Almost dead from hippees.

Once, a long time ago, I was almost dead from Hippees.

I had taken a semester off of art school, and was living in my car in Mexico. I visited the Peyote capital and took a long hike through the desert to the top of a cosmic mountain, to take in the vibrations with my new hippee cohorts. (it was a special mountain)

I didn't take any peyote, because I am scared of drugs. Still, it was interesting to see peyote in it's natural form at this hippee show and tell. I got my finger stuck in some peyote, because it is similar to a Chinese finger trap.

Night fell, and it became deathly cold, Thunder and lightning crackled through the night sky, the wind battered us with occasional horizontal sprays of rain, and scattered parts of our camp fire across the rocky soil. I prayed the sky wouldn't open up. I shivered and hugged a sooty stone that I'd raked from the decintigrating camp fire, while my cohorts, bonkers on peyote, marveled at the "energy".  While the scenery was truly awesome, My outlook was slightly 

less cosmic, as I occasionally traded in my anti-hypothermia stones, and made half hearted suggestions that we might be less likely to be electrocuted if we did not sit on the peak, of the mountain.

I didn't sleep at all, and morning was truly a rebirth, the sky was clear, the sun was shining, and I hadn't died of exposure with a clan of chemically armored hippees.

It really was a pretty cosmic mountain after all, and I found a couple of meteorites. Pretty soon we were ready to leave. But when you're among hippees, there is a big difference between being ready, and really leaving.

Feeling confident of the way back, I headed of down the trail by myself. The trail forked into another, and divided, and meandered around the hills and gullies of Dr Seuss land. I was lost. I tripped and stabbed my wrist on a truffalump tree. Ok, it was yucca. My wrist stiffened up.  I was thirsty, and my jug was empty, the sleeping bag I almost froze to death in the night before, weighed me down as I schlepped it through the desert heat. I was miles from nowhere,

but the power lines that traced the sky over my head mocked that reality. The lines disappeared up ahead beyond a ridge. I scrabbled my way up the long rocky way, to the top of the ridge. The lines had to dip down the other side to the village just beyond the ridge. Just beyond the ridge... It's just beyond the ridge.

I popped my head over the top of the ridge. Nothing. Lots and lots of nothing. The power lines disappeared into the atmospheric haze thickening in the unfathomable distance.  My hope disappeared into a bad 70s van mural.

I staggered back down the mountain, I stopped on a bluff and caught my breath. I sized up my options. Well, assuming that I would be dead by nightfall, It seemed kind of pointless to drag around the extra baggage. So I threw my sleeping bag and plastic jug down the mountain side, and  continued on my way.

A while later, I reached the place where my baggage had landed, and I had a change of heart. If I was going to be dead soon, I might as well not also be a litter bug...  So I picked up my stuff and trudged onward.

It took about 10 hours, but eventually I strayed across a couple of small children playing in a brook. With gestures and with my bad Spanish, I gathered that I should go that way, turn at the thing that looks just like everything else, go the other way for an indeterminate distance, turn that way at the other identical thing...  I gave them $10 and forced them to take me there...   It was right there.