Steven Hunley
05-21-2017, 06:53 PM
Ayahuasca Express
The Hut on the Yapacani
“You have a feeling of achievement when you discover a new plant, even a plant that has no use.” --Richard Evans Schultes.
The next day Hugo met Dude and headed into the forest, first by jeep and then by foot.
The journey Dude was about to take wouldn’t all be by jeep or foot either. But he would put in some miles.
When they left the road the going got rough. It was hot and humid and the air was still. After only ten minutes they sweat through their shirts, first under the armpits, then on the centers of their chests and backs. It was never quiet off the road. Howlers would be howling, and added to that was the chatter of numerous birds, the squawking of Green Amazon parrots, and the constant buzzing of insects around their heads. The forest was alive with greens from head to foot. The constant crunch of their boots crushing through dead leaves on the forest floor scattered myriads of emerald-green lizards escaping into the jade forest. It was shady in most parts and only sunny in a very few patches. Up ahead they spied an open spot. This was the clearing they were looking for.
A small tributary of the Rio Yapacani ran languidly behind a bamboo hut with a single jacaranda growing nearby, planted to provide shade.
The hut was guarded by a Scarlet Macaw, its wings aflash in the dazzling sunlight. He screeched a warning to the inhabitants, who came out immediately. An old man appeared who had a face as wrinkled as the stream, followed by a girl of about seven who possessed especially knowing eyes for someone so young. Dude learned later she was his granddaughter. He recognized Hugo immediately. So did the girl.
Dude expected a man who lived there, and with that appearance would probably speak Chiquitano, or at best Espanol. Instead what he heard was,
“Hugo, you pendejo, where have you been?”
“Nowhere but where I am, Old Man.”
Evidently they knew each other.
“Who’s this then?”
“This is Dude, a friend. An explorer like you.”
“Like me eh?” he laughed. “We’ll see about that.”
The girl was close now and would not allow her presence to be denied.
*“I’m Rima,” she said, and put out her hand.
“Don’t laugh;” said the old man. “I always liked Green Mansions.”
“Maybe it was Audrey Hepburn you liked,” said Hugo.
Dude smiled, then knelt down and shook it with gusto.
“I’m Dude,” he answered politely. “Pleased to meet you.”
Dude was good at formalities when he had to be, and always got along with women, no matter their age.
“Ayahuasca then?” said the old man.
“Yes,” replied Hugo, “that’s what we’re here for. How did you know?”
“That’s what you’re always here for,” he answered. “They don’t call me a curandero for nothing. Let’s go.”
He grabbed a canteen slung from the tree, filled it with water, and then soaked it to keep it cool. They followed him into the forest. They wandered a bit, and the old man pointed to several plants, then trees, even vines. He told them the name of each and what they were for. Rima would repeat each one in turn as if she were memorizing them.
“When I kick the bucket,” he explained, “it’ll be all up to her.” He said with no accent at all, as if he spoke English as his mother tongue.
“You speak English really well,” Dude observed.“Like a native.”
“I should, I went to UCLA four years. I knew English before that. But I picked up American English in college when I got my degree.”
“What in?”
“New world ethnobotany.”
“So you’re a botanist.”
“Sure am.”
It was getting thick now; every step required a swing of his machete. All the trees had creepers, and in their branches were purple and white orchids and pink flaming bromeliads.
“Got stuck here while doing some field work. Now I’ve got family I’m stuck here for good. In the states I was just a cog in the wheel. Never liked being just a cog. Here I’m respected, got a family. Family is important to me. Far more important than being a cog I can tell you.”
Dude nodded in agreement. The fact didn’t require much verification to his way of thinking.
Finally they reached a set of vines with pink and white flowers. The old man directed them to cut off portions, but leave them attached by carefully leaving strips of bark whole on the edges.
“Leave the sections attached by a piece of bark, whatever you do.”
When they did, seeds fell out.
“Look Grandfather! It has seeds now!”
“It’s that time of year, Nieta.”
She stooped down to gather them up in her hand, then handed some to Dude.
“The plant is in the seed Dude, use these when you need to.”
When Dude placed them in his shirt pocket, his fingers felt a small compass he’d put there with a chain that he got in a box of Crackerjacks. He pulled it out with the tips of his fingers and gave it to the girl in exchange.
“Good,” laughed Grandfather, “you won’t need that where you’re going.”
Hearing this, Rima laughed too. She knew what was in store.
Ceremony with Jaguars
They returned to the hut and made a fire to prepare the drink. When they scraped the center free of the bark, it oxidized like an apple and turned blood red. Then they added water and cooked it up just as the sun was going down. Dude noticed it glowed blue-green in the dark. The girl added wood to the fire one stick at a time.
They drank.
It was bitter in the extreme and hard to stomach.
Within fifteen minutes Dude’s stomach grew heavy and he threw up his guts. After that visions began. The old man began to chant something he didn’t understand. It was in Chiquitano. He spoke it after all.
Dude noticed something moving in the shadows, a serpent with skin of multi-colored jewels. Another appeared in the branch of a tree. They met and wound around each other.
When the old man changed the words he sung, the visions changed as well.
“What do you see?”
“I see birds now,” Dude answered, “multicolored birds, beautiful multicolored birds with fabulous colors…”
The old man started singing another sort of song now. The girl placed another stick in the fire.
“What do you see now? You may see… this, or you may see… that…or you may see….”
His voice trailed off. There was something else out in the darkness approaching. No, two things, two things coming closer. They were a pair of Jaguars, one male, one female. Both were outlined with green glowing light. It reminded Dude of a painting by Matisse, that’s how loaded he was. The glowing throbbed in time with their purring.
“It’s jaguars I see now.”
At this the old man and his granddaughter shot knowing glances back and forth.
“I thought so,” his voice pointed to Dude, but his eyes were on his granddaughter.
At first Dude, who was unfamiliar with the ways jaguars, thought they were fighting. But he soon realized that wasn’t what they were doing. Mating was more like it. He'd never seen two such powerful and exotic cats going to at each other like that. Awesome and scary strike the most primitive cords.
Afterwords he fell exhausted into a deep dream-filled sleep.
The dream was this:
He flew through the air at a tremendous rate, over the forest, then the mountains, then above a coastal desert full of ruined Chimu buildings formed of geometric patterns. Then a coastal plane where he saw fantastic images of spiders and hummingbirds made of rock outlines laid out on the ground. He continued over a large dark sea that sparkled in the moonlight and ran on forever. He regained a coast again and flew north, ever northward, until he saw a city below him with tall buildings with regular outlines. One was taller than the rest and was made of glass and obsidian. Here he slowed down and landed on the roof. A girl with rope hair appeared in a white cotton dress that was stained with blood. As forked lightning surged above, a fine mist began to fall. She grasped his shoulders with hands so strong he couldn’t resist and drew him towards her. They made love, and as they violently climaxed, jagged lightning flashed and reflected in the river below, winding into the distance like an silver anaconda.
Then the dream ended as suddenly as it began.
When he awoke he couldn’t remember a thing, but the dream slept inside him as many dreams do.
He got up the next morning and inspected the fire, smelling the burnt wood and ashes. Nearby, between it and the forest, he found a tuft of hair. The old man appeared from the hut and came to join him.
“This is real hair,” said Dude, “I thought it was an illusion, like the dream.”
“Are you saying you think dreams aren’t real?”
“Well, I thought maybe the plant, the ayahuasca…”
The old man cut him off.
“Don’t be foolish. They’re as real as you and me. Here, let’s sit and talk a while.”
Close to the river they sat on the rocks as the water swirled around them in blue eddying pools. Dude noticed that the day was incredibly clear, and that the river itself had a flow or direction that seemed to have purpose and was no distraction at all.
“Some plants have a special relationship with men,” the old man began.
“Many men judge plants to be stupid because they see they have no brain. It’s true of course, plants have no brain at all. But plants have consciousness and respond to light and sound and the feeling of men. So never confuse brains or central nervous systems with consciousness. And plants are rooted, not in just clay or sand or mud. Sometimes they are more firmly rooted in reality than men. This ayahuasca vine is a healing spirit and psychedelic. When we cut the outer sections we are careful to leave the outer skin intact. By next year they’ll have grown back. Some plants are good at healing, right?”
“I guess so. Many plants grow back fast.”
“And plants can heal. Look at penicillin. You ever use Neosporin?”
“Sure.”
“It’s related to penicillin. As far as plants go it’s a stupid plant, just a mold really, kind of primitive. Imagine how more evolved this vine is, and the relation is has with the insects and birds and monkeys…even men. I tell you, my friend, right now eighty-five percent of medicines come from organic sources, and they’ve only scratched the surface. It’s a pharmacy we’re sitting in, a vast pharmacy.”
Dude looked at the trees and plants surrounding them. Certainly there could be more. There was always more to everything.
“So the treasure here isn’t the El Dorado the Spaniards were seeking.”
“The treasure here isn’t gold at all. It’s green. If you want healing, healing on a molecular level, this is it. Remember it. Use it for what it’s good for. Nothing else. It’s what God intended, that’s all.”
“I understand what you’re saying, but what about the jaguars, why did I see jaguars?”
“That’s simple enough, Amigo. In your heart you’re a jaguar. You just saw a reflection of your knowing self.”
“But I’m no jaguar, I’m lost right now. I’m always lost. I have no focus. I never know where the hell I am.”
“Don’t worry, this feeling will pass. You're young, a cub really. You’re not really lost; you’re just on an excursion, an excursion of both mind and body. Jaguars are the wisest cats in the new world, and the most powerful. They always find their way home.”
The others woke up and were starting to appear. It was time to eat and leave. Dude and Hugo bid goodbye to the old man and Rima with the knowing eyes, who was wearing the compass and chain around her neck.
As they were leaving, Dude gave his shirt pocket a pat to check if the seeds were still there.
They were.
İStevenHunley2017
The Hut on the Yapacani
“You have a feeling of achievement when you discover a new plant, even a plant that has no use.” --Richard Evans Schultes.
The next day Hugo met Dude and headed into the forest, first by jeep and then by foot.
The journey Dude was about to take wouldn’t all be by jeep or foot either. But he would put in some miles.
When they left the road the going got rough. It was hot and humid and the air was still. After only ten minutes they sweat through their shirts, first under the armpits, then on the centers of their chests and backs. It was never quiet off the road. Howlers would be howling, and added to that was the chatter of numerous birds, the squawking of Green Amazon parrots, and the constant buzzing of insects around their heads. The forest was alive with greens from head to foot. The constant crunch of their boots crushing through dead leaves on the forest floor scattered myriads of emerald-green lizards escaping into the jade forest. It was shady in most parts and only sunny in a very few patches. Up ahead they spied an open spot. This was the clearing they were looking for.
A small tributary of the Rio Yapacani ran languidly behind a bamboo hut with a single jacaranda growing nearby, planted to provide shade.
The hut was guarded by a Scarlet Macaw, its wings aflash in the dazzling sunlight. He screeched a warning to the inhabitants, who came out immediately. An old man appeared who had a face as wrinkled as the stream, followed by a girl of about seven who possessed especially knowing eyes for someone so young. Dude learned later she was his granddaughter. He recognized Hugo immediately. So did the girl.
Dude expected a man who lived there, and with that appearance would probably speak Chiquitano, or at best Espanol. Instead what he heard was,
“Hugo, you pendejo, where have you been?”
“Nowhere but where I am, Old Man.”
Evidently they knew each other.
“Who’s this then?”
“This is Dude, a friend. An explorer like you.”
“Like me eh?” he laughed. “We’ll see about that.”
The girl was close now and would not allow her presence to be denied.
*“I’m Rima,” she said, and put out her hand.
“Don’t laugh;” said the old man. “I always liked Green Mansions.”
“Maybe it was Audrey Hepburn you liked,” said Hugo.
Dude smiled, then knelt down and shook it with gusto.
“I’m Dude,” he answered politely. “Pleased to meet you.”
Dude was good at formalities when he had to be, and always got along with women, no matter their age.
“Ayahuasca then?” said the old man.
“Yes,” replied Hugo, “that’s what we’re here for. How did you know?”
“That’s what you’re always here for,” he answered. “They don’t call me a curandero for nothing. Let’s go.”
He grabbed a canteen slung from the tree, filled it with water, and then soaked it to keep it cool. They followed him into the forest. They wandered a bit, and the old man pointed to several plants, then trees, even vines. He told them the name of each and what they were for. Rima would repeat each one in turn as if she were memorizing them.
“When I kick the bucket,” he explained, “it’ll be all up to her.” He said with no accent at all, as if he spoke English as his mother tongue.
“You speak English really well,” Dude observed.“Like a native.”
“I should, I went to UCLA four years. I knew English before that. But I picked up American English in college when I got my degree.”
“What in?”
“New world ethnobotany.”
“So you’re a botanist.”
“Sure am.”
It was getting thick now; every step required a swing of his machete. All the trees had creepers, and in their branches were purple and white orchids and pink flaming bromeliads.
“Got stuck here while doing some field work. Now I’ve got family I’m stuck here for good. In the states I was just a cog in the wheel. Never liked being just a cog. Here I’m respected, got a family. Family is important to me. Far more important than being a cog I can tell you.”
Dude nodded in agreement. The fact didn’t require much verification to his way of thinking.
Finally they reached a set of vines with pink and white flowers. The old man directed them to cut off portions, but leave them attached by carefully leaving strips of bark whole on the edges.
“Leave the sections attached by a piece of bark, whatever you do.”
When they did, seeds fell out.
“Look Grandfather! It has seeds now!”
“It’s that time of year, Nieta.”
She stooped down to gather them up in her hand, then handed some to Dude.
“The plant is in the seed Dude, use these when you need to.”
When Dude placed them in his shirt pocket, his fingers felt a small compass he’d put there with a chain that he got in a box of Crackerjacks. He pulled it out with the tips of his fingers and gave it to the girl in exchange.
“Good,” laughed Grandfather, “you won’t need that where you’re going.”
Hearing this, Rima laughed too. She knew what was in store.
Ceremony with Jaguars
They returned to the hut and made a fire to prepare the drink. When they scraped the center free of the bark, it oxidized like an apple and turned blood red. Then they added water and cooked it up just as the sun was going down. Dude noticed it glowed blue-green in the dark. The girl added wood to the fire one stick at a time.
They drank.
It was bitter in the extreme and hard to stomach.
Within fifteen minutes Dude’s stomach grew heavy and he threw up his guts. After that visions began. The old man began to chant something he didn’t understand. It was in Chiquitano. He spoke it after all.
Dude noticed something moving in the shadows, a serpent with skin of multi-colored jewels. Another appeared in the branch of a tree. They met and wound around each other.
When the old man changed the words he sung, the visions changed as well.
“What do you see?”
“I see birds now,” Dude answered, “multicolored birds, beautiful multicolored birds with fabulous colors…”
The old man started singing another sort of song now. The girl placed another stick in the fire.
“What do you see now? You may see… this, or you may see… that…or you may see….”
His voice trailed off. There was something else out in the darkness approaching. No, two things, two things coming closer. They were a pair of Jaguars, one male, one female. Both were outlined with green glowing light. It reminded Dude of a painting by Matisse, that’s how loaded he was. The glowing throbbed in time with their purring.
“It’s jaguars I see now.”
At this the old man and his granddaughter shot knowing glances back and forth.
“I thought so,” his voice pointed to Dude, but his eyes were on his granddaughter.
At first Dude, who was unfamiliar with the ways jaguars, thought they were fighting. But he soon realized that wasn’t what they were doing. Mating was more like it. He'd never seen two such powerful and exotic cats going to at each other like that. Awesome and scary strike the most primitive cords.
Afterwords he fell exhausted into a deep dream-filled sleep.
The dream was this:
He flew through the air at a tremendous rate, over the forest, then the mountains, then above a coastal desert full of ruined Chimu buildings formed of geometric patterns. Then a coastal plane where he saw fantastic images of spiders and hummingbirds made of rock outlines laid out on the ground. He continued over a large dark sea that sparkled in the moonlight and ran on forever. He regained a coast again and flew north, ever northward, until he saw a city below him with tall buildings with regular outlines. One was taller than the rest and was made of glass and obsidian. Here he slowed down and landed on the roof. A girl with rope hair appeared in a white cotton dress that was stained with blood. As forked lightning surged above, a fine mist began to fall. She grasped his shoulders with hands so strong he couldn’t resist and drew him towards her. They made love, and as they violently climaxed, jagged lightning flashed and reflected in the river below, winding into the distance like an silver anaconda.
Then the dream ended as suddenly as it began.
When he awoke he couldn’t remember a thing, but the dream slept inside him as many dreams do.
He got up the next morning and inspected the fire, smelling the burnt wood and ashes. Nearby, between it and the forest, he found a tuft of hair. The old man appeared from the hut and came to join him.
“This is real hair,” said Dude, “I thought it was an illusion, like the dream.”
“Are you saying you think dreams aren’t real?”
“Well, I thought maybe the plant, the ayahuasca…”
The old man cut him off.
“Don’t be foolish. They’re as real as you and me. Here, let’s sit and talk a while.”
Close to the river they sat on the rocks as the water swirled around them in blue eddying pools. Dude noticed that the day was incredibly clear, and that the river itself had a flow or direction that seemed to have purpose and was no distraction at all.
“Some plants have a special relationship with men,” the old man began.
“Many men judge plants to be stupid because they see they have no brain. It’s true of course, plants have no brain at all. But plants have consciousness and respond to light and sound and the feeling of men. So never confuse brains or central nervous systems with consciousness. And plants are rooted, not in just clay or sand or mud. Sometimes they are more firmly rooted in reality than men. This ayahuasca vine is a healing spirit and psychedelic. When we cut the outer sections we are careful to leave the outer skin intact. By next year they’ll have grown back. Some plants are good at healing, right?”
“I guess so. Many plants grow back fast.”
“And plants can heal. Look at penicillin. You ever use Neosporin?”
“Sure.”
“It’s related to penicillin. As far as plants go it’s a stupid plant, just a mold really, kind of primitive. Imagine how more evolved this vine is, and the relation is has with the insects and birds and monkeys…even men. I tell you, my friend, right now eighty-five percent of medicines come from organic sources, and they’ve only scratched the surface. It’s a pharmacy we’re sitting in, a vast pharmacy.”
Dude looked at the trees and plants surrounding them. Certainly there could be more. There was always more to everything.
“So the treasure here isn’t the El Dorado the Spaniards were seeking.”
“The treasure here isn’t gold at all. It’s green. If you want healing, healing on a molecular level, this is it. Remember it. Use it for what it’s good for. Nothing else. It’s what God intended, that’s all.”
“I understand what you’re saying, but what about the jaguars, why did I see jaguars?”
“That’s simple enough, Amigo. In your heart you’re a jaguar. You just saw a reflection of your knowing self.”
“But I’m no jaguar, I’m lost right now. I’m always lost. I have no focus. I never know where the hell I am.”
“Don’t worry, this feeling will pass. You're young, a cub really. You’re not really lost; you’re just on an excursion, an excursion of both mind and body. Jaguars are the wisest cats in the new world, and the most powerful. They always find their way home.”
The others woke up and were starting to appear. It was time to eat and leave. Dude and Hugo bid goodbye to the old man and Rima with the knowing eyes, who was wearing the compass and chain around her neck.
As they were leaving, Dude gave his shirt pocket a pat to check if the seeds were still there.
They were.
İStevenHunley2017