington and began the last state before Canada. A tear rolled down my face as I reflected back on Tyler telling me a thousand miles prior that “Once you reach the Bridge of the Gods you will have become a god and the gods that be will let you complete your journey; they will let you reach Canada.”

That night I stayed in the small town of Cascade Locks, immediately south of the Oregon/Washington border. I stayed with a “trail angel” who opens his home up to Pacific Crest Trail hikers. When I rolled into his place I was still in afterglow, but I came down from it as the evening progressed, and I really wasn’t tripping after I got into town.

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[Conclusion]
I feel that I’ve barely done justice to this final trip in trying to write about it here, but I have to remind myself and anyone else who might be reading this that the purpose behind this document isn’t to say, “here’s what my book is going to look like.” I’ve said it many times in the pages leading up to this point, and I have to say it again for both you and for me that this is just a purging of ideas. I wanted to get all of my trips out on the page so that I could look them over and get a feeling for how they can look on paper. Even in writing them I have conceptualized a lot that I hope to work into a more final text. For example, I’ve decided as of the writing of my last DMT trip last night, that I probably am not going to write about the DMT trips at all when I move towards writing a book. I don’t think that it’s possible for me to put into words what I learned from the experiences that I had on DMT while on the Pacific Crest Trail. I may or may not write about the act of smoking the DMT on the trail, but I think that I’ll keep the visions and subjective effects to myself. If someone wants to know what happened to me in those experiences from reading the book that I hope to produce, then they’re going to have to go out and find some for themselves and just take that leap first hand. I think that by putting it on the page as I’ve done here, I’ve really taken away from what the experience actually was. Sh*t… I can’t even say what it was when I look back on it. All that I really can do is decide to go and do it again if I want to know what the DMT experience is like.

As for the mushroom trips that I’ve written in this document, I will explore some of them in the book that I hope to write, but I don’t know which ones I’ll share or how I’ll share them, or how much detail I’ll go into. It’s all so hard to say, but again, this document has been about getting it on the page to see what it feels like, and I think that I’ve largely accomplished that task. I’ve learned a lot about the trips themselves, what they meant to me, and what the limitations are in explaining them to others. Like I’ve said, I absolutely don’t want a book that just says, “then I tripped, and then I tripped again, and then I tripped again, and then I tripped again.” Rather, I want to highlight the insights, lessons, and knowledge that I gained from each experience. Unfortunately, in writing these pages I’ve had to acknowledge the limitations that there are in attempting to do that.

For now however, I think that I will bring this writing to an end. I will share with you all that I did make it to Canada. The walk through Washington was challenging in its own right, but it did not involve any intake of psychedelics, so I will spare you the details.

There were indeed issues with fires in the northern part of the state, and many hikers quit the trail about 100 miles short because of those fires. I however chose to hike the road during those last 100 miles and I was able to complete my hike in Sumas, Washington by crossing the international border into British Columbia on August 28th at 11:00 pm the day before a massive storm rolled into the state.

If any of you have read this whole document or even pieces of it and have any feedback for me, I’m more than grateful to hear what you have to say. I thank all of you who supported me in the conceptualization of this journey, and just as much, those of you who continue to support me as I take on the monumentally long task of trying to turn it into a book.

Before I go, here’s one last thing—a list of all the psychedelic experiences that I had along the PCT:
-Mountain outside Idyllwild (mile 150ish): DMT
-Coon Creek Cabin to Big Bear City: ½ gram mushrooms
-Morning of day 15; an unnamed desert ridge: DMT
-The day hiking out of Wrightwood at Mt. Baden-Powel (not written about in this document): ½ gram mushrooms
-The desert outside of “Hiker Town” (not written about in this document): ½ gram mushrooms
-Kern River (with Tyler): 2.5 grams mushrooms
-Chicken Spring Lake: 3 grams mushrooms
-Mt. Whitney: DMT
-Thousand Island Lake: 3.5 grams mushrooms
-Lake Aloha: 4 grams mushrooms
-Forested ridge in Northern California (not written about in this document): DMT
-California/Oregon border with “Billy”: DMT
-Crater Lake: 2.5 grams mushrooms
-Sister’s Mirror Lake: DMT (three successive trips)
-Eagle Creek/Tunnel Falls: 1.5 grams mushrooms

For now, this is The_Scientific_Method signing off. Thank you for reading.

A very engaging read. Thank you. Looking forward to completing it over the coming days.

yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

Really looking forward to reading this, I think I might have to print it though

Woah!! I'll definitely need to come back to this with more time... But good on ye, man!! I spent last spring/summer hiking from the San Jacinto Mts to Shasta and back to Mt. Whitney on the JMT. While it was an entheogen-filled journey in its own right, it was also filled with grief and confusion... So I'd love to read the story of a fellow who made the trek of (at least marginally) sound mind and strong spirit.

You made GREAT time for being so loaded! Mad kudos to you; Can't wait to give it a read!!

And... Welcome to the club! The Sierra Nevadas are a harsh mistress for sure! <3 If you ever come back, I owe you a beer!

Thanks for the feedback all.

Hiyo, I'm planning to do the entire journey again in the 2016 or '17 season. I'll be sure to hit you up if/when I get back out there. If it's not on the PCT then I'll be doing it on the CDT.

AGAIN?!?!?

You've got big brass ones, brother! Good on ye', and good luck staying in shape! That trip must take it out of ya!

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this all down, ScientificMethod. Truly an inspiring read.

Is ScientificMethod currently walking?
I was thinking about is project to write a book about his journey on the PCT these days. I would love to read it, this story have been so inspiring for me... Does someone know about it?

Wow man this is awesome definitely looking forward to the book form its a great story, I'd also be more interested to find out what happened with your little brother since I also have a little brother I do psychs with