Aspen and I met in late January of 1985. We were engaged by the middle of March and married by late June. We have never looked back, have always loved one another and have never thought of ending our marriage.

With half of all marriages in the United States ending in divorce, we have decided to share our love story and how and why it has lasted for more than 26 years. So, if you are at all interested in a serious relationship with another person, especially if you want to have children some day, it will certainly be worth your while to read about how we have done it.
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The other day, while Aspen and I were out walking, we came upon a man we knew. He saw us and blurted out, “You’re holding hands.” Yes, we were. We do so whenever we can. We snuggle together every night too, and we make wonderful love. We’re still loving, after all these years. It has always come natural to us.

How did this happen, when it is so rare in the world? Well, when we met that fateful January, we were medicine folks. Every Friday night, we did Ecstasy and acid, first the Ecstasy and then several hours later high dose acid. We did this every Friday night for several months. Doing so, we opened up to each other completely. We came to know each other more deeply in that short time than most couples do in a lifetime of marriage.

The night we decided to get married, we were doing medicines. I asked Aspen if she wanted all of me. She said yes, and she has had all of me, all of my love and support and understanding ever since.
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After our courtship and our marriage, we began to spend more and more time backpacking and traveling. We did some climbing with a friend here in Boulder and in Joshua Tree. We went to more than one Rainbow Gathering too. We lived outside the law, and we were honest. We started in Boulder, of course, but we also lived briefly in California, in Mammoth Lakes, and in Arizona, in and around Tucson. We lived on the West Slope of the Rockies too, in Paonia, on an organic fruit farm.

When we were still living in Tucson, before we moved to Paonia, we wondered what else we could do with our love. We had been married for over 14 years. We had done almost everything we had wanted to do. What else could we do? The decision seemed to be made for us. Aspen was in her mid-thirties and was beginning to realize that she would have to have children soon if she wanted to be a mother.
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Although I had thought that I was done raising children, I was more than okay with us being parents together. I knew she would be a great mom. And I have always enjoyed being a dad. Being parents together would be our new life adventure. I certainly enjoyed actualizing her desire for children, and soon the babies began to come.

When they started coming, with Callahan being the first, we moved back to Boulder, and we now live just two blocks from where we started out 26 years ago, back when we first realized that we loved each other and wanted to share a life together. Since then we have come full circle in our life and our love. And now our love is actually stronger now than it was when we left Boulder all those years ago – way more than enough to nourish our three young boys.

The boys are 5, 8, and 11 years old now. They are more than a handful. They are all high maintenance, extremely loud, and overwhelming argumentative. They are also heartwarmingly loving and extremely interesting. It’s awesome watching them grow up and become people. They are my sons. God! What an obligation! What a responsibility! I love it.

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.

We take Jake to Children’s Hospital in Aurora twice a year. This is our third year. It’s always on a Friday, and we have to be there by 9 in the morning. It usually takes us an hour to get there.

It’s intense on the freeway today; everyone is in a hurry, as we all hurtle through space in our metal boxes. Fortunately the traffic is light this morning. We actually arrive at the Hospital in 45 minutes.

Usually all of us go with Jake. We make a day of it somewhere in Denver. This time we’re going to visit the 16th Street Mall and eat at Johnny Rockets.
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We park and walk into the hospital. It feels really good being here. We’ll be here for several hours. We elevate up to the 4th floor and wait to be called into the Muscle Clinic. Once there, we see the main rehab doctor, a Neurologist, and a Neuro-Psychologist. We also see a Social Worker, a Physical Therapist, and a representative of MDA. On the way out, we stop at the lab downstairs, and Jake has his blood drawn to check for his vitamin D level and his thyroid functioning.

By the time we leave, four hours and some minutes later we have heard that his muscles are still doing much better than expected. And everything else is okay too – except for the DMD of course. Jake’s a healthy little guy. We also began the process of hooking him up with other boys with DMD. He needs friends who are going through what he’s going through. They also gave us a script for a new lightweight stroller for when he gets tired walking.

The people we saw at the Muscle Clinic must be really frustrated. There is nothing they can do about the DMD, nothing at all. All they can do is make it more comfortable for the boys who have it and slow down its progress so that it takes longer to kill them.
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After we leave, we drive all the way into Denver on Colfax, the longest city street in the world. We don’t start at its eastern beginning, and we don’t go all the day to its ending in the west. We just take it from the hospital to the center of town and the mall. Colfax is not your typical city street. On the way, we see lots of naked dancing places, lots of pot shops, lots of tattoo parlors, and lots of darkness. I wouldn’t want to be there at night, not with my family.

The 16th Street Mall, on the other hand, is full of light and fun. The boys love the free buses that take us from one end of the mall to the other and back. When we get tired of riding the buses, we eat at Johnny Rockets. We all have burgers and fries. Good food, although no one sings to us this time. The food is bit expensive, but what the heck.

Back in our box, on the freeway again. I think we all feel the same. We just want to make it home safely. Hurtling through space again, we keep going, thankfully watching the traffic thin out as folks turned off into their own little cities on the way to ours.

Finally we leave the freeway, drive down Table Mesa, and then turn into our street and park in front of our house. We’re home.

We’re excited! We’re home schooling Jake now. Before the boys were born, I wanted to home school all the kids we would have. But somehow we ended up in the Boulder Valley School System.

But then Jake started having more and more trouble in school. It was never easy for him there. Over time, he became very unhappy.

He’s out now though, and is enrolled in COVA (Colorado Virtual Academy.) He likes it a lot. He did three days worth of schoolwork today in just a few hours. The lessons are on the computer, and COVA has just sent him his own computer to use.

Aspen has done a tremendous amount of work setting all this up. She had to learn a lot of new stuff about her computer and the Internet. It has taken her days and has been very stressful. But she did it. And now, along with the computer’s help, she’s Jake’s teacher.

Jake has been happy these first few days of home schooling, happy for the first time since the public school started eight weeks ago. I wish we hadn’t taken so long to decide on home schooling, but we’re doing it now.

At first, when Jake was having so much trouble at school, I thought that he was bummed by his dawning realization that he has muscular dystrophy and what it’s going to mean for him. Now I’m thinking that he was more bummed than we knew by his school. Since we pulled him out, he has been so much happier and certainly less angry.

However, muscular dystrophy is still a major issue for Jake, He is just beginning to deal with it. But it’s hard for him to get a handle on what’s happening. After all, he’s only eight years old, really more like six years old emotionally because of the muscular dystrophy.

Jake needs help with this. In particular, he needs to be around more boys with MD. He’s so isolated now. We almost sent him to the MD camp last summer. I wish we had. He will go next summer. We’re also going to plug into the MD community in and around Boulder. There are a several MD boys living nearby, demonstrating the various stages of the illness.

In 1973, Karen and I were traveling from Berkeley to the East Coast and back. It began as an incredible trip down the West Coast and through the Southwest, then up the Rockies through New Mexico and Colorado to Wyoming and the 1973 Rainbow Gathering. After that we headed down into the flatlands and the beginnings of the hot and humid east heading first through Kansas and Missouri to Tennessee and Gaskin’s Farm.

Later in our journey, while visiting Karen’s folks in Virginia, Karen’s mother took me aside the first day we were there and told me that she knew I had turned her daughter onto LSD. Hearing this, I was flabbergasted and floored.

I told her the truth. I told her that Karen had called up one day and invited me down to her place in Venice. Once I was there, she asked me if I wanted to do acid with her. I said yes and had a wonderful time. I went on to tell Karen’s mother that I have never regretted it and will always be grateful to Karen for turning me onto acid then.

Now it was her turn to be floored. At first, she didn’t want to believe me. For some mother-in-law reason, she already didn’t like me and wanted me to agree with her expectations. However, Karen heard us talking from the other room and came in. She told her mother that everything I had said was true.

We both told her that it had been one of the most important and meaningful things we had done in our lives. We told her that we still use it and probably always would. Karen’s mother didn’t want to hear this, but she did bring it up. She still wanted to make me the villain in her movie, but I wouldn’t play.

Afterwards, thinking about our conversation – as unsatisfactory as it was – I realized that it still took a burden off both me and Karen to be honest about our use and love of acid. I decided to write my parents a letter, telling them the same. Here’s what I wrote:
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Karen and I are with her parents in Virginia. The subject of marijuana and LSD came up in conversation. I wanted to give them my views on the subject. I realized though, that I want to discuss them first with both of you.

I’ve been smoking marijuana for over fifteen years and using LSD for over five. I like both of them very much. Both have taught me a great deal about myself and about life. I’m a better person for having used them.

People have used various plants and chemicals to change their consciousness ever since we began as hunters and gatherers, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Most have experienced this changed consciousness as being of a holy or spiritual quality.

Ten years ago, LSD was legal and respected and used extensively in psychological research and therapy. At that time I was asked to be in a LSD research project. I refused then because I was too frightened. It wasn’t until five years ago that I became brave enough to finally try it.

I was immediately impressed with how much I could learn about consciousness when I was using LSD. As a trained research scientist and psychotherapist, I could see enormous possibilities for important and exciting explorations into the psyche, into healing ways.

However, soon after this, LSD became illegal. All research and all therapies that used it were stopped. At first I continued to use it in private but not in my healing work. But then I decided finally, a year ago last April, soon after I moved up to Berkeley, to devote all my energies to exploring my own and others’ consciousness and to use LSD in my healing work, even if it were still illegal.

Many great discoveries, important inventions, tools, whatever, were first greeting with fear and skepticism by the general public. Electricity is one such example. At first, it was thought to come from the devil himself.

At times people have been persecuted and hounded, killed even, for their religious beliefs. The persecution of the early Christians is one such example of this.

Today, people are persecuted who view LSD as an extremely important tool, one that mankind has urgent need of at this present time – for both research and healing. Today, people are persecuted who use LSD as a holy sacrament, as a means of achieving communion with God, and through God with all life.

I’ve been afraid to share any of this with you. It has been difficult for me to believe the world is different than I thought. The world is different though. I’ve seen, for example, that folks can be unafraid of one another and can live a life filled with love.

I’m going to continue using marijuana and LSD. They are the main thrust of my work of exploring consciousness. This is important work, and not just for me. I don’t ask you to see this as I do. I just hope you will give me encouragement in my life and in my work. I love each of you and want each of you to love me.

eugene

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Postscript: –

I did feel better after writing and sending the letter off to my parents. I was being honest and open with them and it felt good. However, the letter didn’t seem to affect my relationships with them in any way. My mother never responded to what I had said, not at all. My father did say once that I was okay, but it was too bad that I had listened to that O’Leary fellow.

Aspen and I met in January of 1985. We proposed to each other on St. Patrick’s Day, and were married on June 23 of the same year, twenty-five years ago. Right from the start we knew we were meant for each other. And we really were. We have had a wonderful 25 years together.

We spent the first 14 years enjoying our relationship. We traveled a lot of the time. We moved about a bit, but always returned to Boulder. We lived for a while in Tucson, Arizona, in Mammoth Lakes in California, and in Paonia, in western Colorado.

Once we lived in a van for almost a year, telling folks that we weren’t homeless, just houseless.

We went to a fair number of Rainbow Gatherings too – Missouri, Vermont, Minnesota, Colorado twice, Montana, Wyoming, and best of all, Nevada. We met a lot of good folks and made a lot of good friends.

We also backpacked as much as we could. Most of our backpacking trips have been here in Colorado, mostly in the Rocky Mountain National Park. Our favorite camp in the park was up in Glacier Gorge. We have also backpacked several times into my old camp at Dinky Creek in the High Sierras of California. Each time, it was like coming home. Dinky is and always will be my spiritual home, because of what I went through camping there in the sixties and early seventies,
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After 14 wonderful years of sweet loving and traveling and living in wilderness, we felt that we had to find something new that we could do together that would also be fun and fulfilling. We decided then that we would have children and become parents together. Except for raising Ariana during the first years of our marriage, from when she was 11 years old until she was 18, we had been happily married without children. Having children again would be a new and exciting adventure for us.

Callahan was the first, coming to us in November of 1999. He was conceived in Tucson, Arizona, but by the time he was born, we were living out in Paonia, on Colorado’s west slope. But then, when he was 8 months old, we decided to return to Boulder.

We enjoyed being his parents so much that we decided to have another kid. Jake was the result of that, and he was born in June of 2002.

Although we toyed with the idea of having a third kid, even trying for a while to conceive, we felt we had enough on our hands with Callahan and Jake. But, on the anniversary of our marriage proposal to each other, on St. Patrick’s Day, we made wonderful love, and nine months later, in December of 2005, Zane came to us.

Three boys! Although we had hoped for a girl, somewhere in all this, we were happy with the boys. We decided then that we had enough. After all I was already in my seventies, and Aspen was getting worn out physically. She had been pregnant or nursing for over ten years by then, and her body was starting to wear out.
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The boys are now four, eight, and ten years old, and we’re beginning to feel that we might make it. It has been much more difficult that we could have ever imagined. The worst of it is all the yelling and arguing that goes on constantly between the three boys. We know though, that this is part of their growing up. We accept it, sometimes giving ourselves time-out and going off alone together into one of the more quiet rooms of our house.

We haven’t been out on a real date since Callahan came to us. But we are still having fun, and we really like being mom and dad. In fact, I’m very sad when I think that Zane will be the last kid I’ll ever raise – at least in this body. I love babies and little kids before they start getting their egos. But I have also liked watching my two older children, Jonathan, now 48, and Ariana, now 35, as they have grown into adulthood.
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These days, when we’re not being full on parents, when we’re free to turn our attention upon ourselves and each other, we’re usually so tired that we have very little energy to hang out together. Our only time alone in the school year has been in the morning when all the boys are in school. We’ve been going out to breakfast during this time, just to get out of the house and be alone with each other.

In the summer – it’s summer now – we have even less time to be alone with one another. In spite of this, we love and lust for each other immensely. We have never faltered in our love. We have both been completely open and honest and faithful and have always had each other’s backs.

Someone suggested that we keep going for another 25 years. I’m tempted. I’ll only be 102 and Aspen will be only 71. We could do it. The boys would like that.

Aspen and I also have our own trips. I do a lot of writing, working on two books now and writing notes regularly for my blog. I also continue to explored consciousness and reality with the aid of my medicines. Aspen has been spending a lot of her time lately knitting and pursuing her other fiber arts. She’s beginning to sell some of her work now.

We’re beginning to find new friends too. Most of our old friends weren’t parents and dropped us, and most of the parents we have met these past ten years have been boring. Our new friends, as well as a few of our old ones, mostly fit the categories of uncles and aunts and seem to enjoy our kids as well as they like us.

I do think that I’m going for it. The next 25 years ought to be amazing, watching our boys grow up into men. I wonder what else will come our way.

Good times are coming. I can feel them coming, just around the bend, coming our way.

Good times have been slow coming. Aspen and I have had to be patient for a long while. We have been together for 25 years now, and, for most of that time, we have lived on the edge. We have lived for most of that time with very little money, often with just enough to survive.

For the last 10 years, it has become more difficult, as our family has grown. When it was just Aspen and me, it wasn’t too bad, but, with the three boys, it has become much more difficult. We have always managed to pay our rent, have food on the table and clothes to wear, but we haven’t had any money for the normal city enjoyments such as going out to eat or going to a movie. And Aspen and I haven’t been out by ourselves on a date in years. We haven’t been able to afford the childcare.

Aspen and I know how to be patient. We’re good at it. Aspen once said that we are really good at doing poor. She added that she was really tired of it too. It has been hard living on the edge. I remember once when we were stuck in Eugene, Oregon with no money and no gas, living in our van. Fortunately gardening work came just as we spent our last dollar, and we moved on down the road.
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However, during this past year, I have noticed that we seem to be bringing in more money, not much more but enough to take the family out to dinner every once in a while. Some of our other needs seem to be more easily met too – almost as if our luck has changed. Aspen and I have several new and worthy friends. And several old friends, two of them from over thirty years ago, have called and said they want to reconnect with me.

I think a lot about what we need to make our lives together happier and more fulfilling. I want more money for us obviously. I want more of my medicines, my smoke and my acid. These medicines are essential for my work of exploring consciousness and reality. I want more friends, friends who are high brothers and sisters and who are open to exploring with me. I want more peace in my heart and in my life too. Our three boys are anything but peaceful, but I am finding that when there is peace in my heart, the household tends to be more peaceful too.

I want more recognition and respect for my writing. I would feel a lot better knowing that what I have to say is being heard. I also want to have more healthy years ahead of me. I want to be around for Aspen and my boys. I want to see all three of them as young men before I leave this reality behind. I want to be here especially for Jake with his muscular dystrophy. I also want healing for my family. Each of the boys has a physical problem, not just Jake. Zane is allergic to peanuts and Callahan has ADHD. Aspen sometimes has severe migraines that last for a week or more. I want us all to be healthy.
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If good times are coming, and they are, this implies that I have been doing something right. I have always thought that if I put my head and my heart together, if I become a kind and loving person doing God’s work, then all that I needed would come to me. It looks as if I was right, although sometimes it has been difficult to trust and be patient.

Perhaps this would be true for the larger world too. Perhaps if we all focused upon being kind and loving beings, doing God’s work, what we see as our major problems might just solve themselves and everything that we needed would begin to come our way too.

Airplanes have always fascinated me. I grew up during WWII and was really into them then. I watched all the war movies and all the newsreels. I knew every military airplane our pilots flew and many of the enemy’s too.
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This was one of the reasons I joined the Air Force later in my life, during the Korean War. I also didn’t want to be a foot soldier in Korea. So, instead of being drafted into the army for two years, I enlisted for four so I could be in the Air Force.

As an enlisted man, I went through the standard basic training program, where they put us through something very much like brainwashing, intentionally trying to break our ties to our old lives. They wanted us to see the Air Force as our new family.

However, part way through my basic training, something happened that changed my time in the service. I got very sick, exhausted mostly from the lack of sleep and the bad food. Because of this, I was taken out of my training group and was able to hang out on the base for awhile as an almost unnoticed individual.

During this time, I saw a notice, offering tests for Aviation Cadet Training. I easily passed the tests and was accepted for training to be a flying officer. They even let me go home for thirty days before reporting to the officer-training base in San Antonio, Texas.

They tried to teach me to be an officer there. They told me and the others that we were the elite of our nation, that we were special, that we were all officers and gentlemen. I knew it was all bullshit, but most of the other young guys bought it.

A year later, finished with my officer training, I was stationed in California, near Sacramento, training to be a flight engineer on a B36 bomber. By then, I was going crazy. I didn’t like being bossed around all the time, and I was seriously thinking of deserting. Instead of deserting, I began to drink heavily. But I did finish my training, in spite of being drunk or hung over most of the time.

I was on my way to report to my new assignment in New Mexico when I heard on the radio that a B36 had just crashed. It had been caught in a tornado and had gone into a flat spin. Everyone on the crew died.

When I got to the base, I was told that if I had arrived a week earlier I would have been on that crew. I was glad I had missed it. From the start then, I was aware of the dangers facing me. Fortunately though, the worst I ever had to experience, as a flight engineer was carburetor ice. We were flying at forty thousand feet, when all six of our engines lost power and we dropped like a rock – until we finally managed to restart them at twenty thousand feet and continue on with our mission. That was sort of scary.
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The B36 was a giant of an airplane, with a crew of thirteen – three pilots, two engineers, three navigator-bombardier types, two radiomen, and three gunners. During flight I would sometimes have to use the little sliding cart that went through the long tunnel between the front and the back of the airplane, through the bomb bays. I would also have to crawl out inside the wings several times on almost every flight to check for electrical problems or fuel leaks.

Sometimes we carried hydrogen bombs. That was really scary.

Once we were stationed in Guam for three months as part of a SAC (Strategic Air Command) mission. We even flew to Japan once while we were there. I remember when our assignment in Guam ended. Our commander decided we would fly back to the states nonstop. It would be quite a haul. He told the other engineer and me to overload the airplane with fuel so we’d have plenty for the trip. He promised he’d get us off the ground.

He did too, although he used up the entire runway. Once in the air, we flew nonstop for over twenty-seven hours without refueling. We took turns sleeping in the bunks whenever we could. It was a wonderful feeling when we finally came to the mainland.

Over time my eyesight worsened, and the Air Force finally grounded me. I was bummed out at the time, although now I thank God. Otherwise I might have stayed in the Air Force. I might even have become a Colonel or General by now.

While finishing my tour of duty, I worked as a refueling officer. I supervised the refueling of all the B36’s in our particular squadron. Mostly I just let the enlisted men do what they already knew how to do. But sometimes I would forget on purpose that I was an officer and do some of the work. I remember towing one of those giant planes, driving the huge tug myself. That was fun.
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Nowadays, my heart still quickens whenever I drive by the airport and see the planes taking off or landing. I still have a love affair with airplanes; but being somewhat contrary, I have decided I’ll never fly in one again. Now, whenever I want to fly, I do LSD instead – and I get much higher too.

When I call these short essays, “Notes from the Edge,” I mean that they are messages back from the leading edge of consciousness, back to those who are more comfortable perhaps running with the pack.
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In German, my surname Marks (or Marx, as in Karl) originally referred to those folks who lived at the edge, at the boundary markers of their town or city, of their culture really.

And even before we humans had begun to settle in our towns and cities – when we were still wild and wandering tribes of folks, always on the move – those of us who would later come to be called Marks were probably the scouts, those of us who liked to stay ahead of the rest of the tribe, always looking outwards and always letting the rest of the folks know what was coming next. Those scouts, or edge walkers, were probably just us folks who were most comfortable with newness and change.
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Ken Kesey once told a story about Tim Leary, who was definitely an edge walker, certainly one of the most far out we’ll ever see. Kesey told the story this way:

We’re all on a fast moving train. Some of us know that there’s a sharp bend in the tracks up ahead. We also know that the train is going too fast to stay on the tracks when it goes around the bend. But none of us know how to slow down or stop the train. All we can do is to wander through the cars, preparing folks for what is coming. Tim, however, has gone on ahead of us. He’s already at the bend in the tracks, trying to straighten them out before the train and the rest of us get there.
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There is collective movement to the human race. It is not on the physical plane. It is spiritual in nature. And there’s a leading edge to this spiritual movement, made up of those of us who are most comfortable with change and most eager for whatever chance for growth that Spirit might be offering next. We’re not leaders. We’re more like old Tim Leary, just ordinary folks with maybe a taste for the strange and a desire to help the human race along.

When I was growing up, folks like myself were called avant-garde, but that always seemed too foreign and fancy for my taste. And besides, I haven’t even begun to exhaust my native tongue. I’d rather just say that we’re the citizens of Edge City, living always at the edge of the edge.

In my previous post, “Being an Intellectual,” I praised that side of myself. However, it turns out that my life has actually been all about body. Before I entered the woods for the first time, it’s true, I was an out-of-the-body intellectual. I was always reading or studying, and usually sitting at my ease in a chair or at my desk. I seldom if ever exercised and was probably on my way to an early heart attack.

In my early thirties though, something happened. I began to backpack. I also began doing acid. Doing acid in the woods helped me to accept and to facilitate this change in my life. Ever since then, I have remained an intellectual, but I have also been able to enjoy my strength and prowess as a body. And today, I am still very strong and healthy and horny for someone my age.

I’ve been going into the woods now for more than fifty years. I have hiked and backpacked often in the High Sierras of California and in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. I have also backpacked in Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, as well as into the various Rainbow Gatherings in such states as Vermont, Michigan, and Minnesota.
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Back in the late fifties, when this all started, I backpacked several times with my first wife. The first time she and I went, I lost my wedding ring. I didn’t know it then, but I was actually choosing the mountains over my relationship with her. However, it took her cheating on me a few times and then leaving me for her Jungian Analyst for me to do something about it.
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Several years later, after she and I were finally divorced, some friends of mine from UCLA wanted to go backpacking and do acid with me and my partner. Thinking about where to go, I remembered the first place that I had gone to – Dinky Creek in the High Sierras.

Dinky Creek is on the west slope of the Sierras, near Shaver Lake, between Fresno and Kings Canyon National Park. It’s beautiful – lots of rock, lots of trees and lots of water. Another creek, Cow Creek, comes down and joins up with Dinky Creek, and that is where we ended up, right at their juncture.

We had a magical trip together while we were camping there. We all did acid and wandered around barefoot in the woods all day. We realized that everything we did in the woods, even the chores like gathering firewood and cooking was fun, lots of fun! That first day, we all became bodies, bodies with minds. And ever since then, whenever I go backpacking and do acid, I become body. I wander around, exploring in wonder. I climb rocks and trees. I dive into the icy cold creeks. I lie out under the stars at night.

That first trip at Dinky began an incredible spiritual odyssey that I am still on today. After that first trip, I continued to return to Dinky, either alone or with others, doing acid and exploring consciousness. It became my spiritual home.
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In the early seventies, I had a major transformative experience while tripping there alone on peyote. I overcame my fear then and finally became who I truly was. I became Wanderer, an acid adventurer, living on the edge of reality.
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Although I now live in Colorado, I still wander in the woods. I still explore consciousness. And I still use acid to do so. I love spending a day or a week or more alone in the woods doing acid. I have tripped at home, in the city, but I have found that tripping alone in the woods is the best way to become high and conscious.

I still do a lot of day hiking in the foothills near Boulder or up in the higher mountains. I like to hike with the whole family, with Aspen and Callahan and the other boys, although Jake, with his muscular dystrophy, and Zane, with his four-year-old legs, can’t go for very long hikes. Callahan can. He’s great. He keeps up with me easily. I’m grooming them all though, hoping that when I can no longer carry a heavy backpack, they can all help out.

I haven’t backpacked in years, not since Aspen and I started having kids. But Callahan and I are going backpacking together this coming summer. And if I have my way, we will also all go out to California this summer to visit Jonathan and his family – and, of course, to visit my old camp at Dinky Creek.

I was very fortunate when Ramon came into my life. He was an extraordinary man. He always lived life to the fullest. He never let fear slow him down or keep him from being true to himself. His heart was full of love, and he was without guile. I watched him begin to grow into himself and knew that someday he would be a great shaman.

However, like many other extraordinary persons, his life fell short of his promise, and he never made it to his greatness. He died while still young – along with Jesus, Janice, Jimmy, John, and all the rest.
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I met Ramon a long time ago. I met him in Lander, Wyoming. He called himself Mexican then. He and his partner Karen and his friend Sunshine were hitchhiking to the ’73 Rainbow Gathering. We stopped and gave them a lift the rest of the way into the gathering.

We stayed connected in the gathering. One day we all tripped together and realized that each of us had found new and worthy friends. We met afterwards in the mountains above Boulder. We camped alongside a little stream together and tripped more there.

After awhile, Karen and I headed east on the rest of our journey across the country and back. We took the rest of the summer and then some, slowly traveling east and then back again to Berkeley. On the way, in the orchards in Emmett, Idaho, where we were picking apples, we got pregnant.
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One day, just after Ariana was born. We were in our house on Grant Street in Berkeley. I heard a knock and opened the front door. There stood Ramon and his Karen. They had been living in Mexico and had wanted to find us. So they stopped by to see where we had gotten to.

I wasn’t into traveling at that time, what with a new and beautiful little girl in my life. They heard me on this and decided that they wanted to settle down a bit themselves, especially Karen who wanted to be a mother herself someday.

They went back to Florida, to Gainesville I believe, and went to school. Karen and I stayed in Berkeley for a few more years. But it was getting too scary there, way too much anger for us, especially now that Ariana was with us, so we moved up to the little town of Swisshome, in the Oregon Coast range.

I had a lot of trouble in Swisshome and later in Deadwood too. I am not a country boy at all. And no one there was interested in acid or exploring consciousness. The men there weren’t even interested in a men’s group. After a year there, I left and moved to nearby Eugene. Much better for me. Karen came with me, although she soon left me, taking Ariana with her, after sleeping with one of our old friends in Santa Fe.

After I got over her betrayal and the bummer of losing day to day contact with Ariana, I began to put my life together. Ramon came back into my life then. He was working now. He had a good job. He and his Karen were no longer together either. I guess that Ramon liked the young girls more than being married.
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I was tripping with a friend named Drew in Eugene at the time. He and I were close. I really liked him. He was a good tripper. After awhile though, he moved back to Alabama and I didn’t see him for awhile.

Then something uncanny began to happen. Drew would call me from Alabama. Then Ramon would call me later the same day. Drew was still in Alabama. Ramon was in Kansas. They didn’t know each other at all.

Funny things kept happening. They both got into coke at the same time. They both asked for my help. They both overcame the habit with the help of acid; and, what is most weird, both of their coke connections died soon after they stopped using coke.

Their calling me, in unison almost, went on for months. Then one day Drew called and said that he wanted to come and see me. He came soon after that, and we had our visit and tripped together. Several days later, Drew left, and then the very next day Ramon showed up. He and I visited and tripped together too. This new pattern, with each of them visiting me within days of each other, continued for several more months.

Finally I told both of them what was happening and invited them to come and visit me at the same time. They both did and we all had a great time, visiting and tripping. They became good friends too. We all became brothers.

After awhile, Drew settled down with a woman who wanted to own him. At the same time, Ramon became more and more important in my life. He was awesome, magical. We became partners. We traveled, we tripped, and eventually we lived together in the mountains, in Gold Hill above Boulder. Drew’s woman had slowed him down some, but he was still close with us. In fact, he rented the house right next to ours in Gold Hill.
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Eventually though, in spite of acid, in spite of our closeness, and in him spite of being Ariana’s Godfather, Ramon got carried away by the Deadheads and the young girls again. He began touring with the Dead, was soon back into coke. He drank a lot too – wine for breakfast.

Before the end, he seriously injured some man by running a stoplight. He was in a jealous rage at the time, thinking that his current young girl was fucking someone else. He did time for that, and later, when he came out, I told him that he had just gotten a wakeup call. I told him that the next one would be heavier. I didn’t know it would be his last.

At the New Year’s Eve Dead show in the Bay Area, he left his friends to score some coke. He had ten thousand dollars on him. He was shot that night and died shortly afterwards in the hospital. The story that his friends got from the police was that he had tried to rob a taxicab and an off duty cop had shot him.

Not true, of course. He had a lot of money on him. He didn’t need to rob anyone. Ramon wasn’t a thief anyway. He was an honest man, right up to his end. No, he was set up.

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