I felt my body turning into water and flowing off the edges of my crashpad and into the earth. I became keenly aware of every molecule simultaneously changing and flowing.
Just a few hours earlier my friends and I had gone into the mushroom queen of North Alabama to collect our ingredients. She was a well kept secret; four adjoining cow fields right in the middle of Decatur Alabama that never failed to yield metric fuck tons of wild psilocybin mushrooms all summer when conditions were right.
All three of us took two grocery bags full back to the home of my friend Preston. He is a certified genius, master of 40 instruments, physics professor, and curious to no end. This day he was also our shaman.
We chopped mushroom flesh for over an hour, packed the pieces into silk stockings and boiled them in a giant pot normally reserved for 30 pounds of crawfish.
The end result was a kind of sludge with a bluish hue that, on its own, was unpalatable. But after a point or two of honey and smoking a few bowls, we found that we could keep it down.
We poured everything into several gallon jugs and hit the trail.
Our chosen destination was one of the few remaining old growth forests called the Sipsey wilderness area of the Bankhead national forest in North Alabama.
On a Saturday night in the middle of nowhere we let our hearts guide us into the woods. Eventually we came upon this tall waterfall that felt perfect. As we analyzed the scene I took my first sip before passing the jug around.
We backtracked a little bit and climbed to the top where we found an enchanting little patch of thick fescue grass encircled by giant old trees and an ancient fire circle in the middle. There was no question in my mind; this was the place...
The Grove was sitting atop this waterfall and was fed by a pool off to our side and a small cascade fell over a rock wall that protected us on three sides. We made camp, collected wood, and built a fire. Then we began sipping, and sipping.
It didn't take long for our brew to take hold. I was grabbed by an undeniable feeling of euphoria that I had never known. I became acutely aware of my physical body and my connection to the life force around me. This ancient forest seemed to take me into her arms and embrace me like a loving grandmother.
When Preston began blowing on his didgeridoo I lay back and closed my eyes.... And melted. Like totally melted into water.
I flowed off the edge of my foam pad into the earth. I moved past rocks and grass, worms and small burrowing insects. I could feel the tickle of something pulling me into itself and knew instinctively it was the tiniest of tree roots no thicker than one cell.
So I pushed my consciousness in that direction and began moving up into the tree. Again I was given insight and knew then that the only part of the tree that was truly alive was the cambium layer (the green bit just under the bark) and I could feel myself being pulled up and up into the branches out to the very tips and into a berry.
I was the tree. I became the berry. As I amazed at my new situation in life I wondered briefly if this was my new station and decided that if it were, I was fine with it. I felt ancient, wise, and strong.
As soon as I accepted this development I was eaten by a bird. And I became the bird and took flight.
I soared over the sipsey river through the canopy and for the first time in my life I understood freedom. Suddenly I shat myself and I was falling. I became the shit, and in that moment I felt forgiveness for every bird that had ever shat on my shoulder or my car. I knew instinctively that birds have no control of their waste functions. It wasn't their fault.
All this passed through my mind as I fell towards the raging water of the sipsey. When I landed I once again felt myself disintegrate into water, and I became the river. I was water once again. But this time, I was power. Wild, uncontrollable power, and it scared me.
I retreated back into my body, opened my eyes and looked around.
My lady friend was next to me, beautiful. Preston was droning on the didgeridoo like before, the fire was crackling, but something was different. I realized it was me. I had changed forever.
The night went on with lots of laughter, music, conversation, and love.
Hours later my girl and I retreated to the forest and connected physically and spiritually in ways neither of us had ever experienced before. We fell in love in those early morning hours.
Holding hands, we picked our way down to the river and found a tall rock outcropping where we perched like owls and smoked a bowl with the rising sun. Then we heard music. Soft sweet, like an angelic choir getting ever louder, and then we saw them.
A hundred or so women, all dressed in long flowing white dresses were walking in one's and twos through the forest and singing. They came right towards us and passed in front of us when we saw that several of them had tiny babies in their arms.
Part of me knew they were going to their own magic place to baptize the babies in the river. Another part of me genuinely believed they were magical beings, angels, fairies, or something else. It didn't matter. I knew that they were there for us, they were singing just for us, and that same water where they were going in search of eternal life had already given it to me.
We are water. Water is life.