I have had many friends in my seventy-seven years of life. My early school years were long ago; so I don’t remember most of my classmates from then. However, I do remember Bob Smith. He and I grew up together and went to the same elementary school together,

Later, in high school, he was our star pitcher. We called him the Iceman. And after high school, I enlisted in the Air Force and became a flying officer, while he enlisted in the Army and became an officer in the Paratroopers. Later on, after going to UCLA together, I became a clinical psychologist and he became a psychiatrist. I haven’t heard from him in years now, not since I dropped out and began doing medicine.

I have no friends left from my days in the Air Force and only a few from my early days at UCLA. My two best friends from UCLA are both dead now. Richard Taurek drank too much and died of liver failure, and Ken Dallett killed himself by turning on the gas in his psychology lab. Another friend from UCLA, Norm Fogel, later married my ex-wife Pamela, leaving me to wander if he had been one of her lovers when she and I were married.

I had lots of friends in Berkeley, although I don’t see many of them anymore. I lived with Ariana’s mother Karen, Abby Minot and Bobby Keeler in a house in the flatlands of Berkeley. A lot of good folks hung out with us there. And then there was Jim. I really loved him. He was easily as far out as I was. I don’t think I ever knew his last name though.

I made many friends in the Rainbow Family too. I used to travel to the gatherings almost every year just to see my friends. I don’t travel as much nowadays, and I’m not planning on ever going to another gathering. Some of us are still in touch though.
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My best friends have always been those folks that I’ve tripped with. Not having done any acid these past few years, I’ve lost touch (for now) with most of them. But there still remains the acid connection, as we used to call it, that psyche tie that remains forever between two folks who have seriously tripped together.

Ramon Landero, or Mexican, was my all-time best friend. I met him back in 1973 at the gathering in Wyoming. He’s dead now, murdered in the Bay Area outside the Dead’s New Years Eve concert. He was trying to score. Too bad. He was a beautiful soul. He would have become a great wizard if he had lived.

Then there was Paul Borne. I was camping alone at Dinky Creek in the High Sierras once, and I saw this guy jump off a cliff above the creek. I rushed over to where I thought his body would be and saw that he had jumped into a pool, one that I later saw you couldn’t even see from where he had jumped. I was tripping and gave him a hit. He deserved it. The next morning, when I woke up, he was squatting by my sleeping bag with a big smile on his face. “Got more?” He’s a stunt man in Hollywood now. He’s also Ariana’s godfather.

There were a lot of folks at the gatherings who were great trippers. Mitro, who was Chastity when I first met her, turned me onto teepees, turned me onto her too. We were together for a few years, tripping and raising our kids together. I had a high house with Ramon and her and our kids up in Gold Hill, above Boulder.

Then there were Brett and Lee from Minneapolis. Aspen and I planned on meeting them somehow at the gathering in Missouri, We didn’t know how or when or where. We finally arrived there, after flying into St Louis, taking a bus south, and then hitching a ride to the gathering. When the driver stopped to let us out in the gathering’s parking lot, Brett and Lee were standing there, as if waiting to lead us to their camp. Synchronicity!

There were many others high folks from the gatherings too – Spice and Jimbo and Rex and Felipe and Hoot and Motorcycle Michael and all the others, all very high brothers and sisters.

Here in Boulder, Aspen and I had friends too, until our boys came into our lives. Most of our friends dropped off then, when they realized we had become boring, in their eyes anyway. And most of them didn’t really like kids anyway, except maybe for an hour or so. And, for our part, we were always exhausted from having to put so much of our energy into our boys

We didn’t make friends with other parents either. Not many of the couples with young kids that we have met have a 31 years age difference between them, as Aspen and I do. Aspen was friends with some of the mothers for a while, but most of the men just couldn’t relate to me. I was as old or older than all of their fathers.
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In my life now, I want grownup friends, friends of the same high quality as those of my past. I want friends who are interested in what I am interested in and doing now – which is primarily writing, doing kitchen table holy work, and being a holy medicine man. Besides having been a father for most of my adult life – for the last 50 or so years – I have spent the rest of my time either writing or healing or tripping. And I have found that this is what I like to do and do well.

I want friends who have created their own unique life, who value being conscious and loving, and who are daring and wild and live outside the law (so they must be honest, hey Dylan?) I want friends with whom I can really share my interests and hear theirs. And, when we stare, I want to be with them in person, either outdoors somewhere or else sitting together over coffee or tea and maybe a pipe and talking about what’s really going on with ourselves.
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Aspen and I were driving by all the big houses on the Hill here in Boulder earlier today. She said she’d like to live with other folks in one of the big houses. I told her that I didn’t like the neighborhood. I see rich people as greedy and selfish and too uptight – not folks I’d want to live near. But I told her I did like her idea.

I’ve been reading about the Indians of the southwest lately, and they all have large extended families. They honor the family. It’s the center of their life and their most important social world. Most white folks don’t. People move away from family for work. Children don’t stay and live near their parents. The white folks’ nuclear family is exploding.

I’ve lived in communities. I lived in the Grant Street house in Berkeley for several years. Only four of us paid rent, but there were a lot more folks there every day, going home only to sleep. It was a very high, a very fun house.

I lived briefly in the community in Deadwood, Oregon. In fact, I helped start it. I’ve lived with the Rainbow Family too, although there has never been a place for the family to live. I have had to just follow them around, going to thanksgiving and spring councils and some of the regional gatherings too.

I’ve also visited other communes or families. There was Stoneybrook in Missouri, Gaskin’s Farm in southern Tennessee and another, unnamed one in Nashville. There’s also my friend Wayne’s White Buffalo Farm in Paonia, out on the West Slope.

They’ve all been interesting, but I’ve come to see that I’m more interested in a looser family, one that comes together naturally and evolves without rules or any hierarchy. I not at all interested in any sort of formal community.

I haven’t lived with others in years. But I agree with Aspen. I would like to live with others again. I want a large family too, one bound by love and common interest. Actually, I want a family made up of all of my friends.

The first time I smoked marijuana was in the city jail in Roswell, New Mexico. Really! I was in the jail for drunk and disorderly conduct. I had been trying to hit on these two women in a restaurant, and I had been so drunk that I couldn’t take no for an answer. While I was in the jail, one of the other prisoners gave me a couple hits off his joint. It sure made it interesting, being there in jail

I’ve smoked off and on ever since then. Without it, I have found that I have a lot of trouble slowing down. I can’t even slow myself down with meditation. Once, when I had quit for a while and was getting speedy again, I had a dream in which the two dogs I was out walking ran away from me. I couldn’t keep up with their energy. I understood from the dream that when I wasn’t smoking, my physical energy would get out of control and run away from me.

Of course, during the sixties and early seventies, before it got uptight again, almost everybody smoked, even a president. I’d go to a UCLA party and everybody there would be stoned, professors and lawyers and doctors and students and all. And when I lived in Venice and later in Berkeley, smoking was almost a political statement, one that went like this – “if only everyone would smoke marijuana instead of drinking alcohol, the world would be a better place, certainly more peaceful and caring.”

The Rainbow Gathering was another place where almost everybody smoked. And, at least in its early days, it was a safe place to sit outside in nature, smoking the peace pipe, so to speak, with your friends. I made a lot of friends there, sitting around a circle and remembering that what goes around, comes around.
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These days, I have a medical marijuana card. I’ve had it for several years now. In addition to using smoke to slow down and to raise my consciousness, as I always have, I also use it these days to deal with my chronic pain, especially the pain in my shoulders. Sometimes I use it for headaches too. It helps.

I’ve heard it said that coffee makes you smarter than you really are. I know that smoke makes me wiser than I really am – which is really good for my writing.

If I smoke in the daytime, it’s mostly while I’m writing. But I usually smoke at night, after the boys are finally asleep and I’m done with all my household chores. I want to be off duty when I smoke.

Interestingly enough, I’m smoking less and less these days. Over the many years that I’ve smoked, I’ve found, paradoxically, that the less I smoke, the higher I get.

As the next bend in the trail of my life draws near, I’m beginning to see what I have to do in order to bring in more money for my family. I know that I have to support them on a higher level than we’re living at now, one where we’ll be more comfortable, certainly not wealthy, but no longer living so close to the edge.
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In order to understand what I have to do now, I need to first go back in time, back to an earlier bend in the trial of my life, back to when I was younger, in my late twenties and early thirties. In those days, a lot of folks thought I was teetering on the edge of insanity The Jungians in particular were worried and thought I needed more ego if I was ever going to be an analyst.

I disagreed. I thought I needed a less complicated and less frightened ego. So I began to do a lot of acid. In those days, instead of the edge of insanity thing, I preferred to see myself as a wandering acid holy man, With the help of acid, I came to realize that my mind was naturally simple. It was who I was. I saw then that my spiritual task was to fit my life to my simple mind. My life had to become simple too.

In those days, as I have said in my note, “Traveling Light,” I learned to keep my life simple. Even today, I still buy one pair of pants a year and wear them till they wear out. I still borrow books from the public library. I still grow food and eat simply. I haven’t changed.
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But now, raising my three boys, I do need more money. I don’t need more for myself. I still live as simply as always; but I do need more for the boys – and for Aspen too. I definitely need to bring in more money. My family’s real needs motivate me to do so. They really energize my father energy. But I still have my simple mind, and it still requires a simple life. I can’t change that. So I’m seeing that I have to earn more money with this simple mind while I continue to live my simple life. It’s who I am.

My simple mind and my simple way of life are worthy. I know this. I also know that I’m not at all like those holy men in India. I’m not holy in that way. I’m a family man who’s up early every morning and busy raising his boys until 8 or 9 at night, every night. I’m a family man who’s trying to be holy.

But I’m not even always nice. I lose it sometimes when the three boys are all arguing and fighting and screaming, often all at once. When all this is happening, I can get caught up by their negative energy and lose it too. But I always do deal with my lapses of good sense and consciousness, those times when I lose my connection with the love and wisdom in my heart.
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I know I’m high enough now to go wandering again. I’ve been a stay-at-home mommy-daddy for way too long, for the last eleven years, in fact. I’m tired of it. And the boys need a productive dad more than a mommy-daddy now anyway.

I’m thinking too, these days wandering doesn’t require traveling in a VW van or backpacking into the high mountains. These days, I can just go walking around this town called Boulder. There ought to be a few folks out there who would catch my high.

This is the path to more money for my family. I can feel it. I’ll go out into the world and let the world decide who I am and what’s my worth.

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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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When I was a young boy, Christmas was my favorite time of year. I could hardly wait for it to come around again. We always had a family gathering, with me and my brother Ned and Granny Bird and Granny Marks and Uncle Ken and my mom and dad. Uncle Ken was always Santa Claus. Being our only uncle, he was easily our favorite.

We all always had a great time together too, with plenty of presents for all. Later in the day, we always had a special and wonderful family dinner, with more than enough homemade cookies and candy for afterwards. We usually ended the evening with some sort of card game. Sometimes we even got serious and played bridge. Granny Marks was really good at it. She played in tournaments and always did well.
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But I haven’t been into Christmas for a long while now, not since my Berkeley days in the early seventies. The last great Christmas that I remember was from those days. In the Grant Street house, we had a tree with Karen’s candles for lights and rolled joints for decorations, maybe a hundred or so of them. We didn’t do acid together that night, as we had done at Thanksgiving, but we sure smoked a lot of those joints.
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I still celebrate Christmas. After all, I’m a dad and I have three young boys. They are greedy little Christmas monsters, but remembering how I was as a young boy, I cater to their greed. I got over it. They will too.

This year, Callahan will be getting a laptop and some toys, and Zane will get Callahan’s old computer. Zane will also be getting a kid-sized kitchen and some toys too. He really likes to help with the cooking. Jake has a list. I haven’t looked at it yet, but I know that he likes to make things out of Legos. He’ll probably get some LEGO City sets. He was really into transformers a while back, and probably will be again after Transformers 3 comes out this summer. Right now though, he’s more into playing games on his school computer, the one he has because he’s being home schooled this year. Maybe he’ll get a game or two for his computer.

I do tell the boys that Christmas is supposed to celebrate Jesus’ birthday, not be a day of getting. I also tell them that it’s just another version of the Winter Solstice, a time of death and rebirth, a time that is celebrated by nearly all cultures. I tell them that it marks a time when the light has almost left us. After all, the Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year. I also tell them that, after the Solstice has come and gone, the light will begin to return – in the northern hemisphere anyway.
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Aspen and I aren’t much into Christmas ourselves except for the boys. I usually do make a list of things to buy for myself this time of year, probably a holdover from when I used to receive gifts. This year, I’m going to buy myself a pair of socks and an astrological calendar. I’d also buy myself new shoes and some good acid if I had the money.

If it were just me – and thank god, it isn’t – I probably wouldn’t even notice Christmas. I think it’s a really fucked holiday. For one thing, it’s all about greed, very little about Spirit anymore. For another, it’s the wrong time of year to celebrate as we do with Christmas. The I Ching calls this time the resting time of year. We should all be hibernating.

I do celebrate the Winter Solstice. I usually do it alone and with consciousness. I always ask the I Ching what my situation is going to be for the year that is coming. I stand on the cusp. I say goodby to the year that has just passed, and I welcome the one that is just beginning.

When I was a graduate student at UCLA, studying to be a Clinical Psychologist, I read about the 19th century Introspectionists – Wilhelm Wundt, Edward Titchener, Gustav Fechner, William James and others. Although I had thought that psychology was supposed to be the study of the psyche, the psychology department at UCLA claimed that psychologists could only study behavior. It was refreshing and informative to find that these Introspectionists had actually studied consciousness.

They studied consciousness by going inside and by following their thoughts and their feelings, their images and their perceptions, following them to see where they would go, to see how they would interact with other thoughts, feelings, images and perceptions, and, of course, to see how it all fit together.

Later, Carl Jung did similar work with his word association tests and his notion of complexes. However, his research soon led him into the deeper reaches of consciousness.

When I began to smoke marijuana, I would sometimes lose my train of thought and forget what I was saying or thinking. If I wanted to retrieve what I had lost, if I thought it was important, I would go inside, as those early Introspectionists did, and follow my thoughts that I did remember until I came upon the one I had lost. I would usually succeed in doing this, and it was interesting too, to see how it was all tied together in my head.
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In the early seventies, when I was beginning to work with acid, I began to feel the pull to put more and more of my energy into this work of exploring consciousness. As it usually happened in those days, I soon had a dream that justified my feelings and clarified what I was to do.

In the beginning of the dream, I had decided to stop working as a psychotherapist. It just wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life. Then, still in the dream, I was with several people. We were all strangers. We were in an old house in Berkeley, on the south side. I noticed some writing on the floor in the garage there, an old sign that said, “candy, cigarettes, sodas….” The rest was blurred. I was excited. I looked in another room and uncovered a similar sign.

I realized that there had been a store there originally, that the present house had been built over it. The neighborhood must have been really different back then. One of the women there wanted to work with me to explore the old city. A black guy was on the phone excitedly telling his woman about it. He didn’t have it quite right, but he wanted to work with me too.

This dream had a major effect upon me. I decided I wouldn’t be a therapist anymore. I had seen that therapy stayed mostly in the shallows. I wanted to dive deeper. I also began to understand why most people preferred to live in the shallows, on the surface of life. They were afraid to examine the deeper issues of life.

Most importantly, I felt that I had finally found my calling, my new path with heart. I was going to explore the old city – those older and deeper levels of consciousness that existed in the world before this present culture with its here and now overlay

I began to explore consciousness more seriously. I was already intrigued by the magic I had experienced at our camp at Dinky Creek in the High Sierras. I was also interested in telepathy. I had been interested since I was a young boy. I began to notice more and more synchronicities in the air.
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When I would backpack into our camp at Dinky Creek, I would often do acid. I became friends with a large rock. I used to visit it almost every day. I noticed that I would have unusual thoughts when I was with it. I finally realized that the rock – I called it the Old One – was talking to me. I also noticed that it seemed to change over time, becoming more and more endowed with human facial features.

I certainly had many intense spiritual connections with rocks at Dinky. Once, while I was still high above the cliffs, with the darkness closing about me, I met up with another rock, a small one this time, I was having trouble finding my way down the cliffs, when this rock called out and told me that it would help me down if I would take it with me. I picked it up and immediately found the way down to my camp. It still serves me in this manner.

Another time at Dinky, I lost one of my contacts while sitting around the fire late one night with some good folks. None of us could find it, not even with a flashlight. Eventually we gave up and retired for the night. I was in my sleeping bag, bemoaning my loss, when a voice told me that it was stuck on the inside of my shirt. And when I looked, it was there. A much deeper part of myself, a part that didn’t rely on my normal perceptual apparatuses, had observed the fall of the lens and had been able to tell me where it had fallen.
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As I said before, I have always been interested in telepathy. When I was a young boy and recovering from my death experience, I kept hearing these voices in my head. I finally figured out that they were other people’s thoughts and images. I didn’t like that then, not when I was seven years old, so I shut down that part of my psyche by listening to loud music on the radio or else by reading a book all the time.

But later in my life, especially after I had begun using acid wisely, I was able to open myself to the thoughts and feelings and images of others. Once, when I still lived in Berkeley, I tripped with Karen and Bobby and Abby.

I remember, at one point in our journey, I had a strange experience. These four beings entered the front door. Three of them immediately went to Karen and Bobby and Abby and easily merged with them. The fourth milled about for a while, and then approached me, not knowing quite what to do with me. It finally touched me, and, all of a sudden, I felt like Steve Gaskin said he felt one time when he had first connected with his psychic abilities.

I felt then as if everyone but me had always been awake, patiently waiting for me to wake up too. I felt as if Karen and Bobby and Abby had always been telepathic and in each other’s heads. I remember looking at them and knowing that they know I had finally woke up.

I remember too, later in the trip, when Bobby and Abby were in Abby’s room, hanging out and getting to know each other. The two dogs were with Karen and me in the living room, romping around and playing with our acid energy. Karen and I were cracking up watching them. They were really funny. Right then we heard Bobby and Abby laughing also, in tune, so to speak, with us. I realized that Bobby and Abby had been watching the dogs play through our shared consciousness. Just then, Bobby hollered in – and this totally blew me away! He told me not to think about it, or else I’d break our connection and lock us all back into the silence.

Also, I have often received images that don’t seem to have anything to do with my here and now. Once, I was looking out at the ocean, watching the clouds and the waves come in. When I looked down and saw myself, I realized that I was looking out of the eyes of a little girl, holding a bucket in her hand. I have had many such images or thoughts come my way, and it’s clear to me that they are definitely images or thoughts from someone else’s mind.
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Although I have long stopped being a therapist, I am still a healer. Most of the time, just being with me encourages folks to open up and dive more deeply into themselves. I have experienced many unexpected changes in these folks. One woman with a tipped uterus came back the following week to tell me that her doctor told her that it was no longer tipped. Another came to me with a serious cold sore on her lip. I watched, as she talked about her husband and became more and more angry with him. And while I was watching, I saw her cold sore slowly and completely disappear from her lip. This sort of healing doesn’t happen by intention. It seems to be activated by a deeper and more compassionate connection, one that works without words and not through ordinary consciousness.

I have studied Stan Grof’s healing work with acid. His approach to therapy is to have the patient dive deeper and deeper into his or her consciousness. He basically says that if you get to the bottom of things, if you have cleaned out all the unconscious debris in your psyche, then what is left is healthy consciousness and you are who you are supposed to be.

The hexagram The Well in the I Ching, says much the same – that one needs to get to the very bottom of things: Otherwise one may fail “to penetrate to the real roots of humanity and remain fixed in convention” … “or he may suddenly collapse and neglect his self-development.”

Steve Gaskin also said something similar. He said that our deeper levels of consciousness, what many have called the unconscious, are actually incredible communication centers that can hook us up to other awarenesses, He suggests that we clean out these centers by dealing with all the psyche junk we have stored there, all those forgotten and repressed and never realized parts of our psyche that we have never had the courage or the inclination to deal with before.
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Those of us doing acid back in the early days, in the sixties and seventies, found that we would become completely open and honest while we were doing acid. We would share ourselves from our deepest levels. We called it being acid honest. We recognized that acid made us braver, but it was more than that – we became wiser too, as we saw into the deeper and more profound reaches of our encounters with one another. Healing was easy with acid honesty.

Besides the honesty and the healing that acid would usually engender, it also led to some unusual experiences. Once, I found myself floating above the trees – and seeing my body below still sitting under one of the trees. Another time, my partner was sitting in a chair and standing next to herself at the same time. Often, while tripping, I would receive many phone calls, usually from other trippers, but once from two of my ex-wives. They all said that they had called because they had felt my energy.
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I have also noticed, when leading a group of folks who are sharing their dreams, that often many of the dreams had a similar motif. It was as if we were all working on the same or similar problem or realization. Carl Jung noticed this on the eve of WWII. Many folks shared dreams then of rivers of blood and marching armies and other dire warnings of impending war and death.

On another note, once in a dream group, a woman told me that she was afraid she would leave her body and astral travel if she meditated. I told her she would be all right with me leading the meditation. As we began to meditate, however, I suddenly had an image of her running away into the distance. I grabbed her ankle as she began to run out of sight and pulled her back to me. From across the room in the dream circle, I heard her say “thank you.”
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So rocks have talked with me, have helped me to survive even. And I have shared consciousness with some folks and have been inside other folks’ heads. I have also received many images from God knows whom. All this began to happen when I decided that I no longer wanted to be a therapist, that I wanted to go deeper into consciousness than therapy usually allowed. I also realized then that this way I would be able to explore consciousness through exploring my own. This way, I could go as deeply as I wished.

From all this and much more, I have found that we are all tied together in a group mind, called by Teilhard de Chardin the Mind of God. I have also found, unfortunately, that most people are afraid to acknowledge the existence of this group mind. Instead, they believe that they are alone and isolated inside their heads, afraid to plumb even their personal depths. This is so sad. Each of us could be a fully conscious being, as I’m sure Spirit intended.

Webster defines farfetched as being “brought from a remote time or place.” As a name then, Farfetched would refer to someone who had been fetched from afar. Such a person might have been called from afar by Spirit. This happened to me.
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I didn’t understand any of this for the longest time, but when I was still in LA, working on my PhD in Clinical Psychology, I worked at a child guidance clinic in Hollywood. A patient of mine there, a young boy of eleven years, liked me a lot. Once, when we were out walking, he called me Farfetched. When I asked him what he meant by that, he said that I was really far out, someone he wished he could be more like.

Somehow his comment stuck in my head, and sometime later, I told my son Jonathan what the boy had said to me. I asked him what he thought of Farfetched as a name. He liked it as a name, said it was okay, but then he laughed and added that I should never call myself Outrageous. I never did. I knew my limitations.
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When I was with Karen, during my early wandering days, we took Howlingwolf as a last name. We used to howl at the moon when we were out of doors, which was most of the time in those days. During that time in my life, I was Farfetched Howlingwolf and proud of it. Looking back from here and now though, that name seems more than a bit outrageous in and of itself.

Later on, when I was spending time with the Rainbow Family, going to their gatherings and becoming friends with many of the folks, Farfetched was my rainbow name. Most of the folks in the Rainbow Family knew me as Farfetched, know me by no other.

It’s odd; I have never called myself Wanderer, although in my heart and soul I am Wanderer. I have used Wanderer as a name only in my books. I’m tempted again though, as I was once in Flagstaff, a long time ago, when Wanderer came to me in a dream and asked me to take Wanderer as my name. I refused then, feeling that I could be Wanderer without calling myself that. Now I’m not so sure.
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I’ve always felt that the reason I was fetched back from afar – fetched back to life when I died as a young boy – was because I had something important to do with my life. As I grew older, I identified with Black Elk, the Lakota holy man, and others who had died as young boys and who had been returned to life for spiritual purposes. Like them, I too was brought back from death to share a message from Spirit.

When I was a young boy and died on the operating table, when I was falling into the darkness and about to panic, a voice called out to me, told me that there was no bottom, to turn the falling into flying. Somehow I did this, and, shedding my fears, I flew blissfully towards the White Light that waited for me.

I realize now that the message I was brought back from death to share was what the voice had told me as I was freaked out and falling – that there is no bottom. There is no ending to our lives as conscious beings. Our consciousness doesn’t end with the death of our bodies. We go on.

Remember this when you are leaving your body: There is no bottom. You are not falling. You are flying. Fly blissfully to the Light.

As I wander down the page, I leap from rock to rock, from thought to thought – from ‘tonight I finally have some time to myself’ – to ‘I’m up so early every school day, getting the boys up and off to school, and it never lets up until late at night.’

By the time we have fed and entertained them, have hung out with them, have helped them with their homework, and have finally got them into bed, it’s 8:30 or 9 at night, later if it’s not a school night. By then all I want to do is read for a while and then go to sleep.

So, as I said before, tonight I finally have some time to myself – and it’s not late at night either. I’m alone this night because Aspen and Callahan are in their Karate class at the Y, and Jake and Zane are in the nursery there.
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The path down the page forks here. Should I take this fork and say that my body is finally beginning to wear out, finally beginning to die? It’s interesting, watching it happen. I don’t mind leaving my body. I’m not afraid to die. I know that I’m not my body. I have left it twice before, and, both times it has been blissful.

However, I plan on staying here for another twenty or more years. I want to be here to see my boys become men. I want to be here for Jake at the end. Once, I said that I wanted to leave with him. Maybe I still will.

Or should I take the other fork and say that I really want some good acid, preferably liquid. I really do want some, and soon. I want to fly free once more before I leave this body. I want to dance on the edge of life once again.

I want my boys to see who I am at my best. So far, all they have seen is a mommy-daddy who sits around much of the day, either here at the computer or else with a good book in his hands. I have really been much more fun and potent and out there when I have had good acid. I’d like them to see that side of me too.

The two paths converged. Did you see that? It’s the urgency of my body’s aging that compels me to set off on this admittedly dangerous endeavor. I want to become Wanderer again while I still have my energy, while I can still walk the trails of life, and still enjoy the ride.

Also, acid has always been good for my body. Acid would really help me actualize my goal of living another twenty or so healthy and strong years. Twenty-five would be best. This way, Aspen and I would be able to celebrate our fiftieth wedding anniversary. Callahan would be thirty-six then. Jake would be thirty-three. And Zane would be thirty. They will be men, beginning to mature, men I know I’m going to be proud of. I want to be there for them then. I can do it. I will do it!

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.
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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.

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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.
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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.
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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.