First Ever Trip Report

Well, after nine months of actively pursuing my first psychedelic experience, I finally got what I asked for. It took me a surprisingly long time to actually find anyone with mushrooms, but it finally happened. The following experience took place at a cabin on a tree farm owned by my grandfather in the Catskills and on an eighth of mushrooms.

In all, it was an absolutely beautiful experience, certainly one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. Originally, I had intended to have a more introspective trip a la the Secret Chief method of just chilling out in a dark room with a couple of blankets and a carefully selected playlist of some of my classical favorites. But about an hour to an hour and a half after chewing them down I decided to move around a bit. One thing led to another and I ended up getting outside for a walk along a path short path I had cleared the day before through the forest steps from the front door. Inside, I did not really visually experience anything of great interest. Certainly I was feeling different ("fucking great" is how I described it), and I think some of it had to do with me peaking as I walked outside, but the second I stepped outside it was as if a switch went off. Right away I noticed a spider web spun the night before hanging a few feet in front of the front door. I immediately was absolutely mesmerized and intrigued--I had seen spider webs before, but I had never REALLY seen a spider web before this one. Normally, I'm somewhat afraid of spiders and easily bothered by anything creepy and crawly, but not in the least when I was on my trip. To skip a few of the details (which were extraordinarily interesting to me, but naturally are difficult for someone else to appreciate) I spent about 2 hours in the 200 feet from the front door and the spider web to the spot halfway down the trail where I first noticed I was beginning to come down. Everything was just so absolutely fascinating, I was noticing normally insignificant details as if they were the only thing one could help but notice. I would glance at a branch and instantly see the seven caterpillars on it or I would notice a fly on a leaf ten feet away. I was even finding single strands of spider silk floating off of the trees in the wind. Particularly fascinating were the water droplets that had collected as morning dew (I tripped first thing in the morning) on the leaves, grass, spider webs, even on the hairs on the caterpillars. I could easily see how an experience like this would be useful to the artist and it certainly was--if nothing else at all--absolutely beautiful, though it was certainly more than that.

But as I started to come down, about halfway through the 100 yard trail, I had a quite profound experience. I was standing with my face inches away from a branch of an elm tree in the rain (it was raining by now, but that was perfectly fine) noticing all of the things that I had been noticing all morning, when I glanced a few inches up and noticed that the branch right above the one I was looking at was of a different tree, a maple actually. I followed that branch in to the trunk and noticed that this maple was much bigger, broader, and somewhat dominated the area more. Then I looked at the elm and noticed that the first few feet of its trunk, some 20 feet from the base of the maple, grew straight up but that after that, it grew at an angle moving away from the maple. Then I looked back at the branch I was looking at, I noticed that the leaves only grew where they would receive direct sunlight and that the entire branch leading back to the base of the elm was bare where the maple had blocked out the sky above. I looked around at the other trees in the area and noticed another tree, growing at a 45 degree angle away from the larger maple tree. That it could grow at such an angle and not fall over was amazing to me, even now as I think about it. It's roots would have needed to stretch far beyond the maple in order for it to hold itself up. A fourth tree grew right against the base of the maple. But it didn't grow vertically, rather after the first two or three feet it split in two, growing like a "Y" with wilting arms. But one side of the Y, the side directly under the maple, had died and was beginning to rot, the other though, was growing away from the base of the maple and was thriving. I realized that the tree itself must have cut off the right side from whatever nutrients it was absorbing from the ground and that is why it must have died. That side of the tree couldn't have been receiving much sunlight and must have been a burden on the other half of the tree so it just cut it off in order to live. These thoughts all occurred in a sort of revelation as I recognized--for the first time in my life--that trees were not just these inanimate things which, yes, were alive, but that lacked the sort of defining characteristic of what I considered to be life. But these things were alive in every sense of the word! They were active, they were animate, they even have a sort of conscious intent to their movement. The one short tree even made a DECISION in order to best adapt itself to a particular situation.

As I marveled at recognizing these trees as my brothers in life, the experience merged with the previous two hours and I FELT that all of these things, the caterpillars, spiders, flies, slugs, dew drops, birds, the bedrock under my feet, the clouds over my head, were all quite literally inseparable. When I say that I FELT that way, I don't mean it in the ordinary way ("I feel like a slice of pizza"), I mean that I EXPERIENCED it, I KNEW it but not in the way that I know that 2+2=4, but I knew it experientially, emotionally, I KNEW it in some way that I can't possibly articulate. This wasn't quite the experience of the "one" that I've often read of, but I think I was close. What was missing however, seemed to be me. As I looked around, it was still the "I" that had experienced this, it was still me that FELT this. I felt like a full blown mystical experience was just out of reach, almost as if it was on the tip of my tongue. While still in the moment of this feeling of the inseparability of everything, I looked down at my feet standing on the wet grass, on top of the roots, which were in the soil, which was above the bedrock, which at the time, meant the entire planet itself, which was ALL connected, but "I" was still there, inside my head, observing--externally--the connection in all things. I was what was missing. I say "I" not in the sense of my body, because my body was a part of everything else, but my conscious self was still somehow outside of all of this. And I knew that this particular trip, I would not be going any further.

I don't know if I needed a larger dose to break through, if the circumstances were not quite right, or perhaps I was just not ready for it, but I stopped right there, on the verge of what I knew intellectually must be true, but hadn't yet experientially KNOWN to be true. It was a beautiful experience, and the moment under the tree was profound, but I know I've only touched the tip of the iceberg.

I am sorry (mostly for myself) that it had taken so long to have this experience, but I am glad that I did and am looking forward to future explorations.