My life back in the late sixties and seventies certainly wasn’t boring. When I read what I had written then, The Birth of Wanderer and The Life and Death of Wanderer, and when I remember my life back then, what I had done then, my life seemed to have been very exciting and adventuresome. And every day was different.

I told Ariana the other day that I don’t have anything interesting enough in my life to write about these days. My life seems boring. It’s always the same. I’m living in a rut. I’m up at 6:30. I help get the boys off to school. I do chores, run errands, workout with weights at the gym, and then come home and meditate and write for a while. In the afternoon, I greet the boys as they return from school and help them with their homework. Every day is the same.

When I compare my earlier days as Wanderer back in the sixties and seventies to my life now, I feel that I don’t have anything to write about now. I’m not backpacking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon in the dead of winter. I’m not traveling around the country, meeting new folks every day. I no longer walk with Coyote. I’m not tripping everywhere I go. I’m certainly not living in a house with other high folks. I’m not one of the spiritual centers of Berkeley anymore either.

My life today is really different now. Except of an overnight this summer with Callahan, I haven’t backpacked in over 11 years. I don’t travel at all, and I seldom meet new folks now. I just used the last of my acid, and there’s no more in sight, although I can always hope. Anyway, I don’t trip as often as I did back in the old days, even when I do have some.

I certainly don’t live in a house with other high folks. Instead I live in a house with Aspen and the boys. And, to be honest, the boys are not at all high, and Zane’s the only one with any innocence left. They are always arguing and fighting with one another. They are all greedy and selfish and think only of themselves. They’re young boys, what do you expect?. What did I expect? I’m not sure. I’m certainly not a spiritual center here in Boulder. I have enough trouble just keeping my cool with all the anger and conflict going on in the house.
.

But I am 77 years old, and I am raising three wonderful boys. That’s an adventure in itself. Relating to each of the three boys is an adventure. They’re all so different.

Callahan was born scared. He and Aspen almost died in childbirth. He was stuck coming out. His head was out, past the cervix, but the rest of him wouldn’t come. We finally rushed Aspen and him to the hospital in an ambulance where she had an emergency C-section. It was close. He has been scared ever since, not of everything though. He’s very brave most of the time. But he’s scared of death, afraid even to let go to sleep, afraid he won’t wake up. We’re working on it.

Jake has Muscular Dystrophy and should be in a wheel chair by now. He astounds the doctors – and me too. He’s still walking and running and horseback riding and jumping and even bounding up the stairs at home. He’s very brave too. He knows what Muscular Dystrophy is. He knows his future. And he keeps on trucking. He’s really smart too, tops in his classes. All his teachers say so.

Zane is still cute. somewhat innocent, and utterly charming. He’s so full of love too. One night Callahan was crying (yelling) because he couldn’t go to sleep. He was keeping everyone up until it was after midnight. I was sitting in the boys’ bedroom with them, waiting for Callahan to calm out. I was beginning to lose it though. I began having “who does he think he is” kind of thoughts, when Zane took my hand with both of his and held me until I felt the love in my heart again. I realized he had given me a love transfusion.

Maybe I can write about all this – about my life with the boys. Maybe it’s not as exciting as my life back in the sixties and seventies, but it’s still an awesome adventure, raising three boys at my age to become kind and loving, strong and capable men.

Several weeks ago, I wrote this:

Today, as I write this, I’m trying something most difficult. In my long life, I have been Wanderer and lived as a wild mountain man, mostly in the woods at Dinky Creek in California. I have been Wanderer and lived and traveled in an old VW van around much of this country. I have been Wanderer and part of an incredible acid traveling family.

Now I’m trying to be Wanderer and be father to three young boys and live in a house in a city and follow their school’s weird schedules for much of the year. I’m trying to be Wanderer and do all this and more. This has become the most difficult journey I have undertaken in my many years as Wanderer. So far, it has been almost impossible to follow the flow, to be in the Tao while having to follow someone else’s schedule.

We have to get up at 6:30 every school morning. I am not an early morning person. For the past four years, this has been my private hell. I don’t sleep well when I have to get up at a certain time. And I almost always wake up too early and then can’t get back to sleep.

I could mention many other ways in which I have had trouble flowing with the rigidity of the school’s schedules. I’m not used to going to bed at a certain time either. Sometimes I have to decide between following a creative hunch or getting enough sleep, all because I have to be up at 6:30 the next morning.

.

I was having tea with Ariana the other day and I was complaining about this to her. It’s been big on my mind lately, what with school starting up again. She said something, I forget her words, but what I got out of it was that this was my life now. This was my flow, 6:30 in the morning, even in the dark of the winter, and all.

Ever since then I’ve been thinking about what she said and trying to fit it into my here and now life. Today is, a big day for me, I’m doing the last of my acid. This has made the day special for me. As I came on earlier, I wondered where the acid would take me.

Except for some solitary time during the first few hours, mostly meditating, I did the same as if I weren’t tripping. I found that debriefing the boys when they came home from school, helping them with their homework, helping to feed them, and sending them all off with Aspen to the YMCA for hers and Callahan’s Karate class – all this was in my flow. And doing the dishes and filling the water bottles and taking out the trash while they were gone was too. I realized that I already was in the flow. Being their dad and helping to run a household and getting them where they need to go is my flow.

And when they come home soon, my flow will lead me upstairs and into helping them get their school clothes out for the morning, helping them go to the bathroom, helping them to floss and brush their teeth, and then sharing hugs and kisses and holding hands and into their beds for the night.

Then I can relax and float into the remainder of the night, reading or writing or smoking or maybe visiting with folks. Maybe I’ll get lucky and Aspen and I will play. But nothing too late, unless it’s really important (like playing.) I have to be up and functioning by 6:30 in the morning.
.

Aspen and I have been going through a lot of changes lately, what with being parents and all. One big change has been with respect to our friends.

We’ve been parents for almost 11 years. Now that we finally have time to be more social, we’ve come to see that we have very few friends left.

We have been so busy raising our three boys that we haven’t really noticed our loss until recently. However, this past summer, we had more time to reach outside our family, and we were surprised to find how few friends were left out there.
.

We started thinking about what kind of friends we wanted, now that we had felt the need again, now that we had more time for a social life.

We thought we had a new friend, a body worker, but he turned out to be a “call me for an appointment” type friend. We don’t want friends who are still hooked into the straight world like that. We decided then that what we did want were friends who have freed themselves, not just from the 9 to 5 and trying to get ahead system, but from that entire way of relating to the world.

Aspen and I are edgewalkers, and we really like our few friends who are also living on the edge, citizens of Edge City as we are. We want to find more friends who are edgewalkers.

I have also found that friends who use the various medicines for spiritual growth fit us well. I have always found that I have a deep and permanent connection with folks I have tripped with, And I have noticed too that when I sit down with a friend and we smoke a bowl, we both find ourselves becoming more open and friendly – certainly more real.

Aspen and I especially like friends with kids. It’s difficult for most folks to relate to Aspen and me if they don’t be parents themselves. It’s also difficult for most of them to relate to our kids when they don’t have any themselves. There are exceptions; our friend John Bob has always been awesome and understanding with our kids.

Mostly Aspen and I want to have friends we could live with, raising our kids together with. You know, folks we can get along with. We’re not in a hurry to live with others but it is on our minds.

And you know what? Ever since we began thinking about friends, new friends who would fit our new life as parents, we’ve been meeting them.

I’m listening to Joan Osborne singing one of my favorite songs, “One of Us,” in which she’s asking,

What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on a bus
Trying to make his way home
Like a holy rolling stone
Back up to heaven all alone.

I remembered Stephan Gaskin once saying something like this too – saying something like, so you’re enlightened, great, but you still have to mind the store and tend to the little things, that sort of thing. For him, enlightenment was not in itself the end of spiritual striving.

I also thought of the Buddhists and their notion of the Bodhisattva, the person who achieves enlightenment but who stays behind with the rest of us in ordinary reality just as long as there’s anyone left here still unenlightened.

Listening to her sing, I wondered if maybe I was a Bodhisattva, like the God that she was singing about, just a stranger trying to make my way home, like a holy rolling stone. The thing is, even if I am God, even if I am enlightened, it’s not that big a deal. I still have to take care of business. I still have to raise and support my family. I still have to contribute to the general welfare and consciousness.

Maybe this is what I was thinking about when I decided that this time around I wanted to be Wanderer right here in the middle of ordinary, everyday reality. I’ve wandered many lonesome back roads and wild forest trails in my day. I’ve wandered in the darker regions of my soul. I’ve wandered to the higher reaches of Spirit. I’ve seen the Light. But I have never wandered and shared myself in ordinary reality. It’s about time that I do.

The other day, someone asked me why I had needed to use acid, why couldn’t I have been high without it. His question got me to thinking.

Acid and I had a natural fit. Acid opened the doors to higher consciousness and alternative states of reality. I’d always been interested in consciousness and magic. When I was a young boy, I wanted more than anything to be a Druid when I grew up. This is why I earned my PhD in psychology from UCLA. This is why I became a healer. This is why I started using acid

I have always worked to raise my consciousness. I have always listened to and tried to understand my dreams. I have been consulting the I Ching for more than 45 years. I have done yoga and meditated for almost this long. When I first did acid, in 1968, I saw it’s enormous potential for my work with consciousness. I immediately added it to my consciousness raising tools.

I was also a wanderer and an adventurer. I particularly liked to use acid and wander about in consciousness. There’s always something new and exciting to find and explore. Understanding this, I soon began to use acid to explore the many realms of consciousness.

For example, there is a level of consciousness that is always in the here and now. There is also a level where one is in all of time at once, a level where one can see from the beginnings to the ending. I found that I could go back and forth between these two realms at will. I have found others just as interesting.

I was sitting under a Juniper Tree in the High Sierras once. I was doing acid. Then I suddenly found myself high above the tree looking down at my body that was still sitting under the tree. Ever since then, I have known that my consciousness is not tied to my body and I can leave my body whenever I wish.

Another time, again in the High Sierras, I saw the world of rocks and trees disappear, replaced by a grey nothingness. I asked for the world back then, the world of beauty that had surrounded me. The grey nothingness vanished and the rocks and trees returned. Ever since then, I have known that the world of rocks and trees is no more real than the grey nothingness.

I’m extremely interested in this sort of thing. I always have been. I always will be.