My hopes are high
My way is bold
Reminiscent of the old
Here I am
Rising from the dark again
From the interior of my soul
Where I have lurked
Hibernating through the years
Until this time
This day
When from now on
I call myself Wanderer
And ask you
To call me Wanderer too
After all
This is my name
.

Wanderer has long been a sometimes conscious part of my personality. Originally he was just a part of who I was as an active and happy little boy. But when I died as that little boy, I lost a large part of myself. I lost what I have come to call Wanderer. He was lost, left to wander in my unconscious, existing as mere potential.

After dying on the operating table and then returning to life, I became very introverted and very scared and very unhappy. I spent most of my time alone in my room, reading grownup books and listening to music. I had very few friends. I was no longer an active and happy little boy.

Lost in my unconscious, Wanderer carried the rest of me, all that I had lost – that active and happy little boy, enjoying his body and beginning to explore the world around him. For a long while, this Wanderer side of myself was completely outside of my life and my consciousness.
.

In my late thirties, after working on my head for a long while and becoming a lot braver, Wanderer finally began to return to me, He first came to me in a dream, a wandering man that I took home with me. He appeared in several more of my dreams, but then he became strong enough to come to me sometimes when I was doing acid. Once, when he came to me, I actually saw him. In fact, we sat around my campfire for hours together. After a while, I even forgot he wasn’t with me in a physical body and offered him a joint.

Finally, alone for three weeks in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, doing acid and peyote, he and I merged and became one. Soon after this we began to wander and our life became one of adventure and powerful magic.
.

However, back in 1973, traveling through Flagstaff, Arizona, Wanderer asked me to take the next step, to take Wanderer as our name, to call ourselves Wanderer instead of me calling myself by my given name. I refused, feeling it would be weird and presumptuous to introduce myself to others as Wanderer.

Looking back from the here and now of my life though, I realize that I should have taken the name Wanderer then. I should have been braver. This is why I am taking the name now.
.