"I think there's something, after all this time, that you've failed to realize about me, Max. I ain't no bitch," said Mike.
And I interjected, "Yeah! And I didn't ride my bike all the way over here to pussy-foot around and half-ass this mushroom gravy-train."
"What? You ride your bike over here every day pretty much. And it's fucking perfect outside." said Max.
"Exactly. Shut up. Just be a good sherpa." And with that, I emptied my plastic bag into my mouth, caps and stems and all, and Mike and Max did the same. When I chomped down, it tasted like dried dirt and old cardboard. Yum. We all washed it down with old Miller High Life. "Ok, now what?"
"Well, I figured we go up through Pogonip and romp around, and if anything gets too gnarly just uh, you know, tug on my sleeve or something." Pogonip is a plot of nature up on the hill, adjacent to the university campus, and apparently it's a mystical forest wonderland. "BB said she'd drop us off at the bottom. Where is she?"
"Probably humping Grant," said Mike turning around the corner to yell up the stairs. "BB!"
We all yelled. "BB!"
"Mom! We wanna go now!"
She came down flustered and sarcastically annoyed. "Goddammit okay, I'm here," she said prancing down the stairs. "Where am I taking you silly idiots?" Then eyeing the empty bags, "Did you eat them already?"
"Duh."
"Take us to Pogonip!"
"Can you drop us off at the bottom by Costco?" asked Max, batting his eyes and handing her his car-keys. "Pretty please? It's their first time."
"First time!? Oh, boy."
"Yup. We're virgins," I said. "Hehe."
"Well, you two are in for a treat. Give me the damned keys."
"Yay!" So BB drove us up to where the edge of town pushed up against the wilderness around the back and at the base of the hill. By the Costco and the Little League field, between the forks of Highway 1 and Highway 9. I still didn't feel anything when we got there. "Dude, I don't think it's working."
"Ha. Give it a little more time," said Max.
"Yeah, just you wait," BB said as we got out. "Have fun!"
"Thanks mom!" She drove off and we began our trek up the hill towards Pogonip. The first part was a little steep, but the woods by the trail weren't too thick and here and there they would open out onto a quiet green meadow with the grass around waist high. Halfway up, as we strolled by one of the meadows, they hit, and I stopped in my tracks. "Whoa, guys."
"What's up?" asked Max. They both both turned to look at me. "Haha! Are you feeling it?"
"I... think... so..." It was a question, and there was the strangest feeling of vertigo that came rushing with the first few steps forward, and my heart, it raced. "It didn't hit you guys yet?"
"Psh, no," said Mike. "But hell! I'm excited now! You look like your trippin' balls a little bit!"
"That's because I am a little bit!" And we continued on, me tip-toeing because it awesomely felt like the best way to tackle it. And I chuckled to myself because everything was slowly becoming more beautiful, and it wasn't just the white-framed, fading, blue-lensed sunnies I had on. A switch had flipped.
[stop]
It was another world. I had never been to Pogonip, through it's meadows between the tree lines. And so that place was made special in my mind the way places do when the first time is so significant. So significant it was to learn how to grab the reins. To realize the mind's eye, and the view from another's. And dialogue with yourself like no one hears, because no one's listening to me talk in my head. It was a narrative, just me and me, and what looked like a wild fucking ride we'd already been strapped in for. The stagecoach was already way out of town, and the horses were beginning to get wily. So what then? I guess just grab those reins tight and pull 'em tighter. And set 'em straight for god's sake. And holler and "Ha!" and giddy-up. It was an easy fight to hold onto waking consciousness, but a fight nonetheless, and sometimes it slipped. "Just keep marching," I'd whisper in my ear. "Stay aware. It's so much better."
We finally hit the road on campus that swings out and around the back to Merrill and Stevenson. A thin layer of sweat filmed my skin. There was a bench on the trail, a little off the road, right before the soft edge where the hill began to slope down and towards town. It was one of those crystal clear days with clouds, when one could see Monterey easily across the bay, and the smoke stacks at Moss Landing were crisp. Clouds loomed over the mountains to the north, rolling slowly over and burning off in the hot day, never quite making it to the ocean. I set myself down and threw my arms over the back of the bench and my head back to breath in as many great gulps as I thought I was warranted. Slow and deep. Breathing in until I couldn't, breathing out until I couldn't. And the muscles relaxed and weren't afraid anymore
"We're close," said Max. "Just gotta get up into the trees and it's going to be so nice."
"Yeah! Do you guys still not feel it?" I asked.
Mike thought about for a second, and his eyes sparked as if he'd found something. "Oh...! I'm starting to, I think!"
"Oh, boy! Oh, boy! Oh, boy! Oh, boy!"
"Haha! AH, you fuckin' guys," said Max. Then he took a strange step and a tilt, and giggled quickly with a dumb smile before turning up north towards the trees. "This way all! Whoa... Haha!"
We laughed together while we walked, marching into the trees and down a maintenance-road-looking trail of dark dirt and white stone. Everything was moss soft, and everything changed so beautifully so as the tree canopies danced and splashed golden drops of sun through the forest. Out in the open and in the shade became two different worlds init of themselves, with different atmospheres and feelings and moods and questions and challenges. We all quickly found walking sticks; big, tall obnoxious ones. And then Max took us down to the coy ponds. They were these shallow, about three feet deep traps of water in between the roots of the forest trees. Giant redwood roots that hugged and clung to the mountainside. We walked over them like step stadium benching that's always too high to step down normally. It was always a little stretch, but it was worth it. We put our noses right up to the still pond water and watched the fish swim lazily and sometimes dart into a rooted nook of the pond, away from us, the mysterious forest invaders. All the senses felt a little different and my vision swirled when I wasn't concentrating. It was other worldly. Like that moon Endor at times, but without the adorable ewoks. It still was fantastic though. And we, the three of us, were all fantastically high. Balls-to-the-walls high.
Then we jumped back on the trail with our ridiculous walking sticks, and our sandals and boardshorts and hats. If mushrooms are anything, they're most definitely a rollercoaster, like everything else. An old wooden rickety one at that. The trail we were on was not an empty path. Students jogged on it regularly, and it was a beautiful Wednesday afternoon so there were certainly other patrons we passed on our trek. They weren't exactly few and far between either, these joggers on their daily lap through the woods on the back of campus. Hikers too. You know, the usual mountain trail traffic. Their faces always contorted when they got close, squished in like cookie dough, or they looked worn out and sweaty. Then there was us. The sharp-featured mushroom adventurers, blindly in awe of the mystic, wild elegance that resided everywhere in that place. With sunglasses and tall twisted walking sticks. Giddy with bubbling laughter and open-mouthed because my lower jaw seemed to swing loose from the hinges. We must've looked as silly to them as they did to us, but that's nothing to care too much about. It didn't stop us from going quiet and rigid when those other patrons passed though, and we'd hold on, but not for too long before we'd burst into laughter again. Just another drop on the coaster. "Just remember where I am, and don't get lost." Who was that? "It's me, silly. Yourself. Well, myself, I guess." Did I say that out loud? Hmm, I don't know.
Apparently the amount of laughing we were doing was rather strenuous because we found ourselves stopping to rest plenty of times. Not that I was opposed to it or anything. In truth, I was probably the most out of shape of the three of us. We'd stop and Max would go tight-rope across a fallen tree, and Mike would balance smooth stones in a tower, and I would just watch, constantly aware of the reality slipping away. At the limestone kilns, we all laid down on the roof looking up through the hole in the canopy that the kilns had cut. The clouds were light and smokey and swirled and meshed and moved in a way that clouds don't know how to move. It was grainy but wet, that sky. Still like sand in a bowl of water, always at a slow spin. And someone put on Cat Power on an iPhone with the speakers on loud and our minds went rambling with the dreary, hollow jazz that soaked quickly into the loud woods around us. The chirps, the breeze sliding through the trees. The leaves rustling, the branches squeaking. The nothing else, the absence of everyday life. All in time with that smooth-rasped Southern belle and her salty band, never in any rush. There was no need to rush things. Mushrooms are an endurance drug.
We took our time through the forest, going everywhere before coming back, and we found ourselves on a trail in a another meadow just past peaking, standing by a curious sounding sign. I read it aloud, "Danger. Mountain lion habitat. Hmm..."
"Say what now?" said Mike.
"I say it's says that this all here's a mountain lion habitat," I said. "I don't think I can fight a mountain lion right now."
"Woo! Me neither," said Max, eyeing the tall meadow grass off the trail. It was golden dry and about head-high, and it swayed slowly before us in the wind. We all gripped our walking sticks instinctively.
Mike was undaunted though. "Psh, whatever. I'd beat the shit out of a mountain lion right now," he said swinging his stick like a bat. "What do you think'd be better? A swing or a stab?"
"Probably a jabbing stab," said Max thoughtfully. "If you miss with the swing you're fucked."
Mike stopped swinging. "Good point." And he started jabbing at the high grass with the sharp top of his walking stick. Then there was a branch crack out in the meadow and Mike stopped again and we all held our breath.
Then Max yelled out, "Not into the high grass!" and got up from the Indian pretzel he was in and started jogging back towards the road and I bolted up too, and Mike and I hurried to catch up, and we crossed to the other side of the road. The campus side. We hiked up between the road and the fenced-in cow pastures, past the East Field, to the bottom of Stevenson.
"Fuck, there's a lot of people at the field right now," said Mike from the cover of an alcove of ferns. "And everywhere really." There were. I felt like old, rich white folks on an African safari, and I'd forgot until then that we were on a college campus. It was positively bustling on that warm spring afternoon.
"Maybe we just post up here for a little while," I suggested. We laid down in the grass by the path, against the slope and under the ferns, and relaxed and laughed fiendishly for hours, even more so when the occasional sweaty jogger panted by. We rattled off lines from random movies at each other with dramatic style and gasping breaths. We were an outdoor nuthouse. Max's Jurassic Park impressions were fantastic. He kept a serious face just long enough to get through them. "They're attacking the fences systematically looking for weakness... They remember."
"Not into the high grass!" we'd yell in high-pitched voices as the joggers passed. They would start for a second before continuing on. They all looked downtrodden in varying degrees. Glaze-minded, waiting for things to be better. Looking far off to the future. To things past college. To some distant achievement to come. Barely noticing anything, and it was sad to me. And at the same time, so hilarious. When was the last time they realized how pretty the clouds were on a given day? Because today they were miraculous. And after all, they're always different. But that's never really a high priority for some, even if it is so simple. And the thing they miss is that it can make all the difference in the world to notice the pretty cloud days and be grateful. Eh, maybe it was a mushroom thing.
But anyways, the sun set soon enough, and we crossed the field as the sky darkened. The hours had passed like weeks in my mind, and we were all sort of delirious. Max called BB, and she said she'd pick us up from the bus-stop by the East Field lot so that's where we waited. Still chronically smiling. Still with our sunglasses on. Some girl I'd met at a bar off my growl and paw-claw maneuver was waiting for a bus across the street She saw me and shot me a quirky look, then crossed over to greet us. She lived in the Village, and I'd dined her a few times. "Hi!" she said.
"Yes we are."
"What's that?"
"We all ate a bunch of mushrooms a while back," I smiled, leaning back into the wooden bench.
"Oh, really," she said smiling back. "Let me see your eyes."
So I stood up and took off my sunglasses and stared her hard with rapt focus. Trying to look serious, but failing miserably. My eyes darted when hers did, and she laughed a little. "You're ridiculous."
"I know," I said. Just then BB and Monster came roaring up the hill in Max's old Mercedes and it screeched to a stop in the road next to us. I jumped back and stood there surprise-faced. "Well, I this is our ride. I'll call you later though, yeah? Saki bombs at I Love?"
"Do it." The way she smiled dimpled her rosy cheeks, and there was a fired torched in her green eyes.
I winked at her before jumping in the back of the sedan with Mike and Max, but I'd put my sunnies back on so I don't think she noticed.
BB pushed the pedal down and we vroomed off. Monster, in shotgun, turned excitedly and asked, "Was that the Village?"
"Ha! Maybe."
"You guys are ridiculous," she said and she squeezed Max's knee.
"Yeah, tell me about it," I said.
