A Nation of Mystics_Book II_The Tribe

by Pamela Johnson

  KATHY AND CHRISTIAN

  MAUI, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS

  SEPTEMBER 1968

  Rolling over in bed in the cottage, Kathy recognized Keith’s voice. At dinner the evening before, Keith had mentioned that the drive to the rim of Haleakala Crater would take two and a half hours. They needed to be on the road by 5:30 a.m. or they wouldn’t have time to trip and return in one day.

  “What time is it?” she asked into the darkness.

  “About 5:30. We overslept. Come up to the main house when you’ve got it together.”

  Lighting the lantern, she grabbed her still-damp towel and made her way to the river. She gasped as her body hit the water, washed quickly, and dried off shivering.

  Last night, just before bed, Kathy had said goodnight to everyone at the main cabin, and, as Julie had suggested, she had let her gaze linger on Christian.

  Alright, she’d told herself, that couldn’t be mistaken.

  She’d stacked pillows behind her back, picked up the book, and waited as she had the night before. Time passed, until, once again, she knew he wouldn’t come.

  Now it was morning.

  Christian was waiting at her hut when she returned from her bath in the river. His hair was everywhere—over his shoulders, hanging down his back, stirring her eroticism, asking her to touch it, to wrap herself in the closeness of it.

  “Can you do my hair, Kathy?”

  “In the car,” she told him, dressing quickly. Out of habit, she picked up all the hash, pot, and paraphernalia lying around and put it away from the cottage, stashing it under a bush.

  Six people were going up to the top of the crater. Annie and Julie were staying home to care for the infants. Kathy sat in the front with Keith and Christian. Bob, Dharma, and Lizbeth—the lady who lived in a tree house on the land—sat in the back. By the time the group had made it to Kahului, Lizbeth had her arm on Bob’s knee.

  “I think we should take the back trail,” Keith said. “We’ll drop going in, cross the crater, then come back out the Sliding Sands Trail to the visitor center. From there, we can walk or hitch down to the car. We should be able to handle people by that time.”

  Shortly after 8:30, they reached the top of the mountain, signed the visitor book, and drove up to where they would park the car. From a plastic bag in his shirt, Christian brought out barrel-shaped doses of acid. Kathy wondered where he’d gotten Richard’s tabs. They had to know someone in common.

  “They’re about two hundred mics,” he mentioned with accuracy. “How many do you want?”

  Kathy had been waiting for this opportunity all summer. “I’ll have three to start,” she told him. “I’ve wanted to high dose for a few months now.”

  Swallowing was difficult because she’d had nothing to drink all morning. The pills stuck in her throat, and she forced them down with what saliva she could muster. Christian copied her, eating three. Then he passed the bag around to the group.

  Single file, they started up the ribbon-thin trail, not more than two feet wide. The ground was crushed and splintered rock, a golden yellow color, with only a few low plants growing on either side of the trail at that high altitude.

  Without food, it took only fifteen minutes for Kathy to feel the acid’s come-on. Her legs began to shake, but she held them steady to the path, following Christian, grateful at the moment for the deliberate act of forward movement. Up and up the mountain they climbed, the ground changing colors from yellow-gold, to iron-reds and lava blacks, until at last, one by one, they came up to the rim of the crater. Sands of dark granules formed vast plains stretching away into the distance; monoliths of lava rock reached toward the sky. As she passed over the crest of the hill and dropped down into the bowl, she thought of the words from the Apostle’s Creed—“He descended into hell”—remembered the mythological stories of Hades, became Dante descending into the Inferno.

  But sensations were changing rapidly, and she didn’t have time to worry about the dangers of Hell. Indeed, her most immediate thought was to pay attention to the path, because it began to narrow, and to one side was a sheer drop. Kathy stretched back to the walls of the cliff, moving carefully, trying to focus her eyes, her body trembling and vibrating from the powerful dose.

  Again, the path widened, twisted, moving downward toward the floor of the crater, then narrowed, a sheer cliff on her left again. At one point, the path had crumbled. Christian turned to make sure she maneuvered the obstacle without mishap, his own face disquieted, moving, but a part of him still thinking, and thinking of her. The thought barely touched the tip of her consciousness before it blew away, lost in new maneuverings, but it was a thought she totally accepted, as if it were right for Christian to care for her, as if they did indeed already belong to each other.

  They reached the floor of the crater and stopped to regroup, regarding each other with shy grins, reddened faces, weaving and shifting in the light. Christian took out the plastic bag and offered tabs around the group. Kathy took two more and watched as Christian swallowed another two himself, wondering where they were going on a thousand mics of acid, ten thousand feet in the air above an island in the middle of the sea.

  Keith started out across the plains, and one by one, the group followed his lead.

  Once on the crater floor, Kathy simply wanted to sit and inspect the immensity of color. What had appeared as a huge black pit from above was actually a whole world of different shades and hues. The rock formations formed intricate spirals of smooth swirls, not at all the barbed and jagged volcanic rock she had seen along the seashore. Everything in this mineralized world was balanced form, still part of the life force, growing, changing. The rock structures resembled trees, even to the outstretched branches, their porous arms held up to sun and rain. Tiny stones of sand were jewels, sparkling in the sun as vividly as dew drops—reds, blacks, golds, and browns—never a single color duplicated, each grain its own special world.

  The path they followed took them through a field of cinder cones, reminders of heat and fire. Her body spread out and away, disappeared in a flux of energy. She became the volcano, heat and hot steam, red and yellow magma, bursting upon itself to cool and form, and burst again in this island place that had existed before the first seed, before plants, insects, and birds, before man.

  She lived the formation of earth, probed her genetic memory, stretched back, open to all the beings that had gone before, one with them, knew all three and a half billion years of evolution. For the present, it was her turn to exist, and someday she would pass on this experience through her own genes. What would she give to a child of her own? Greater reasoning? More awareness? What would this trip mean to evolution, to mankind? Would the child be the mutation that would guarantee the earth’s survival? Knowing greater heart and mind?

  Near the center of the crater, the group stopped to rest, sitting on large volcanic rocks that had once been forcefully thrown from the smaller cones within the crater. Christian took out his bag once more. Everyone refused more of the tabs … except Kathy.

  Just one more, she thought, to see what it will teach.

  Christian smiled now, took one for himself, and absently put the bag away.

  Kathy lay back on the rock. The darkened colors of the crater were in sharp contrast to the sparkling blueness of the sky. For a moment, she wondered about the sun. At ten thousand feet, the sun should have been intense. If she had been at the beach, a day in the sun would have destroyed her. But she had learned that acid somehow protected her from burn, no matter how long her body was exposed, almost if she was able to use sunlight directly, like a plant.

  Reaching for her toes, she stretched on the warmed rock, feeling the pull of muscles in her legs and back, beginning the asanas. Christian took off his shirt, stood in the sunlight, and lifted his arms. She watched his muscles move in waving patterns, longed to reach out and touch him. Somewhere along the trail, they had come together in mind-blending intimacy. Where? She could not separate either her mind or body from h
is, as if they had always been one.

  Keith looked at the group and gave them the sign. “We need to move on. There’s water ahead.”

  Shakily, Kathy once more took to the trail that wove its way through the crater. From the height of expanded consciousness, she examined those elements of karma that had brought her to this spot. The patterns of her childhood became clear images. The presence of her parents was so strong that she believed she could create a wave that would touch them with her mind.

  Are not thoughts waves? Is not the will energy? She had only to direct the waves, and they would feel her presence.

  A vision began to appear, born of love and hope and promise. An island, round and green and vibrant, much like the one she was on, and slowly, one by one, she began to people the island with those she loved … everyone she had ever loved.

  Someday, Mom and Dad, I’ll show you this moment. Someday, I’ll drop with you.

  Ahead, in an oasis of green grass, was a small red cabin trimmed in white and surrounded by shade trees. Behind the cabin, a huge water tank held the rainwater that kept the area alive. Kathy had not realized until that moment how dehydrated she was. They’d had nothing to eat or drink since last night’s dinner and had walked across many miles of crater floor in full sun.

  The water was sweet and clean, wetting her mouth and throat, filling her stomach. If only she could put her whole body into it. Instead, she splashed her face and arms, pouring water over her shirt. Then taking a deep shaky breath, easing her acid smile, she took a seat under a tree next to Christian. When he touched her shoulder and looked into her eyes, she opened herself to him—every experience, every thought and emotion, all that had made her who she was.

  “I’ve just about peaked,” he said to her. “I’m moving to the downward side.”

  “You’re thinking about something important,” she answered softly.

  “Yes,” he nodded. “I’m searching out the karma of my relationships. I need to keep my people safe. I’m responsible for so many lives. I have to know, ponder all the possibilities that my dealing might bring.”

  “And what did you find?” she asked, smiling, the light in her gaze reflected in his eyes.

  “Integrity.” He gave a shaky breath. “I’ve been straight with everyone. We’re protected.”

  “I’m on the downside, too. I have control of my eyes again. But I’m slowing down. The sun … fasting … no food and water … the vision quest …,” she told him, remembering her class with Benjamin Miller.

  “It’s getting late,” Keith told them, looking at the position of the sun. “We’re going to have to hustle to get out of here before dark. We’ll have to pick up the pace.”

  From Paliku Cabin, they started walking back to the visitor center, a distance of about seven and a half miles. Kathy felt her body tiring, her thoughts beginning to slow. Not a physical tiredness, but a neurological one. She was beginning to space.

  They passed one of the cinder cones, then another, reached a second cabin. Water, a short break, and they continued along the trail. Kathy knew she was moving slower than the others. One by one Bob, Lizbeth, and Dharma passed her. Ahead, she could see Christian’s anxious glance, and the bottom of Lizbeth’s thongs as she disappeared over a low rise. She tried moving faster, caught a glimpse of the party at the top of the hill ahead … and already they were moving on. Christian waited for her at the bottom of the valley, but before she reached him, he started walking again, making sure he kept the others in sight.

  Now the place where they walked was barren, and the thought of hurrying forced Kathy to move without focusing on the minute crystals of rock or the occasional bright yellow flowers that appeared out of black sand.

  Keep moving, she ordered herself.

  And she did. Until she reached the top of the next rise and caught a glimpse of the setting sun, a sunset such as she had never seen before. The vibrant motion and color lured her, a moth to the flame.

  “Kathy!” Christian called.

  But she could not move. Instead she sat down on the small peak and watched as the sun touched the edge of the earth.

  Christian walked back and squatted beside her. “We should get moving,” he said gently.

  “Can’t … not now …” was all Kathy could manage.

  Ten hours of sun and fasting, consciously dropping the largest dose of acid she’d ever taken, had brought her to this place. Native Americans had held such ceremonies for thousands of years to induce the mystical experience, and now that the union she sought with God was so near, she couldn’t worry about the time of day. She had to go with it.

  Christian looked ahead apprehensively. Everyone else had gone. But the path looked easy enough. They would just have to follow when Kathy was ready. He understood clearly what was happening, knew that ego death was a difficult thing to experience, sometimes terrifying, closely approaching real death.

  “We’ll wait till you’re ready.”

  Kathy took a deep breath, found it harder to put words to thoughts, while meaning became more difficult. She was losing the separation between herself and all matter, all thought.

  A giant electrical hum oscillated in higher and lower pitch, first loud, then soft. Her nervous system stood out from her body. Impulses fired a charge from one nerve ending to another. As she slowed, she became trapped in the sensation, became the single impulse between two cells. Just before fear, neurological transmission between all the cells opened. Her nervous system became a gigantic flash of glowing white light. The hum grew louder, vibrating. The sun meeting the earth exploded. One finger touched the ground. Time stood still. Bathed in radiance, she became the face of God, inseparable from anything in existence, eternal shimmering molecules of formlessness.

  Then, just as suddenly, she knew the body, realized the self.

  Released from the image of white light, her sensory system begin to pick up impulses again, moving time forward, slowly, then with more momentum, until the sensations took the form of those things around her, until things could be named, faster still, reintegrating her psyche into a new personality with a new vision, a vision based on the deep truths of the trip, finally to understand that she was with a man named Christian who sat beside her.

  “Christian …,” Kathy murmured, looking into his eyes. “Christian …”

  “I know,” he whispered.

  As she fell more and more into the person who was Kathy, she understood they were alone and that Christian had waited for her. Of all the others, Christian had put her before himself.

  Where will I ever find a man who loves this way again?

  “I … know God …,” she tried telling him. “You were my first thought. I came back … to you …”

  They perceived each other with a nakedness few men and women ever show each other. They merged, understood, and wondered.

  Will we ever be able to separate completely again?

  Christian looked back over the horizon where Keith and the others had disappeared, taking Kathy’s mind with him.

  “Where is everyone?” she asked.

  “Gone. We should try to catch up. The sun just set.”

  Kathy stood and without a word, nodded to him. They turned toward the trail, climbing to the next hill. At the top of the rise, Christian stopped. They couldn’t be far from the crest of the crater and the visitor center. But how far? There was only black rock stretching on the plain as far as they could see.

  Kathy looked at him blankly. “Which way?”

  Christian studied the scene. Patterns were easily accessible on acid. They had seen patterns in the tiniest particle of rock. But now, looking before them, they saw a multitude of patterns, dozens of paths. Which was the true path?

  “Could that be it?” Kathy asked, pointing.

  “Let’s walk that way. We can’t stay here. The sky’s already starting to fade. The wind’s picking up.”

  Before long, they knew they were lost. They began climbing in and out of small gullies that cou
ld not be part of the park trail.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked. Twilight had begun to deepen.

  “I think we’ve just run out of time. We’re going to have to stay here. If we try and move around, we could get hurt. The crater holds cracks and fissures, and this pumice cuts.”

  “What will we do for shelter?”

  Christian looked around the barren plain. “I’m sorry, lady. I wish I could give you a warm home, but the closest we’re going to come is that small boulder. It might give a little protection.”

  They sat down on the ground, close to each other, and watched as night descended, dark, the moon thin. Slowly, stars began to appear, first only a few, then tens and scores more, until thousands filled the night sky. The wind began to blow fiercely, sending the temperatures plummeting.

  “The s-sun was so h-hot t-t-today,” Kathy’s teeth chattered. She sat huddled next to him, wearing only a T-shirt and shorts, her arms locked around her knees.

  “We should have carried something,” he answered. “Water. Food.”

  Reaching into his pocket, Christian brought out a lighter and flicked it on. For a brief moment, the air was filled with a bright flash, and color reappeared in the air. Kathy could just catch a glimpse of his face earnestly seeking the light, before the wind blew out the flame. He tried once more. Again the wind took the light. And again. The clicking resounded in the darkness, the brief flashes and sparks fading into colorful paisleys. Kathy reached out and covered his hand and the lighter with her fingers. “It’s alright.”

  For the first time, they touched, laying side-by-side, shaking, visions still vibrant weavings of pattern and color in the darkness. Christian’s breath was warm, his arms around her, holding tightly. Soon, one hand was at a breast, then his face was between her cleavage, breathing into it, starting to move his lips against her chest. She took his head in her hands without passion, only a rising sense of protecting him.

  A thousand mics of acid. Surely, he’s far away and searching for a route home, so let him suckle and find a home in me.

  His hand traveled her body, feeling at her waist, rising over her hip, searching between her legs, resting there, warming his fingers between her thighs. The pumice was hard, cutting into her unprotected skin. Kathy knew it would be impossible to be naked, to lie on the rock, to have his weight on top of her.