Chapter 27 – Finally Home

Back in Berkeley!

As they drive over the bridge and across the bay, just north of Berkeley, Sam finally begins to give out. His stout heart and their magic have gotten them all to here, but now Sam just wants to stop and rest. As they pull up into the driveway of their old house on Grant Street, he quits and won’t start up again. He needs an engine transplant now, and soon, if they’re going to be in New Mexico for the comet.
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All his Medicine buddies are here in town now. Chuck’s here, having spent most of his summer and fall in the mountains where they left him. He has really matured. Joe Shaker’s still here. Sunshine is here too, from Florida, says that Mexican and Karen have been living in Mexico. Cheno’s back too. Everyone’s here but Abby who’s not yet back from visiting her folks.

He wants to get seriously back into acid now, especially with all his acid friends here in town. Karen would rather he didn’t, feels he gets too spaced from it. He’s okay with doing it though. His friends agree. He knows he can do acid and still be a good father too.

The next morning, Joe comes by and suggests that he and Karen panhandle for the Emergency Food Project. They’ll get a free meal every day they work as well as a decent percentage of what they collect. They try it out with him and make some money, more than they thought they would. They’re on top of the money part of their life for now.

He still wants to go to New Mexico and visit with the comet soon. He’s hoping that Karen and some of his friends from here will want to come with him. Chuck’s interested, and so was Abby when they spoke with her by phone this morning.
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The next day, after panhandling, he does some acid in the hills with Joe. Joe doesn’t like to walk around as much as he does, but he still enjoys the view of the bay.

Later, back down in town, when he’s bothered by the sounds of the city – the cars and sirens and all – Joe suggests that he’s bothered because he has judged certain sounds to be good and others to be bad. Joe says he should accept all sounds without a preference. Then he would have one less thing bothering him when he’s trying to be high.
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His Work Now

Karen is definitely pregnant. She has been to a doctor and taken a pregnancy test. They’ve even been to social services to see what sort of medical assistance they can get. He’s also thinking about working as a therapist again
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He dreams that he goes to his parent’s house and asks for his suit. His mother, who is also Pamela, brings out a dark brown one and a lighter brown leather sports coat with a pair of matching slacks. She’s leaving for work soon. His dad is here too and finally says hello to him. He was afraid his dad wouldn’t speak to him. He decides to get his hair cut by a barber. He thinks of what it would be like to go back to work. He thinks of what he would say when they ask him what he has been doing since earning his PhD in 1971. He realizes that all he could say is that he dropped out then and has done a lot of wandering and acid since.

He also dreams that he’s driving alone, early in the morning, just before dawn. The comet is the only light in the sky, shining very bright off to his left. He thinks that Mt. Diablo would be the best place to see it from. He stops at this older public building being repaired on his right, goes inside to use the men’s room. He finds the women’s room but not the men’s. Someone shows him where the men’s room is though, and he goes in.
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With a child coming to him and Karen, he wants to be a good father and take care of their child. He’s thinking of going back to work in the straight world, wearing a suit and even cutting his hair. He realizes though, that he can’t account for his past several years, and that, if he is to be honest, all he could say is that he has done a lot of acid in that time. He realizes even more deeply that acid has been his work. And it still is.

His second dream is telling him that the comet is the only light in his sky now, that working in the straight world is an old structure being repaired, and that, although he can find the women’s room, can work in the straight world maybe, using his feminine side, he can’t find the men’s room on his own, and is having trouble finding a way to work as a man in that world. His mother side can go off to work, maybe working as a therapist, but his inner father then stays behind at home.

He decides from his dreams that his focus now is to help folks relate to the comet. That’s where his masculine energy is now – with the comet. He’s going to call a meeting soon to discuss it and to see if anyone else wants to head to New Mexico with him to meet it.
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Acid in Berkeley

When he tripped with Joe the other day, when he had just gotten back into town, they did low dose, and he focused on being with Joe. Today he’s heading up into the hills again, this time to be alone and do a higher dose, enough of one to let go of ego.

He finds a nice place, hidden away, where he can relax and let go. He drops three of his remaining hits of Clear Light. He’s comparing himself now to whom he was back then, before he went traveling. He’s given up being a self- indulgent doper. He gave that back to Bobby. He has given up being a psychedelic guru. He gave that back to Tim Leary and Stephen Gaskin. He has given up being anyone’s disciple. He gave that back to Larry.

Instead, he just wants to be a good husband to Karen and a good father for their coming child. But how can he do this? He’s scared and feels impotent. He has never felt emptier. Where is his strength, his courage, and his fullness of being?
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He wants to work, but how? He has always expected that, when he became who he truly was, folks would gather around him. It hasn’t happened – why? A big part of the answer is his love and use of acid. It’s too scary for most folks, and he’s not getting any validation for what he has done with it.

He’s tired of thinking so much. He can’t solve anything now, coming on to the acid. So he gives up for now and spends the rest of his day walking in the hills, until his mind is finally quieted, finally peaceful. After walking around for a while, he finally begins to notice the beauty around him.
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He remembers that he’s going with Joe and with Sharon tonight to a Beethoven concert in a local church. So when it’s almost dark, he starts down the hill, walking through town, and then to their house on Grant Street.
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He realizes later at the concert that his old self-hater had almost gotten him again. He hasn’t felt fear this strong in a long while. He can feel it nibbling still at his mind, from some back burner where he had left it when he was walking in beauty.

Beethoven’s magical music, together with Joe and Sharon’s company and some very good and stoney grass, finally helps him to get past his fears and into the here and now.
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And Again

He dreams that he’s in Tim Leary’s old house. He’s with a younger man who used to work for Tim. Tim is getting out of prison soon but won’t be allowed to go back to his old place. Because of this, the younger man won’t be working for Tim anymore. Listening to the young man, he somehow knows that he’ll cross paths with Tim himself in the near future.

He understands from his dream that the Tim Leary within him is getting out of prison soon. He’s free to trip again but not in the same old ways, especially not with someone younger like Chuck ‘working’ for him anymore. He’s on his own now.
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He’s doing acid again today, again alone. Since he returned to Berkeley, he has come full circle. When he first arrived back in Berkeley, he was a hesitant acidhead who was ready to give it all up and turn straight. Now he sees that he really is an acid holy man.

He’s smoking grass now whenever he wants to, without worrying about whether or not he should. He’s done with worrying about what he should do. Body’s more together now than when he last tripped, and that’s what’s really important. Acid is always healing for body.

He’s in a good place, but most everyone else he runs into seems scared or angry and not very aware. The winter solstice is tonight. Tomorrow is the return of the light, the beginning of the new solar year. Maybe folks will begin to wake up then and mellow out.

The comet’s coming, and he is going to meet it. He’s going to New Mexico soon – but not alone with Karen, not with her fear of him and acid, no way. He would rather go alone or with a larger group. He needs support against her fear. This is the last day of the solar year. He wants to continue on the path he has chosen. He wants to continue being Wanderer, exploring the worlds, inner and outer. He wants to find and keep his balance between these worlds.

He doesn’t want to go anywhere or live anywhere alone with Karen, especially now when she’s so down on him and angry. At the orchard, he was scared that she would leave him, but now he sometimes wishes she had. Does she feel she made the wrong choice? Is that why she’s so angry? If she can’t get out of her bummer, he doesn’t want to be with her.
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Chapter 28 – Heading to the Comet

The Coyote and the Comet

He dreams he’s alone in the desert. It’s night, and he’s looking for the comet. Coyote comes up to him and opens his mouth to speak. Just then the comet appears, right above Coyote’s head, in the western sky, piercing his eyes with its brilliant light.

Coyote is the wise old trickster, the wildest of the wild. The light of the comet is what Coyote wants him to see, what he shares with him alone now in the desert of his dream. Coyote has asked him to come. He can’t refuse.
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Abby’s back. She’s going with them. He’s not sure who else will be going. But whoever is going, they’ll be part of the Coyote Family. He hears that John and Ann are coming with them to New Mexico, are going to meet them at Joshua Tree in Southern California. Sharon and Todd say they’re coming too, maybe Chuck and Joe.

It’s several days later now, and they’re almost ready to leave. They’ll probably leave tomorrow, in the morning sometime. Today, he’s tripping alone, sitting on the Senior Men’s bench on the UC campus. He’s feeling very clear and slow. He’s realizing that he has a family here in Berkeley, has had one all along. If they want, they can all work and live together, like all those other families that they met and lived with on their long trek across the country and back.

Karen’s still hurried and bitchy. He hopes it’s just the hormones of being pregnant and not that she regrets that they conceived little Juniper Berry.
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Last night he finally accepted that he will die someday, that he won’t live forever. Each winter, it’s harder to keep it all together, especially harder to stay warm. He has peaked, reached his mid-life, and he’s on the plateau now. He’s smarter now though, and knows how to take better care of himself. He should last a long while yet – long enough.

He’s really looking forward to their coming road adventure. Sam has his new engine and is purring, eager to go. He’s looking forward even more though, to the peace and solitude of the desert in winter. He’s traveling with other folks this time, but the desert is large. He wants to be alone with Coyote and the spirit in the comet. Afterwards, he wants to come back here to have their baby, and then he’ll see.
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Joshua Tree

They’re finally on the road, hearing south. Abby rides with him and Karen. Sharon’s following behind them in her car – with Chuck, David from next door, and Todd, her young and gifted friend. John and Ann are coming later. They say they’ll meet them in Joshua Tree, at the Hidden Valley Campground.

Sharon’s a high sister. She and Abby have become close friends from living together. Chuck is much more together than he used to be. David is a teenager, the oldest son of the Goertzen’s, their high Quaker neighbors living next door to them in Berkeley. Todd’s a young friend of Sharon’s, younger even than David.
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Soon after driving into the Hidden Valley campground in Joshua Tree and setting up camp, it begins to snow. They hadn’t expected it this far south. It really comes down. Abby doesn’t have a tent and has to sleep in the van with him and Karen the first night. It’s a bit crowded. Reminds him of that time when Chuck had to sleep with them in Yosemite, hiding from the bear.

The next day, it’s clear and sunny, but still quite cold. The snow is overwhelmingly beautiful, contrasting as it does with the reddish desert rocks. He does some acid and walks around in beauty all day. He meets some other folks who are tripping, and they talk about what it would be like if they could make their own acid, what it would be like if one of them were an organic chemist. Maybe he’ll run into one someday, someone who’ll like acid as much as he does. He feels as if he has been here before, although he knows that he hasn’t, not in this lifetime. But it feels familiar and like home to him.

Karen and Abby are close. They’ve needed this time together, without him around. He needed to be alone with acid today anyway, away from Karen’s continual bummer. Karen needs to talk with someone, figure out why she’s being so negative and mean. Pamela wasn’t like this when she was pregnant.

They’re still waiting for John and Ann. They said they would be here by now. Maybe they should have waited for them in Berkeley, maybe they’ve had trouble on the way. They’ll wait for them until tomorrow and then go on to Arizona.
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He realized earlier today that acid is medicine in the physical sense, not just in the sense that the Native Americans use the word, as a spiritual healer. Acid heals body, not just by waking folks up and helping them to be more aware, but more directly, by releasing tensions and by letting body’s deepest energies flow as they should.
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Aqua Caliente

John and Ann never showed up at Joshua Tree. There are seven of them now heading to New Mexico – Karen, Abby, Sharon, Chuck, David, Todd, and himself. They’re in southern Arizona now, heading over to Tucson.

On the way, they see the town of Aqua Caliente on the map, marked as a hot springs. They decide to drive the extra miles north to find it, to see if it’s still there.
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It’s still here all right, a dry, dusty, and deserted ghost town in the middle of nowhere. Probably what happened, why it’s deserted now, is that the town’s water source failed. It looks as if it had been a fancy resort at one time. There’s even a sign saying that Teddy Roosevelt stayed here once.

The young guys, Chuck included, wander off to explore the old abandoned town. He wanders out in the desert to be by himself for a while. Later, he hears yelling and glass breaking and hurries back. He finds that it’s just the young guys breaking the few remaining windows that previous visitors had somehow missed. They’re yelling and throwing anything they can find, letting off steam after having been way too long in the city.
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Later on, they drive a few miles on the road that heads north from Aqua Caliente to nowhere, park off the road, and set up camp. They’re camped up on a ridge where they can see any cars coming before they are seen. They’re sort of shy.

They ask David to be their front man if anyone does come by. He’s very open and friendly and knows what to do. Later, when two cowboys drive up in their pickup and stop down below their camp by their two cars, David reaches into his pack and pulls out a half pint of whiskey, puts it in his back pocket, and walks on down to say hello.

He comes back soon and tells them that the cowboys are friendly and want to hang out with them. He and Chuck and Sharon walk over with David now and say hello. The cowboys have more work to do for now, but they want to come back later. They tell them that they’ll be able to find them by their fire.
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When they cowboys do return, they get them stoned, and the cowboys share the beer they brought. When the coyotes start to sing nearby, their new cowboy friends tell them how they often come up here at night to listen. He realizes that these cowboys are a lot like him. Maybe he should have been a cowboy.

The cowboys stay with them until early in the morning, until they’re all falling asleep around the fire. They all really enjoy their visit together.
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The Chiricahua Mountains

The next morning they pack up and head over to Tucson – to find some showers and to stock up at the natural foods store there. They’re all having fun and are looking forward to backpacking somewhere together soon.

While they’re in Tucson, they hear about the Chiricahua National Forest south of here. It’ll probably be the warmest place they can find this side of Mexico. By now, they’ve given up on going all the way to New Mexico. He would like to go on still, but he’s okay with exploring somewhere new too.
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They stop at a restaurant/bar on their way. Inside, David and Todd play Merle Haggard’s, “I’d rather be an Oakie . . .” on the jukebox. When they sit down, they say they wanted to stir up all these straight folks here by playing it – them being such obvious road hippies and all.

He can feel the bad energy they’ve generated towards themselves, so he starts talking with the owner behind the counter. He and Karen have learned to always try to get along with folks on the road, being wanderers and all. He and the owner find that they served in the Air Force at the same time, although in different places. The owner appreciates that he was a flying officer on a bomber. It takes away the sting of what his young friends did.
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Later on, in the Chiricahua National Forest, at the trailhead, a second and more serious division surfaces, when Chuck ego trips, insisting on taking a very difficult trail rather than the easy one going up alongside the creek that flows down the canyon. He and Karen think it’s too dangerous, but Sharon and Todd decide to follow Chuck. Later, when they meet up again, Chuck’s party agrees it was too dangerous. They say they actually had to give it up and follow the creek up as they did.

That night they all see the comet. It’s very faint, not at all like the astronomers predicted. After awhile, he goes off by himself. As soon as he leaves the campfire, Coyote begins singing, and he follows him a ways out into the dark. Coyote wants him to follow. Doing so, he comes finally to a slight rise in the ground where he can see all around. He hears Coyote very close by, and then sees him sitting there. He sits quietly with him, listening to the spirit of the comet as it speaks to him.
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They camp here for several more days. The split at the trailhead never heals completely, and finally he and Karen and David leave, heading slowly back to Berkeley. Karen’s mellowed out some from the trip. He thinks that maybe she has just been scared, being pregnant and him without a regular job and so into acid.
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Listening to Coyote

On their way home to Berkeley, David decides that he wants to visit some friends in Tahoe, so they let him off to hitchhike up the east slope of the Sierras. They’re already almost back to Joshua Tree. There are very high winds here, with sand blowing everywhere.

When they get to Joshua Tree and set up camp, Coyote comes to him in the night, walks right up to him sitting in the van, so he follows him out into the desert for a talk. Coyote wants him to know that he doesn’t have to lose himself forever being a father, that someday he can be wild again. Coyote is sad that he’s going to be tied down again, in a city so far away from him, unable to wander for so many years. Coyote says that whenever and wherever he hears Coyote’s song, he can remember who he has been and still can be.
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The spirit of Coyote continues to speak to him in his dreams. That next night, after walking into the desert with Coyote, he dreams of being with Captain Kirk of Star Trek. A large group of them are traveling to another planet, where it’s very dangerous and exciting.

He dreams of seeing Doris Lessing on the street, of walking up to meet her and offering to buy her car. Later, he’s driving it, looking all over for her, afraid the police will think that he stole it from her.

He dreams of being outside with his friends. His mother calls him from upstairs. He goes inside to see what she wants, and she hands him a shirt that she has mended. She’s being nice and very sweet. He thanks her, and tells her he’s still busy outside. She understands.
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He knows that he’s losing something by having a child with Karen. He doesn’t mind though, if she really loves him. He likes being a dad. Coyote minds though, doesn’t understand why he would sacrifice himself for a child with a woman who may or may not love him.

He knows that he is sacrificing his wild and wandering side. He was on his way to Mexico or to Peru – to the high mountains somewhere, anywhere wilder than here. Now he’s going to live in a house in town again and worry about money and what other folks think.

His soul is more like Captain Kirk’s, needing adventure and being attracted to Doris Lessing’s world in which craziness is really magic, is really a sign of higher consciousness. But his father energy is pulling him into the straight world for now though. His mother side is pulling him into it too, into letting her be a mother again through him. Because of this, she is now being very helpful and no longer seductive. Instead, she is encouraging him to stay and be a dad.
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