" Oh I have been a beggar

and shall be one again

and few the ones with help to lend

within the world of man." - Bruce Cockburn

I awoke early on the late September morning of the day Aaron went outside for the first time. It was a Saturday morning, the third consecutive day of unseasonably warm weather. I looked outside in great anticipation and saw only a few puffy cumulus clouds in an otherwise blue sky. When I walked out on my back porch at seven in the morning to take the air, it was already nearing seventy degrees outside. As I listened to the birds and took in the morning, I considered the momentous steps Aaron and I were about to take together. I had come to care for Aaron a great deal. To lead him to the sylvan forest and the ancestral dreams that sleep there while guiding him through the wonders and terrors of the psychedelic experience was obviously a greater task than I could hope to accomplish alone. Many times already Aaron had ridiculed the suggestion. Yet I knew he wanted to try, that our friendship might hinge on my efforts.

I prayed.

I showed up at Aaron's apartment at eleven A.M.. When I arrived, Aaron seemed upbeat. "It's a beautiful day," he said. "I made a reservation for us on the plane to Provincetown, in case you want to go. I've never been, but it should be nice."

I told Aaron that Provincetown was very nice, but that I had somewhere else that I wanted to take him. I told him I had given the place a good deal of thought and while I thought Provincetown was a fabulous scene, it wasn't where we should go that day. Aaron asked me where the place I wanted to go was. All that I was willing to tell him was that it was within an hours drive from his house. We played with this little mystery while Aaron canceled the plane reservations.

In meditation that morning I had come to the decision that the best place to take Aaron to introduce him to tripping was a small patch of conservation land in Weston, directly adjacent to the grounds of the Cambridge School, the prep school where I spent my last year of high school. The area was small, no more than a couple of square miles, but it was densely forested with many large old trees. There was a stream, a small pond, some beautiful meadows and a hill, Cat Rock, the top of which had been a popular spot for keg parties when I was a Cambridge School student. These were woods I had walked in more times than I could count. As a youth, I had come here and tripped and it was here I came to understand tripping, myself and my inseparability from the translucent fabric of nature. When I had been a student there, I had explored these perspectives with my fellow students. Now I was bringing Aaron to the hallowed grove. I hoped he would be ready to embrace it.

The drive out was uneventful. Since I didn't want to tell Aaron where we were going, I drove. I deliberately kept the conversation on national politics, playing off Aaron's pleasure in disagreeing with me. I made every effort to steer him away from any discussion of what we were doing. As we got off the highway in Weston, an extremely affluent western suburb of Boston, Aaron noticed where we were and remarked that he knew some people who lived there. I considered what a challenge it would be to introduce someone so long conditioned to wealth and high status to the ultimate proletarian experience, to the simple fellowship of leaf and mud. I told Aaron that Weston was where I had gone to high school and that the place we were going was very close to my old school.

I parked the car in a little patch of dirt by side of the road, directly behind a large white house that served as a Cambridge School dormitory. We crossed the street, skirted round a metal gate and walked down an old dirt road into the conservation land. Bushes, firs, and great old oak trees crowded in on the road. A short way into the woods we passed the ruined foundation of a house, half filled in with water. Aaron asked me the story of the place, but all I could tell him was that was how it had looked when I was a student there. We stopped a few moments later to admire a particularly large oak tree. I told Aaron that the base of this tree was a popular place for people to come and smoke pot between classes when I was in high school.

We walked on, slowly, for perhaps ten minutes. Aaron went very carefully and made several remarks to the effect that he never walked and he wasn't sure how he was ever going to get back. The ground we were traversing was almost level, but whenever we descended to any minute degree he noted that we would have to climb back up later on. He asked me whether I was sure we wouldn't get lost. I reassured him.

In a small meadow off the main trail where I had once eaten peyote, I spread out the blanket I had brought along and invited Aaron to lie down in the grass. He slid down gratefully onto his back and I sat down beside him. I brought out a joint and we smoked and enjoyed the warmth of the sunshine, the clouds rolling by. I brought out a little satchel in which I kept some sacred crystals and shells that I liked to carry. I carefully took out and unwrapped a little piece of paper towel and showed the contents to Aaron, two corn chips which were impregnated with large doses of liquid LSD. I told Aaron that these were a sacrament, a psychedelic Eucharist. I told him that they would change him and he must be ready to change when he took of them. I reminded him that I was his friend and he would not be alone. This time, he did not laugh at my assertion of friendship.

I put the crackers between us and insisted on holding hands. I told Aaron that I wanted to sing a little prayer song to bless the crackers and if he could join in when he caught the words I would appreciate it. I spoke the words for him once, slowly, before singing them.

"It's the blood of the ancients

that runs through our veins

and the forms pass

but the circle of life remains."

I sang the song three or four times. Aaron watched me intently but did not join in. When I stopped he said my singing sounded nice, but the words were meaningless. Then, without asking me anything, he picked up a corn chip and ate it. I ate the other chip.

We got into a long conversation about the governments role in the narcotics industry. I told Aaron that it was my theory that the government supported by large corporate interests like timber, tobacco, and cotton which competed with industrial hemp, had conspired to illegalize marijuana and the stronger psychedelics because they were consciousness raising, revolutionary drugs. In their place, the government would flood the black ghetto and eventually it's own troops in Viet Nam with cheap heroin. The flood of heroin would help stigmatize blacks, making it easier to attack and frame their leaders. Those who became strung out would also be unavailable for civil rights work and the community as a whole would be severely taxed in dealing with the situation. I told him I had heard anecdotal evidence that the heroin was especially pure and cheap during riot times in the nineteen sixties. Aaron asked me many questions as I unfolded this theory to him, forcing me to make explain myself at great length.

I told Aaron that for years the alternative media, and to some extent even the main stream press, had been circulating the story that during eighties when Ronald Reagan wanted a way to resupply the Contra rebels in Nicaragua in defiance of Congress a scheme was devised whereby planes loaded with weapons flew down to Nicaragua and returned to the United States loaded with cocaine aimed at the ghetto. Thus, for political reasons, drug users in and out of the ghetto were treated to a shift from cheap, easily available heroin to cheap, easily available crack cocaine. Cocaine being a stimulant whereas heroin is sedating, the shift was accompanied by an explosion of violence in the inner cities. I noted that in the past few years the powers that be seemed to have recognized that cocaine was too difficult to manage and that they now seemed to be making a concerted effort to bring back heroin. The mainstream papers had recently run several stories about cheap, remarkably pure dope causing overdoses.

Aaron said, gently, that he thought I was paranoid. He said that if this were true people would have talked about it. I said that people had talked about it and the establishment tended to come down rather hard on them when they did. Aaron said I should talk to his brother, because his brother thinks the whole wide world is a massive conspiracy controlled by one guy. We laughed at each other.

Aaron asked me about the healing properties of psychedelics and pot. I said that Marijuana and the stronger sacred plants were used by traditional cultures to obtain in experience of the divine which was at once transcendent to and immanent in themselves and all things around them. Eating mushrooms or peyote around the sacred fire, or even merely coming together to smoke, brought about a rich psychic sharing, a community of spirit, resplendent and glorious. Initiation into the use of these plants was the ultimate ritual signifying the attainment of adulthood in these societies. I told Aaron that the effect of these substances on the children of our alienated urban society was wholly consonant with the tribal paradigm. As in the jungle, in the city one can find crowds of young people happily tripping the night away as they lose themselves dancing to loud electric rhythms.

"Trance, dance and psychedelic drugs has always been a prescription for both mystical experience and a really good time." I said. By now nearly an hour had gone by since we ate the crackers. I was beginning to notice a tingling in my fingers and a vague lightheadedness, the first symptoms of the acid. "This is first time you ever did LSD." I remarked, bringing the matter up for the first time.

"LSD?" Aaron asked, trying to sound more shocked than he was. "I took LSD. That cracker was LSD?"

"Come on, Aaron!" I said with mild exasperation. "We talked the last time we were together about doing this today. I asked you this morning if you were ready and you said you were. I told you the chip was the psychedelic Eucharist before you ate it. We even blessed it together. What more could you want?"

Aaron laughed, nervously. "I didn't really think about it, though. When I ate the chip I was just hungry. I'm always hungry and after all that singing. And this morning. You asked me if I was ready and I said I was. Ready to take a walk in the woods. Still, I am glad you got me to do it without worrying about. Hmm. Let's see. Do I feel anything? Are you sure it's working? I don't seem to feel any different."

"Don't worry," I said. "You will."

Time passed and I am not sure what we talked about. At some point I noticed Aaron doing something I had never seen him do before. He was staring at the clouds. Staring. He seemed enrapt, hypnotized. I just watched him for a moment. When at last he looked away, I said "Nice clouds today, huh?"

"I think I'm getting high on the acid." Aaron announced

"I noticed you staring off at those clouds."

Aaron paused to contemplate the trees at the edge of the meadow. "I keep drifting off, spacing out. My thoughts wander off and suddenly I am caught up in how beautiful this place is. This is a really spectacular day. This place is unusually beautiful. And I usually hate nature! But listen." We listened together to the wind in the trees. A flock of crows flew over us, cawing loudly. More wind came through the trees.

"I don't know about this." Aaron said in a doubtful tone, pulling himself out of the reverie. I don't know where this leads. There doesn't seem to be any profit in this."

"Aaron," I said. "You're joking. You have more money than you need and you’re still piss poor! There is a richness and a fullness here, in growing with the forest, in going with the flow, richness that you desperately need. You may criticize my paying so much attention to this richness when I lack the comfort of wealth. But you clearly have the ease to let yourself relax for one day, to go with the flow a little bit."

"I never let myself go with the flow." Aaron mused. "I always have to be in control of where I'm going. You can't just let go for one day. You make a little step and then pretty soon you'll be completely out of control. Crazy. It could cost me everything. I can't make that first step..." He stopped talking to watch a bright yellow butterfly landing on the blanket.

"You've already made the first step," I told him.

After a while, I suggested that we walk. As we walked Aaron commented on how I was like the pied piper leading him happily down to road to anarchy and madness. He certainly was happy. I had never seen him in such a good mood. Every detail of the terrain held his undivided attention. I felt an tremendous vicarious joy watching him discover the beauty of the outdoors for the first time. "Just a week ago I went for a walk in some woods in Ipswich that we want to develop. I was with these environmental consultants and regulators, people who want to make sure we preserve as much of the natural setting as possible. This woman said something to me like 'Don't you think this is beautiful?' and I told her that I hated it. They were all shocked when I said it, but it was the truth. But this! This is completely different." He was like a child let out to play on the first day after the spring thaw.

We walked for hours. As much as possible I tried to just watch, to let Aaron drift. When he strayed back into talking about the dangerous places towards which he feared we were drifting, I did my best to preach the gospel to him. I talked about Buddha, I talked about Jesus, I talked about Gandhi and King and Timothy Leary and the Indians and the simple hippies panhandling for spare change. I talked about the things more precious than money, which rust and moth do not corrupt. I thanked Aaron for sharing this day with me.

We walked through the forest, enjoying leaves and moss and mushrooms growing at our feet every bit as much as the oaks and pines towering overhead. Aaron especially liked the way the pine trees were girdled by blankets of their soft brown needles. We walked along the edge of a small pond. The trail passed an dam that had been recently rebuilt, crossing a the stream that flowed out from the dam by a low wooden footbridge.

The week before our trip there had been especially heavy rains in the area. The final storm prior to the warm spell we were now experiencing had been a near hurricane. The water in the pond was higher than I'd ever seen it and the new dam was partly overwhelmed by the flow. The stream, normally slow and quiet, raced loudly by. The bright rushing water reached to only a foot or so below the footbridge. Aaron insisted that we stop on the bridge. He was in awe of the power of that little stream. He said he had never heard anything so beautiful as those burbling, laughing waters. We stood and listened for at least ten minutes.

Aaron expressed amazement that I would put up with him. He said that all his complaints and questions must be torture to me. He was willing to admit that this might be tremendously healing for him, but he could not see how I could stand to put up with him. The idea of love as a motivation still eluded his thinking entirely. I tried to explain to him the joy I felt in seeing him becoming more free. I said that watching him was healing for me because if even someone as uptight as he had been could come this far, then there was hope for us all.

We walked on around the far shore of the pond. In a meadow on the other side, we stopped to rest. While we were there, a family passed by walking their dogs. They stopped to let their twin boys climb a large tree by the pond. We watched them from twenty or thirty yards away. As they were getting ready to leave, one of their dogs bounded over to us and started licking Aaron. The father of the family walked over to reclaim him, making small talk about what a beautiful day it was. Aaron bantered happily with the man, seeming not the least bit paranoid because of his altered state. I thought this boded very favorably for his compatibility with psychedelic drugs.

We walked roundabout through another stretch of woods and emerged at the base of Cat Rock. A long swath of grass, about thirty yards wide, ran down the steep slope of the hill to the meadow where we stood. From where we were, the rocks and the gray metal water tower at the top of the hill towered about three hundred feet above us.

"Back in the Sixties the Cambridge School ran a ski-lift up this hill and the students used to do downhill skiing here after class," I said. I pointed out the decaying remnants of the lift towers running uphill just inside the treeline on either side of the grass. "Come on!" I exhorted, turning to start up the hill. "Let's go!"

I walked about ten paces uphill and turned to look back at Aaron, who was looking uphill at me. "You must be crazy!" he protested. "I can't go up there. I never climb anything. I never even walk. I'll have a heart attack if I try to climb that."

"Nonsense. Utter nonsense." I replied, suppressing a chuckle. "All you have to do is take it slowly. Rest if you need to. Come on, Aaron, I know you're really going to like it when you get to the top."

"Fuck you," Aaron mumbled as he started towards me. As he drew close to where I was standing and stopped to rest, I moved to a new position about ten paces farther up the hillside.

We worked our way slowly up the hill in this way. I would urge Aaron onward, either by belittling his feeling that he could not do it or by enticing him with promises of a great view at the top. About halfway up the hillside, Aaron turned around and looked back for the first time. By this point he had already climbed high enough to see over the treetops at the base of the hill. Now he could see a glimpse of the meadow by the pond where we had rested earlier in front of him. Off to his right he could see the hills on the other side of Route 128, their sides dotted with hotels and office complexes. "Wow," he said. "It's quite a view."

"Yes," I said, moving back down the hillside to stand beside him. "That is one of the great things that you learn when you climb mountains. That for each little bit of effort you exert to elevate yourself, there is a corresponding increase in your perspective, a widening of your field of view. I have always thought there was something especially cleansing about being able to lookout over vast areas of land, especially after climbing by one's own effort to view them."

"Wow, " he said again. He stared off into the distance, as he had earlier, mesmerized. After a while he said, "So climbing mountains gives you a broader perspective. Hmm." Without waiting for me to lead, he turned and took a few steps up the hillside. I moved to walk beside him.

Aaron stopped to rest several more times before we reached the top. Each time he turned and looked back on the expanding view. After a few moments we started climbing again. I didn't need to talk Aaron into climbing any more.

At the crest of the hill is the pile of stones which gives Cat Rock it's name. They have never remotely resembled a Cat to me, regardless of the quantity of psychedelics I have ingested. They do provide a good place to take in the view. Aaron and I sat down on the rocks and looked. From this height, we could see the entire area where we had spent our day. Down below us the forest spread out until it reached the meadows. Across the meadows, we could see the little pond and the bridge by dam. Of to our right we could see the highway and the hotels more clearly now. Beyond that, in the distance, the Boston skyline glinted in the afternoon sun. A rabbit darted out of the woods halfway down the hillside. I pointed it out to Aaron. We watched it together until it disappeared back into the trees.

I pulled a joint out of my sock. Holding it up to the sky I sang:

"Thank you for this day, Great Spirit.

Thank you for this day.

This healing, this healing

this healing day."

We smoked together in silence.

By the time we got up, it was after four o'clock. While there were still several hours of daylight left, the sun was noticeably dipping towards the horizon. Aaron took the walk down the hill almost as slowly as the walk up. While he did not get as tired going down, he was extremely cautious about his balance. I ran all the way down to show him how easy it could be. Then I had to climb two thirds of the way back up to hold Aaron's hand at the steepest incline. When we got to the bottom we looked back. "Congratulations, Aaron," I said to him. Aaron was smiling from ear to ear.

We crossed a little patch of forest and skirted the edge of a baseball diamond. Back under the trees, we headed down a broad dirt road. Soon we were at a little wooden bridge that again crossed the little stream we had crossed earlier in the day, up by the dam. I invited Aaron to sit beside me, our legs dangling above the fast running waters. Aaron asked me if we had any water left to drink. I passed him the bottle. When he handed it back to me, it was almost empty. I took a swallow and then an idea struck me.

"Aaron," I said. "Listen. Let's take the rest of this water and you pour it in the river as an offering to Spirit for what you learned today, as a first step towards going with the flow in your life." Aaron took the bottle from me.

"I'm not ready for going with the flow yet, " he said, cautiously. "But I will offer this to trying to go with the flow." He poured the last drops of water into the stream below.

Ten minutes later we walked by the gate at the end of the road. Aaron's car sat where we had left it, by the white wall of the dormitory. Now there was no question who would drive. We headed west, to a spiral garden in the front yard of the house where some friends of mine lived. They were away on a trip, but I knew they would not mind us walking through their garden.

We arrived at their house just as the sun was setting.

"This is my friend Tasha's Wishing Garden," I told Aaron, as we circled around through the plants on either side. I helped myself to a cherry tomato and some chives. Hibiscus flowers and sage bushes jostled for space with roses and fennel and a half dozen varieties of mind. At the center of the garden, we came upon a decaying plaster birdbath with a naked cherub perched on the rim. Some browning leaves floated on the surface of the gathered rainwater in the basin. On the bottom lay a few dozen pennies. "It is customary to put a penny in and make a wish," I said.

"I don't have any wishes," Aaron replied.

"Then I'll make one for you," I said, fishing a penny from my pocket. "May my friend discover what he most deeply desires."

We stood another moment. "Actually, I do have a wish." Aaron said. We both looked in all our pockets until I found a penny in the lining of my coat. Aaron through the penny into the water. I asked him what he had wished for, but he wouldn't say.

We drove back to the city and ate a good meal of Italian food at La Summa. Finally we went back to Aaron's house and smoked. It was nearing ten o'clock when I bid him goodnight.