“Waters of Unknown Depth”

AT Day 86

Miles Today: 26.81

AT Mile: 1566.7

(The Northern Cookie Lady [Hanger])

It seemed like a bad idea at first–diving in without properly examining the waters’ depth. I walked up to the dock and asked the ladies sitting at the end if it was deep enough to dive. They all said no, but as I walked closer to the end and looked into the water, it was so much clearer than any of the lakes that I’ve seen this far on trail.

The ladies were right; the water at the lake’s edge didn’t drop off deep, like it looked from a distance. Rather, it very slowly dropped into greater depth as the shoreline grew more distant. But from what I could tell, it still looked deep enough to dive in safely. I was willing to take that risk.

The way I tell it makes it sound like all of this took some time, when in reality I just walked up to the dock, asked if it was deep enough to dive, they said no, and then I proceeded to walk to the end and dive into the waters of unknown depth.

It looked deep enough to probably be safe.

I was confident enough.

—

The last time we went swimming on a day like today–to actually go swimming and not just to rinse off in a lake–was back at the Mohecan Outdoor Center. It must have been a few hundred miles ago. And the only thing that felt like it was missing that day was a psychedelic. It had been almost a month since my 50-day experiment in conciousness that began at Amacalola Falls, and I had drifted away from them in the last 35 days. Dabbled a bit in the last four weeks, but not much.

I’d drifted far enough away that when the thought arose this morning that today might be a good day to dive back in and start the morning with mushrooms, I felt some trepidation running through me. But I’ve learned that when that feeling arrives, the best thing is to trust and to dive, so long as the waters look deep enough to catch me, but not so deep as to swallow me.

And so today my supply of mushrooms became notably smaller. I’m sure that of the three of us, I’m the only one that was taking any today. I’m also sure that if the others had taken any, then I would have been the only one of us who redosed throughout the afternoon. I’m sure of it.

—

Psychedelics don’t magically make everything better. Shoot… a long ways from that. To the contrary, I think that there’s at least some value in the argument that psychedelics can make things significantly more complicated and solve abosolutely nothing. It all depends on set and setting…

But I’ll be damned if today didn’t feel a whole world better than what we’ve been slogging through the last two weeks. I know that yesterday was more pleasant as well, and overall we’ve been on an upward progression since the heat wave started to break. But today in particular was just magikal!

There was something in me this morning that realized, right at the first effects of the mushrooms, that I felt more like myself through their lens than I have in some time. It’s something that I’m going to need to explore more fully in the coming days, but I couldn’t shake this feeling that I was back in my own skin again today as the first effects started to take shape. I felt alive, playful, focused, sharp, and excited for the next steps.

If the others had taken any mushrooms with me this morning, they also would have remarked that the miles passed easier and the energy felt cleaner today.

—

I dove in, not quite sure if the water was deep enough to be safe, but confident enough in my assessment that I was willing to take the risk.

Waters of unknown depth…

And they received me like some place that I was already supposed to be. I don’t even remember hitting the water; there was no transition moment of the piercing between one reality and the next. I only remember jumping forward from the dock, and then being in it, completely submerged.

I opened my eyes, and it scared me how clearly I could see things around me, and how that visibility turned into something dark and gray as I looked out into the deeper water of the lake. In the shallows there was penetration from daylight, and I saw what looked like a perch dart off to my left. But in front of me the waters became deeper still, so that sunlight couldn’t reach the depths as readily.

I didn’t come up for air or shy away from the gray and the darkness. Instead, I kept pulling myself further into it, swimming deeper into the direction of the lightless waters, and as I swam further and deeper, I could feel the depths and how they became colder as I swam deeper.

I don’t know how long I was under. It felt like a lifetime, but for some reason I never felt like I needed air. When I came up to the surface again, it wasn’t for air, but because I felt done exploring the deep dark waters and I wanted to see the sky again. I rolled around onto my back, filled my lungs with air, and floated there like a cork, my arms sprawled out, just bobbing and looking up at the blue sky and streaks of clouds.

What a beautiful realization–that we actually can fly, but through the magik of this transformed reality of an underwater world. The experience of weightlessness and flight, at only the cost of our breath.

It was as close to a perfect moment as I have found in many weeks on the Appalachian Trail.

I don’t want for it all to be because I was under the influence of a psychedelic. It wasn’t all because of that. What it was was a moment of serenity, ushered in by a psychedelic. The medicine wasn’t everything in the moment; it’s just what brought it about and made it feel so pure. It felt like the lake and the water and the ladies on the dock, and the clear sky, and the sun, and the forest all around were literally flowing through my veins. It felt like I was made of all this stuff, and no longer something seperate from it.

I was glad that I’d been unafraid and dove.

It makes me remember why the psychedelic piece is important to me on this hike and in this life… even if it’s not the most the only important piece. The puzzle that has been my hike of the AT has been grand and complex.

—

Today I floated on a lake, looking up at the sky and feeling alive.

Today I ate psychedelic mushrooms, danced, and felt alive while I hiked up trail.

Today I hiked 27 miles with my friends, we laughed, we commiserated, and we felt alive.

Last week I struggled to find god or reason why anyone would want to hike this trail. Today I remembered why.

—

Sad news, but my necklace is starting to delaminate. I’ve carried it with me since the beginning of the trail, but I originally got it in early 2020. I remember it well. There’s a story behind it that will have to wait for another day.

It’s a laser cut pinecone with a piece of moldivite inlayed, and coated in epoxy. I don’t think you’re supposed to swim with it, but I don’t know if it was the swimming, the rain, or the constant sweat that made it start to peel apart. But whatever it was, there’s definatley some moisture in it now, and I have to wonder if I should try to fix it or try to rough it out to the end of the trail… only 700 miles left!

—

We saw this morning before leaving camp that the Northern Cookie Lady was about 26 miles ahead, and so we set that as our target for the day. We got destracted by the cabin with the dock where we went swimming, and that added about a mile to our hike, but still the Cookie Lady was where we were aiming.

We got here at around 6:30, met Ruth (the Northern Cookie Lady) and the site caretaker, a girl named Ava. I wasn’t expecting to find such a great human connection here, but Ava was really amazing to get to know.

She’s here on a work for stay from Pittsburg, and from what I could tell she’s searching for herself just like the rest of us are on trail. Only difference is that she’s not thru hiking and only really started to learn about the trail this week, when she arrived to help the Cookie Lady with running the space for the month of July.

We probably talked for the better part of two hours. We talked about where we came from and where we’re going, what we’re looking for, what we’re afraid of, what we’re wondering, and all sorts of things in between. It was the kind of conversation that I absolutely love, but that a lot of people are turned off by. Ava noted the same–that we don’t normally dive right into our greatest hopes and fears when we first meet someone. But somehow on trail that’s more normal and seemingly more acceptable.

At one point Ava mentioned tarot cards, and I asked if she’d do a reading for me; it had been a while.

I pulled the Ace of Rods, which she explained is really the Ace of Wands, but her deck calls it Rods. Whatever the term, it made no difference to me; I’m mostly ignorant to it all, except that I had someone in my life who was really into NewAge arts for a few years (understatement of the day).

Anyways, Ava read from her book about the Ace of Rods and explained that now is a good time to dive in to whatever big thing I’ve been feeling afraid of. I don’t think that’s the term her book used–“dive in”–but it was something close to that. It immediately reminded me of the lake, the cold gray water, and the mixture between excitement and hesitation to swim deeper. It was the same feeling I had at the start of the AT about coming out here in the first place. It was a feeling of conviction and determination, but not absent of hesitation and trepidation. It’s how I’ve been feeling towards my relationship with Boots and my desire to write a book about all of this after the trail.

But her deck of cards said that it’s okay to dive in. To not hesitate. To be willing to jump in and start something new. I took it to mean that knowing the waters’ depth wasn’t important, that they’d be deeper than I was fearing, so deep that light had yet to reach them.

I tried to project the idea forward and thought more about my hopes to spend time writing after the trail. It made me wonder if I actually could produce a book if I took the time and put my mind to it, like I’m wanting to do.

—

Boots has kept in contact and is still a part of the story. I go all over the place with how I feel about her. No… that’s not true. It’s not what I mean. I know what I feel about her. I feel love and longing for her. What I don’t know is whether those feelings are greater than this urge for independence that I also feel a pull towards. Whether I should be swimming deeper into the unknown waters of this new relationship, or into the unknowns of being independent and solo in this world.

I don’t know if the waters of uncertainty I should be swimming deeper into are the waters of independence or the waters of a relationship. I’m also not certain that it’s impossible to find both–love and preservation of my time alone.

—

Shoot… this one’s going long and I’m growing tired. The mushrooms spurred a lot from the back of my mind today. So much more that I still want to write, but hard to stay awake to keep writing.

Tonight the three of us sleep in an airplane hanger that’s been converted into a bunk house by the Northern Cookie Lady and her husband. Tomorrow it’s back to trail and north to Vermont.

The trail goes on.

Wormwood.