As spring approached the whole area became awake with it. People started to get busy. A chicken coop was put up, the field was plowed and the pioneer commune, New Buffalo, invited everyone from all the communes everywhere in the area to a calibration of the birthday of a guru: I don’t remember which. Stan and I had smoked some opium before hiking down from the mesa through the town and up on the other mesa to the beautiful adobe pueblo of Easy Rider fame with a pack of us from Morningstar. There was a noticeable lack of wine and drugs… maybe a chillum or two of pot… but it was small scale consumption going down compared to other get-togethers. Then someone announced that we would all sit in a guided meditation in honor of the guru’s birthday whose picture with garlands of flowers was propped up in front of us. Though I’d sat for hours at a time while tripping, this guided group meditation business was foreign to me. We were all given these strips of wood to hold that represented our egos. At the end of the meditation we were instructed to throw our strips of wood into the fire… burn our egos. I missed the whole point and held up that strip of wood and then tucked it in a pocket… I kept my strip of wood along with its attendant ego. I just wasn’t ready to let go… it seemed so final to burn it. It was all so innocent and oh-so-holy to be there though. I was touched by the spirit of it. I longed for that kind of fellowship… a deep and abiding hunger. Around that time a couple of the founders, Jason was one but I don’t remember the other, headed out towards Loredo Texas with Little Joe from the Taos Pueblo on a peyote hunt. Little Joe was a sort of the sponsor saint of the communes from the Taos Pueblo who’d ventured to teach the “founders” skills such as the making of adobe brick and how to conduct a peyote ceremony. Now this was a big deal. I’m not sure if the Native American Church had been sanctioned yet to use Peyote back then but Richard Nixon was President and I don’t know how tolerant the Texas Rangers or Border Patrol would have been regardless had they been caught with a jeep loaded with peyote. The DEA was something entirely new then too…. does anyone remember when the War on Drugs started? … it hasn’t ended, that’s for sure.
I was advised by Byron to fast at least a day before the Peyote Ceremony planned for Easter. I had never fasted before and knew nothing about such things but I had damned near starved a few times in my wanderings and did know what it was like to be real goddamned hungry. So, I went out to the goat-pasture for three days and sat with nothing but water and a nibble here or there… just a nip or two off a piece of chapatti. Chapattis were a sort of tortilla I was shown to make by grinding wheat or whatever other grain into a flour and with nothing other than water. I found I could make them with multiple grains besides wheat… brown rice, barley, rolled oats, even soy beans for protein. That and oatmeal were my main staples along with cheddar cheese, tahini and a soy bean pop-corn kicked in once in a while. Fresh vegetables didn’t last very long but there were some around right after a supply trip into Taos.
Water was always a top priority and most of us kept very few eating utensils that would require water for cleaning because we either had to hike over the terrain with a five gallon plastic container. Having to take that trip with one such can balanced on my head I had fit one neatly into an improvised back-pack, trekking cross the mesa and down into an arroyo to a small trickle of a stream emptying into a pond formed from a recently bull-dozed earthen damn (I can see from Googling it that the pond is still there). It was a third of a mile as the crow flies but considerably more negotiating my way down the sometimes steep trail to the pond. Packing along my bowl and spoon, I rinsed them out there and filled the plastic can after taking a dip in the near freezing water of the pond to get some of the campfire and smell of sweat off of my body. It was at least a twice a week hike but I was young and healthy then and enjoyed the wonders of it. Other than that a truck could load us up with a fifty gallon drum to fill our bottles and so on down at a gas station in Arroyo Hondo.
The Easter peyote hunting party arrived and the folks who knew what they were doing busied themselves for the ceremony. It was to be held in the teepee fixed in the depression at the beginning of the gully that split the mesa off from where Reality Construction Company had its claim. The traditional ceremony excluded women but Morningstar assumed an exception to this rule in acknowledgement of the Age of Aquarius I was told. However, a larger contingent of the women respected the tradition and busied themselves preparing the breaking of the fast. I remember vividly the woman, Beatrice, who actually sat next to Byron at the head of the circle opposite the entrance flap of the teepee. The circle around the fire-pit sat in two rows… Some were experienced with the ritual and some not. A peyote ceremony has a certain arrangement that doesn’t vary much. An earth crescent was formed in front of Byron and Beatrice between them and the fire. The fire was made by laying down two sticks at a time, one crossing the other at the ends closest to the crescent on which was place in the center the Peyote Chief… the largest of the peyote buttons. Jason was the fireman. The fireman had the responsibility of keeping the fire going and stood at the entrance flap.
The whole ritual of the ceremony was fixed around the idea that one was expected to stay put from sundown to sunrise. There might have been a break at midnight but I don’t have any recollection of that. It just seems impossible today that I could have sat that long back then. If anyone were to leave the ceremony’s intention or spirit would be broken. There were five items passed around from the beginning. One was the thunder stick… a stick adorned with bells tied around… spiraling the length held upright, striking the ground to accompany the steady beat of the drum. This drum was unique in that it was a fairly large bowl (was it brass or ceramic?) half full of water with a skin stretched over it. I hadn’t ever really heard ceremonial drumming before and didn’t expect it to be a steady… bom-bom-bom-bom-bom… simultaneously with a ching-ching-ching-ching of the thunder stick… carried on hypnotically through the night. These were passed around the circle with attendant prayers offered by each. I can’t really recall the sequence but they made the full circle before the peyote tea and then the buttons were passed. The vomit bucket was passed as needed.
One of the characters that hung out at the Kiva a for a few weeks before was a Bible thumper who preached to anyone who would listen and to anyone who would not, the traditional Baptist babble of John 3:16. He was tolerated and very few objected but I was surprised to see him in the ceremony. The drums and thunder-stick came his way it it was time for him to pray. He stood shaking his bible at everyone declaring that we were participating in a Satanic ritual and would be damned to hell if we continued. He then left the teepee at the protest of some about breaking the circle. He could care less because he had the Sword of the Lord on his side I suppose.
The ceremony continued and it was some time after everyone had at least tasted one of the slices of buttons that my tripping began. The drumming and thunder-stick were a powerful inducement to take me higher than I’d ever been since my original trip on Waikiki Beach. I saw no such thing as a Castaneda spirit world vision but my heart overflowed with a pure and simple love. I believe that for me this was the single-most important part of the whole adventure. All that resentment and anger… cynical distrust and alienating anxiety dissolved into a wholeness of spirit. I felt at one with the bom-bom-bom-bom of the Spirit Drum… the ching-ching-ching-ching of the Thunder-Stick and the power of the chants in native tongue combined with the ones prayed in English as voices raised and ebbed in synch with the beat.
Then it happened… the spell was broken… the entrance flap flew open and there stood a majestic looking man with a rifle glowering over us. Jason, whose position at the door welcomed him. He stood without saying a word for an eternity… then said, “Some white kids playin’ cowboys and Injuns, eh?” After which he departed.
It was either Byron or Jason that then said flatly, “Thank you Bodhisattva. Let us continue.”
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