We came up with another spur of the moment camping trip. After some research from a facetime call, Sean booked us a spot at Mineral Wells State Park about an hour and a half drive out west of Fort Worth. On a side note, although I’ve lived in Dallas most of my life, Fort Worth remains a relatively unexplored figment of my imagination. I’ve heard great things about the stockyards and live music out there, but I’ve always kept it some kind of fantasy in my mind. I think a big piece of the soul of Texas may survive out there. But I digress. We packed up and headed out there on a Tuesday. When we entered the park, I remember the jubilant energy of the entrance woman. She boldly told us we must check out Penitentiary hollow. We discussed the serendipitousness of the encounter and her adamance of making sure to check it out. So hell yeah, let’s scope later for psychedelic usage. The camp was down a series of off roads and had a space the size of a large living room, with trees surrounding the outskirts of the open area. A fire pit sat in the left corner and a picnic table right on the front of the camp. We set up our tents, at least Ryan and I’s, and Sean set up his hammock. I couldn’t fathom sleeping in a hammock all night, but to each his own. The tents were my Dad’s who let us borrow them for the few days. I designated Ryan take one of the tents and I the other, and not having seen my Dad’s tents beforehand, I took what I would eventually realize was the wrong tent to be in.
We jumped back in the car after set up and went to explore. The first stop was of course Penitentiary Hollow. Not 50 feet into the trail, the sky opens up, and off in the distance you see the entire lake shining back at you as you look into the direction of the setting sun. About 40 feet below lies a valley and on either side massive walls of rocks sit. We took the trail down, and walked through the valley to upwardly gaze up at what we had just looked down upon. Interesting metaphor I think. By switching sides, you open yourself up to new vantage points you didn’t previously have access to. Neither side necessarily is better than the other (unless you’re throwing something), they’re just, well, different.
At the bottom of the trail you reach the lake. Not a good place to get in the water because it’s overgrown with vegetation, but I had some urge to take a gamble and get in and swim out as far as I could knowing I’d need to turn back. I found myself coming out upon boats on either side of me and people fishing off of them. As soon as they saw me they turned their boats on and headed out, but didn’t say anything about how I scared their entertainment away. Swimming back to the shore a baby snake had followed me out there. Not maliciously by any means. Almost as if he thought I was on his team. A sort of companion. He zipped around about two arms length away from me pretty gracefully, and stopped to stare at me when he realized I was heading back to the land. Kind of like he was sad I wouldn’t stay out to entertain him and explore. Or maybe he was hoping I’d be his bodyguard from the alligator gar below.
We took off back up the trail to get to the car for a ride back to the campsite, and along the way we stopped in the designated swimming area of the lake. We hadn’t planned for a swim, but Ryan and I had on workout shorts, while Sean donned a pair he had no intention of getting wet. Outside the open car doors in the parking lot, Ryan looks at me and goes “What the fuck is he doing?” “Jesus Sean” I said as I realized he was getting into his tiny tight briefs to go swimming at a family friendly lake. He just started laughing knowing exactly how we felt about this. We walked out to the water and waded around. I took a swim out and around the swimming boundary buoy. It was around this time about 75 yards away we heard a car pull up and stop on the bridge across the dam of the lake. The car windows were down and kids were getting out of the car. We could hear them clearly because the sound direction made it crystal clear as the vibrations came across the water. “Hello?!” she said. She was talking into her phone, and it was one of those hello’s that was a worried hello. A “stay onto the phone and buckle up because what I’m about to tell you is incredibly important, must be relayed, and acted upon in urgency, and help is what we need” hello.
I turned around to Ryan and we started bantering about her hello. “Hello, yes, there’s a man walking into the lake with his weiner hanging out of his pant’s” I said, talking about Sean in his skin tight briefs. “Hello, yes can somebody please send help, my kids are with me and there’s a man with his weiner out at the lake right now...what?....yes there are other families out here.” Ryan added. We laughed hysterically about this concept for about 7 minutes…..and the character of weiner man was made.
Camp at night. Sean is one of the best cooks I know. He’s one of those people who is on the brink of mastering a skillset, and food is his. You can tell because a master is someone who sticks to the basics. No fru-fru, no bullshit, just simplicity. He had some kind of beef loin smothered in an onion, mushroom, cream sauce with a cauliflower mash and asparagus. We are camping at this time, mind you. It was one of those meals you eat at a fine dining restaurant, but it was in the woods. It was so perplexing to have such a good meal in the middle of camping, but it was Sean who cooked, so it didn’t hit Ryan and I until after the trip.
It had been a long day, and psychedelic day was the next. So we laid down to go to sleep. And this is where I had to face the tent demon.
Ryan had the tent with all mesh netting surrounding the outside. I had a tent with only one end of it having a mesh netting. I’m pretty sure it would be great for the middle of winter in Chicago, but it was 98 degrees during the days in Texas. Night was cooler, admittedly, but when you’re outside in 98 degree weather all day, the worst thing is getting into a tent with no airflow and warm nights. “Hold on guys, just give me a second” I’d say as I tossed and turned in the tent trying to get comfortable and removing the thermal sleeping bag off me. I was half joking because I knew it would irritate them that I can’t get comfortable and wouldn’t shut the hell up. But then another great character came out of that. The “Hey guys, just give me a second” character. You know, they guy in your friend group who is always stumbling into impediments and needs to tell the group, so that the group can’t continue doing their thing until that one guy found his wallet, or his phone, or his keys, or he needs to make a quick call, or he needs a clean pair of socks, or your cheers are halted because he can’t open his bottle, or the guy who needs to get gas first. All of them fall under the umbrella of “hold on a second guys” guy.
In the middle of the night, I awoke to a car we had seen coming into the camp leaving at 2:30 am. Lying there, I started thinking I kept hearing noises, were they coming from my own head? It kept getting closer, and I thought perhaps it was a deer, but the deer for whatever reason was burrowing into the leaves every half foot. Then I remembered around 10 o’clock that night we had seen an armadillo in our campsite burrowing around. We shined a flashlight on him and he didn’t give two shit’s about it. We watched him for 10 minutes narrating what he was doing with the voice of Matthew McConnahuey. It seemed the perfect voice for his demeanor. “What’s going on boys, I’m diggin through your shit, whatcha gon do ‘bout it?”
So at 2:30 am he was back and Matthew McConnahuey was talking in my head as I heard the burrowing going on. I tossed and turned in sweat, and woke up about 6:15 to Sean and Ryan making coffee. I relayed the night I had about Matt coming back. We chugged some coffee and took a drive to a trail on the other side of the lake to hike it. We decided to jog it, and at the end sprint back to the car. It was great. There’s one thing I’ve learned through running, and it’s all a mental game. Not a game perhaps, but you have to understand your own mind and the thoughts that come in. Positive encouragement is essential to pushing yourself. I don’t get that same feeling in the gym partly because hitting failure is very easy within 8 reps with heavy enough weight. But running is about the long game. And training your mind to stick with it when you think you’re about to pass out is important to realize you’re giving yourself excuses to quit. You need to push through that bullshit to know you can keep going and you will keep going. We washed off in a well by the car. Water is a beautiful thing.
We went back to the lake where once again weiner guy came back, and this time a kid and his Dad were walking to their car from the campsite general store. “Dad, why does that guy have his weiner out?” Ryan and I dreamed up and couldn’t contain ourselves.
Back at the camp Sean fired up some breakfast tacos with bacon, eggs, salsa, and tortillas. A Texas breakfast staple. We took our acid at approximately 12 o’clock, and made sure we had intentions and something we could learn in our experience. My specific intention was that we all were grateful that we had each other in our lives, and that we work together as a team. I wanted to personally go deep within myself to better know my own self. We knew we only had about 40 minutes to get to a trail. Sean and I had a backpack, two waters for each of us. Ryan didn’t have one so we said we’d carry water for him. But he was convinced we had enough. On the brink of the trail was an information placard that Sean was reading. We started off on a 4 mile hike to a primitive campsite in the back of the park. A primitive campsite, if you don’t know, is an area in the campgrounds that doesn’t have access to any amenities or drinking water. Typically it’s by a creek or river so if you need water, you can get it there and sterilize it yourself. All just nature. About 12:40 we had a group consensus that we weren’t feeling anything. It was probably 95 degrees out at this time. We continued on for another two miles and stumbled upon a military training facility we had no idea was out there. We at first heard pops thinking they may be firecrackers, but the succession of them matched that of a shooting range and then we saw the humvees confirming the military training site. Had the acid kicked in, I’m not sure what my thoughts would have been on it, but having been from Texas and around guns and shooting them and ranges, I enjoyed knowing we had some good ol’ boys around. If you’re not around guns and haven’t shot them, I highly recommend it. It’s a great life experience, and you gain the respect of them and the people who know them.
Upon entering the primitive camp area we came across a bridge that ran over a gully, and Sean had mentioned that we should call it “Transformation Bridge.”
It’s about 2 pm by this point and another group consensus confirmed the acid either wasn’t enough or it was just old. Ryan had gotten from a hippie in boulder who claimed it was “blessed.” We all laughed at the ridiculousness. But it felt like a good omen.
At this point I had started my second water bottle and so had Sean. Ryan was beet red from not wearing sunscreen or a t-shirt and was parched. We took off back to the camp, and there was a sense of some kind of relief from me that the acid had been bummed, so that we could go out and enjoy our day with some more exercise. We jogged about a mile back to the main road and then all the way back to our camp. We sat around exhausted, and Sean took another tab. At some point while we were all sitting around, Sean was telling a story and then started trailing off. Ryan and I looked at eachother and Ryan said, “Sean are you tripping?” Sure enough Sean took off straight to his hammock, and we went to our own as well. It was during this time that we started to go deep. We all had another consensus that we just overpowered the acid in the 98 degree weather and exercise, and now we were going inside ourselves. Ryan played some beautiful music by M83. A song called Outro. I had the biggest smile on my face from seeing my whole life play out and the people that mean the most to me in my life. My family. My Mom. My Dad. My sister. My best friends I was with and the countless others in my life. The gratitude just poured out of me and it was incredibly special. Ryan continued with some other great songs by Hanz Zimmer. You need to listen to him. The amazing thing about a really good artist is that they have a way of showing you a fundamental truth inside of you and throughout the world. And Hanz Zimmer hit a heartstring with me. I cried. From joy. And knowing my time is limited in this world. And the people around me, their time is limited too. You have to make things happen with the people in your life. You have to be a leader, and show them the things in the world. It’s amazing when I look at it, because I had this immense feeling of “I’m a man now.” Which sounds ridiculous coming from someone on an acid trip. But I had this shifting in my mind that allowed me to finally accept myself for who I am. It’s funny looking back at my twenties and seeing how much I fought with myself to be someone I thought I was, instead of just accepting who I truly am. And in doing so, a weight was lifted off my shoulders. A freedom of sorts I can’t fully describe. I think it’s something everyone should do in the right mindset, in the right safe space.
I called my parents and my sister in the middle of a song because I had to tell them how much they meant to me. They didn’t answer. Which Ryan and Sean thought was hilarious. But they called me back, and asked me right away how many mushrooms I had taken. I didn’t admit to them it was acid, because I knew they wouldn’t understand. Acid has gotten such a bad wrap from the US government. You know the same government who decided that Marijuana should be a schedule 1 drug. The same as heroin. It’s hilarious.
In any case, daylight was leaving us. Time marches on. We took off down to the lake again to swim. Sean once again in his skin tight briefs. We made it out to the middle of the swimming area, and Ryan had a hilarious scene play out. This time, as Sean moved into the water, Ryan made a scene where this time when all the kids in the lake turned and pointed at Sean and screamed “it’s the weiner guy” Sean turned his head to the nearest kid and wagged his finger in his face and said “no no no. I’m a changed man now” referring to his transformative conclusion he had come to after taking acid. We imagined the whole lake in on it, everyone looking in awe at the transformed man as he glided through the water to reclaim the middle of the lake as the powerful one. We imagined him looking up into the sky with his arms stretched out wide and saying “I’m the transcendent one” all the while the lake was parting and he was slowly spinning in a circle and levitating to beautiful music.
Sean had a hilarious finding out about iPhones going through an update at night, and during this update they were removing everyone’s reminders they had set on their phones. So if your phone went through an update without you knowing overnight, and the next day you had had a reminder on your phone, your phone wouldn’t notify you. So then the “set a reminder” character was created. Sean suggested we make a sketch about the employees at Apple setting a reminder to remind themselves of bringing this up at the upcoming meeting. But because everyone's phones kept updating, they never had the reminder. Little confusing, but here’s what a script would read like.
ALLEN a head executive at Apple and MICHAEL his personal assistant walk down the aisles of Apple Headquarters. JANET, another assistant, approaches them with important information.
JANET
Allen have you been briefed on the complaints coming in about the reminders being removed from customers updated iphones?
ALLEN
Oh boy, thanks Janet. Michael, go ahead and set a reminder to bring that up at the next meeting, we’re gonna need to let them know about that.
CUT TO:
A meeting lets out of the room, JANET comes up to ALLEN.
JANET
Allen how’d the update about the reminders go?
ALLEN
Oh shit…Michael, go ahead and set a reminder for me to remind myself to remind the people in the meeting about that next time.
We played this scene over and over, never losing interest ad infinitum. We left for Penitentiary Hollow and watched the sunset from on top of the plateau. It’s so bizarre sometimes to see the enormity of the land out in front of you. It’s not something you see living in cities. No expanse, just obstacles in front of you. But the expanse of nature. It’s humbling. You need a consistent reconnection to it to remind yourself you’re a tiny little creature on a big planet, and in an incomprehensible universe. We had done it. We had been transformed, I think. I still feel it now, although it hasn’t been long. But I do feel those experiences stick with you forever, and make you grow, and continue to learn about yourself.
We retired that night weary from the day. It’s amazing the energy I have when I’m doing things that I enjoy. Matthew was back that night again still talking shit, but I was too tired to have an internal conversation with him. We packed up the camp and took off back to the reality we were familiar with. When you come back from trips like that, you realize all the petty things that go on in “life” that society makes you feel you should pay attention to. But after a trip like that, your reset button has been pressed, and those petty things are just easily looked over.