Before he cooked, Robert explained the hierarchy of the hot springs to everyone there.
“There is a class system here” he said, “It goes like this. This place and this energy is a result of Goddess. So first in the hierarchy are the goddesses who come here. Whatever they want, they get. Here they are not girls or women, they are Goddesses and I exist to serve. ” The beautiful girls in the tub with us murmured in delight.
“Next come those who serve Goddess and the Goddesses who visit. So this young man,” he indicated a dark youth with a secure energy about him who was happily massaging a Goddess’s shoulders. “He is next because he helped me carry my gear up the mountain and he is really pleasing this Goddess. After that come the rest of the guys.”
The shrooms started reshaping my reality and the snow-capped peak directly across from us began sort of bow and kow-tow to me while the trees began to giggle. Faces and words began to blend into each other and I thought of how the whirling dervish spins so reality blurs together and God can be seen in totality. My reality was blurring into the steam rising into the clouds and the stars that were not there dancing among those that were.
One of the boys brought out a pipe and propane lighter. We shared his weed. I was intensely reflecting inward while I sat in the corner. Sitting in a bucket looking at my bucket. The Goddesses were lovely and the water was divine at just the right heat. A light snow began to fall.
Robert pontificated pleasantly from the pool called The Lobster Pot and I settled into a comfortable corner of another called The Bear’s Den. The dark boy and his Goddess were next to me; they were very comforting and real. The Naked Gourmet served up a delicious treat with orange slices that I tasted with my ears and felt with my nose.
Goddesses first, then helpers, and then the guys. Strange things still blurred the corners of my vision.
Two very drunk teenage Goddesses came and got in the Bear’s Den with me. They both had huge bottles of beer. I struggled to hold on to the center as their much older boyfriends came and got in with them. Let the molesting begin…
I felt an urge to speak but each time I tried, I realized, I fit in better being quiet. The Goddess and her dark servant moved to the Lobster Pot and the drunk young Goddesses squealed in delight at the extra room. I felt like I was going to be soaking in their boyfriend’s sperm soon so I moved to the Lobster Pot.
Robert’s constant patter about the adventures of the Naked Gourmet allowed me to simply listen and exist in my own world. Each time someone got out of the pool, we all shifted to a more comfortable spot. Slowly faces became distinguishable and words took on meaning. The visual died away and I returned to the somewhat Valhallalike world of Scenic Hot Springs.
The Naked Gourmet cooked in the snow and then turned from his makeshift kitchen with quesadillas and more orange slices.
Shortly afterward he began packing his enormous load of gear into a sled and set off yelling “For those of you here tomorrow, I’ll be back for brunch!”
I stayed in the Lobster Pot for the next 6 hours or so, only getting out once to take an enormous pee in a downhill snowdrift.
About 3:00 AM, my friends and I dressed as needle like snowflakes flogged our mineral bathed skins. The hike down the mountain was a slick ride on one foot while crouched in the easy parts and treacherous ice in the flatter areas.
I thought my trip was still going on as a loud buzzing got near deafening and I looked up to see the purplish blue wires coursing up and down the mountain with an eerie ionic glow.
My friend saw me looking and said “Isn’t that a trip?”
“You mean it’s real?” I asked.
“Yeah, freaky huh?”
I thought about the strange effects all of that electromagnetic energy must be having on my brain, nervous system, and body as I lived among it every day…the same as standing under the same power lines in a city… the thought made me shudder.
Hunted in Acme: Real or Memorex?
Shortly after George Hush got busted for stealing parsley, a friend of mine gave me some LSD soaked sugar cubes.
I figured it would be good to get away from everything for the weekend and knowing the trauma George was enduring after his bust, I asked if he’d like to come along. Part of the reason George had been caught shoplifting was because he had blown his knee out jumping around on a pogo stick. So he hadn’t been able to run when that hand clamped down on his shoulder.
We loaded our gear into my bus and drove out to the boondocks. A small town called Acme, Washington. There was a free campground with a nice little creek running through it. As we pulled in we noticed that there was a large number of what looked like permanent residents.
Most of them giving us dirty looks as we drive up in a VW. From this, we surmised that we just might have wandered into a camp full ofrednecks. We ignored them and set up our camp a good distance from anyone else. We were up on a hill, having a good view of the rest of the camp with a thick-forested hill behind us.
We started a fire and consumed our sugar cubes as the sun disappeared. For about an hour or so, things went as they usually do with LSD. I had a conversation with a slug, George was tripping on his ex-girlfriend, and the fire held our interest. The trip was pretty intense and so I brought out some white sage to mellow things out. Many people believe white sage brings about a change and acts as a cleanser of negative energies.
The sage helped and as we both began to mellow out the first gunshot rang out.
I looked at George and asked, “What was that?”
“An unnatural pause,” he replied.
Suddenly we heard a woman screaming and a baby crying. It sounded to me as if she were yelling at someone for shooting in the camp and waking her child. She was interrupted by seven or eight more gunshots. She and the child were completely silent. I looked to the right of our camp and saw a head in the bushes, watching us. I motioned to George who looked over and saw it to.
“What the hell? Who was that?” he asked. I didn’t know. The person disappeared.
A few moments later the guns began ringing out again. The sound was somehow different than before. I looked over the hill and saw four men, including the one who had been spying on us, firing their guns in our direction. George stood up and yelled at them.
“Hey, we’re up here, there are people up here!” The firing increased in intensity.
“We got to get out of here man,” I said to him. We zigzagged our way slowly with George’s bum knee. Not far into the hills we found a fallen log surrounded by thick ferns that we lay underneath.
We covered ourselves with ferns and waited as gunfire continued and voices called out “We’re gonna get you!” and humans bayed like hound dogs. The rednecks were searching through the woods for us.
We had left camp suddenly and had no weapons of any sort. Just a nail George was using as a button to hold up his pants. We decided if one of them came upon us, I would take them down and George would stab the nail into their throat. We would then have a gun. This madness continued for about an hour and then we heard more trucks arrive, bottles began to break, and drunken fights broke out.
Finally we heard the trucks all depart and we snuck down to our camp, five hours after leaving it. We quickly packed up and drove back to Bellingham.
I called the police to report the incident and they told me it was out of their jurisdiction referring me to the county sheriff, the county sheriff referred me to the State Parks Service, who in turn referred me to the Forest Service, who in turn told me they would look into it. The same night four campers were shot in a campground about 35 miles north of us in Canada.