[00:00:00 - 00:00:07] In the meantime, the cramped world of this trading vessel is ours, the Faviolita, selling [00:00:07 - 00:00:14] plastic shoes, tinned food, and fishing line at the small clusters of houses on stilts [00:00:14 - 00:00:18] that appear several times during each day of travel. [00:00:18 - 00:00:24] We arrive, tie up, and while the jefe of our vessel makes negocios with the colonistas, [00:00:24 - 00:00:31] I take my butterfly net and walk to the jungle, hoping to escape the stinging flies that swarm [00:00:31 - 00:00:35] near the boat landings. [00:00:35 - 00:00:48] Sometimes there are long opinionated conversations, everyone animated and taking part. [00:00:48 - 00:00:52] Sometimes a silence falls among us that lasts for several hours. [00:00:52 - 00:00:59] Once each of us is comfortable watching the riverbank slide monotonously by or nodding [00:00:59 - 00:01:17] on the edge of siesta. [00:01:17 - 00:01:22] It is February 7, 1971, a Sunday. [00:01:22 - 00:01:26] Last night we arrived at an unnamed place and spread our mosquito nets and hammocks [00:01:26 - 00:01:29] for the first time in the Amazon. [00:01:29 - 00:01:34] Eight AM found us back on a rainy river under leaden skies. [00:01:34 - 00:01:38] The moods of the approach to the secret are many. [00:01:38 - 00:01:45] The air is delicious with oxygen and the odors which reach us from the passingly unhung forest [00:01:45 - 00:01:50] change with the frequency and subtlety of a sonata. [00:01:50 - 00:01:56] Brief stops at police inspections and ever more isolated riverside dwellings mark this [00:01:56 - 00:01:58] day as well. [00:01:58 - 00:02:04] Today after 40 minutes early morning travel, we passed a shallow depression in a clay bank [00:02:04 - 00:02:07] on the Peruvian side of the river. [00:02:07 - 00:02:11] There thousands of parents were gathered around a salt source. [00:02:11 - 00:02:16] The sonic shrill of their many-throated voice and their iridescent green bodies cleaving [00:02:16 - 00:02:22] the air heightened the impression of moving in an aqueous Venusian whirl. [00:02:22 - 00:02:28] We tied up opposite the lick and some of our crew went across the river to capture some [00:02:28 - 00:02:33] parrots to add to the traders already large menagerie. [00:02:33 - 00:02:40] With our own small monkey, the non-human population of this arctic pool numbers two dogs, three [00:02:40 - 00:02:46] monkeys, a kitten, a dante, a cock, a pig, and a crag of pigeons. [00:02:46 - 00:02:52] Today is the day of the full moon and tomorrow we will arrive at Alencanto. [00:02:52 - 00:02:56] There if present plans hold, we will meet Dr. Guzman. [00:02:56 - 00:03:00] The tensions that divide us have also surfaced. [00:03:00 - 00:03:05] Vanessa and Sia, who have very little in common, are warm friends. [00:03:05 - 00:03:08] Is this because I have miffed Vanessa? [00:03:08 - 00:03:11] It is not going well at all. [00:03:11 - 00:03:13] Dennis is very quiet. [00:03:13 - 00:03:15] Dave is worrying about the food. [00:03:15 - 00:03:19] He is a chronic worrier and naive. [00:03:19 - 00:03:24] He seems to have thought that one just takes off one's shoes and goes to an Indian brother [00:03:24 - 00:03:30] and says that one wants to learn the secrets of the forest and they say, "Come, my son. [00:03:30 - 00:03:33] Come with us and you will learn the secrets of the forest." [00:03:33 - 00:03:40] Now that he is actually confronted with the Amazon jungle, he seems a bit taken aback. [00:03:40 - 00:03:43] Animals are falling off the boat into the river once an hour. [00:03:43 - 00:03:49] The captain of the boat hates us because we have to start to drag these soaking monkeys [00:03:49 - 00:03:51] out of the dream. [00:03:51 - 00:03:58] [Music] [00:03:58 - 00:04:05] [Music] [00:04:05 - 00:04:12] [Music] [00:04:12 - 00:04:19] [Music] [00:04:19 - 00:04:26] [Music] [00:04:26 - 00:04:33] [Music] [00:04:33 - 00:04:40] [Music] [00:04:40 - 00:04:47] [Music] [00:04:47 - 00:04:54] [Music] [00:04:54 - 00:05:01] [Music] [00:05:01 - 00:05:08] [Music] [00:05:08 - 00:05:15] [Music] [00:05:15 - 00:05:22] [Music] [00:05:22 - 00:05:29] [Music] [00:05:29 - 00:05:36] [Music] [00:05:36 - 00:05:43] [Music] [00:05:43 - 00:05:50] [Music] [00:05:50 - 00:05:57] [Music] [00:05:57 - 00:06:04] [Music] [00:06:04 - 00:06:11] [Music] [00:06:11 - 00:06:18] [Music] [00:06:18 - 00:06:25] [Music] [00:06:25 - 00:06:32] [Music] [00:06:32 - 00:06:39] [Music] [00:06:39 - 00:06:46] [Music] [00:06:46 - 00:06:50] [Music] [00:06:50 - 00:06:56] Chapter Three, Along a Ghostly Trail [00:06:56 - 00:07:04] Shortly after dawn the next day, our vessel left the broad course of the Putumayo and turned into the real Karaparaná [00:07:04 - 00:07:09] for the last few miles of the journey to San Rafael where the boat would leave us. [00:07:09 - 00:07:18] The Karaparaná more correctly fitted my conception of the jungle river, it being only several hundred feet across at its widest point, [00:07:18 - 00:07:23] with lush vegetation overgrowing the banks and trailing in the water. [00:07:23 - 00:07:31] Its flow was so sinuous and unpredictable that we could seldom see more than a half mile or so ahead of us. [00:07:31 - 00:07:39] At mid-morning we arrived at a low bluff surmounted by a white flagpole and a few corrugated buildings, [00:07:39 - 00:07:43] appearing lavish in a land of hatched huts on stilts. [00:07:43 - 00:07:52] This was Mission San Rafael. We were correctly, if unenthusiastically, received by Padre Miguel. [00:07:52 - 00:08:02] He was thin, Castilian, with deep-set eyes and a barely noticeable palsy that was the result of malaria contracted years before. [00:08:02 - 00:08:10] He had been in the Amazon over thirty years. It was not possible to read from his face what he thought of us. [00:08:10 - 00:08:20] He had seen many anthropologists, botanists and adventurers pass through, but I sensed that our longer hair and loose manner made him uneasy. [00:08:20 - 00:08:24] His uneasiness increased when I asked about Dr. Guzmán. [00:08:24 - 00:08:31] It was clear then, by the stiffening of the old priest's face, that my question had hit a sore point. [00:08:31 - 00:08:39] Nevertheless, we were offered a ride to a point upriver near a trail inland to San José del Encanto. [00:08:39 - 00:08:50] Yes, Dr. Guzmán is doubtless there. He passed through on his way to return to his language studies only three weeks before, and his wife was with him. [00:08:50 - 00:08:55] The priest's gaze hardened. You may be assured of finding him. [00:08:55 - 00:09:04] We were given lunch by the nun in charge, la madre being the form of address to the number one nun at these missions. [00:09:04 - 00:09:09] While we ate, Ev questioned the priest more carefully concerning La Chorrera. [00:09:09 - 00:09:15] Yes, the trail took five days for a fully loaded expedition to traverse. [00:09:15 - 00:09:19] We anticipated the need for quarters to help carry our equipment. [00:09:19 - 00:09:26] Padre Miguel said that we would get some help in San José, but that now was the time of hunting, [00:09:26 - 00:09:32] and men would be reluctant to leave the hunt to hire into an expedition going to La Chorrera. [00:09:32 - 00:09:39] We were determined not to be overburdened with equipment on the last leg of the push to reach La Chorrera, [00:09:39 - 00:09:43] so after lunch we sorted all of our equipment once again. [00:09:43 - 00:09:51] Books were relentlessly left behind. Our plant and drug file was thinned down to only the essential articles. [00:09:51 - 00:09:55] Excess camera and insect collecting equipment was stored. [00:09:55 - 00:10:01] It all went into a trunk to be left in the priest's keeping until we should return. [00:10:01 - 00:10:07] With the chore finished, we stowed our light and supplies in the priest's powerful speedboat, [00:10:07 - 00:10:13] an immense luxury in a world where the paddled canoe is the standard transportation. [00:10:13 - 00:10:17] In a few minutes we were tearing over the surface of the brown river, [00:10:17 - 00:10:22] the moving center of a cresting wave of tremendous mechanical noise. [00:10:22 - 00:10:29] The priest looked considerably more human and at ease here, with his brown cassock beating furiously in the wind, [00:10:29 - 00:10:33] his long beard trembling in the spray and the sunlight. [00:10:33 - 00:10:39] After forty minutes of this furious travel, we had gone a day's distance by canoe. [00:10:39 - 00:10:44] Suddenly the priest turned a small boat at right angles to the flow of the river. [00:10:44 - 00:10:48] We were making directly toward a long low spit of white sand. [00:10:48 - 00:10:57] The engine cut off at what seemed the last instant, and in a shattering silence we slid lightly aground on the sandbar. [00:10:57 - 00:11:03] It was a spot seeming no less desolate than any other place we had passed in our wild ride. [00:11:03 - 00:11:10] But the priest clamored up the bank and pointed out a broad trail, much overgrown with vines. [00:11:10 - 00:11:17] "It was a half a mile to the village," Padre Miguel explained as we moved our supplies into a jumbled heap on the sand. [00:11:17 - 00:11:24] "I'm sure you'll be well received," called the priest from the river as he wheeled the little speedboat around. [00:11:24 - 00:11:27] Then he was gone. [00:11:27 - 00:11:33] Long after he had turned a bend in the river and the sound of his departure faded, [00:11:33 - 00:11:41] the glassy surface of the river moved and sucked against the banks as a last reflection of this unusual commotion. [00:11:41 - 00:11:43] Silence. [00:11:43 - 00:11:50] Then a shrill wave of insect sounds swept like a drawn curtain through the air. [00:11:50 - 00:11:52] Then again silence. [00:11:52 - 00:11:58] There was jungle, river, and sky. There was not else. [00:11:58 - 00:12:05] For the first time we were not being conveyed through the jungle river world with a seasoned expert in control. [00:12:05 - 00:12:13] Now we were on our own, and we all became aware of it in that moment on that spit of sand on the shore of a jungle river, [00:12:13 - 00:12:16] one of hundreds of such rivers. [00:12:16 - 00:12:20] The mood could not last. [00:12:20 - 00:12:26] We had to find the village and make whatever arrangements we could to move our supplies there from the river. [00:12:26 - 00:12:28] We had to act before dark. [00:12:28 - 00:12:32] There would be time later to contemplate our situation. [00:12:32 - 00:12:41] No one wanted to stay with the mound of supplies, so we hid them in the bushes away from the shore and then started down the trail. [00:12:41 - 00:12:44] Vanessa brought her box of cameras. [00:12:44 - 00:12:52] I carried my telescoping fiberglass lepidoptera net, bought in a collector's supply shop in Shinjuku, [00:12:52 - 00:13:00] as a present to myself for surviving a stint teaching English in two Tokyo English mills simultaneously. [00:13:00 - 00:13:05] The trail was broad and easy to follow, obviously cared for. [00:13:05 - 00:13:10] As we moved away from the riverbank, the vegetation was less lush. [00:13:10 - 00:13:14] We were walking through an eroded, scrubby brushland. [00:13:14 - 00:13:22] The soil was lateritic, and where it was exposed to the sun, it baked and shattered into sharp-edged cubical fragments. [00:13:22 - 00:13:32] At length, we topped a long, slow rise and looked down on an assemblage of huts on sandy soil under a scattering of palms. [00:13:32 - 00:13:42] Striking immediately was the fact that all of the houses were of the stilted, thatched variety, except for one near the center of the village. [00:13:42 - 00:13:50] As we surveyed the scene below us, we were ourselves surveyed, and people began running and shouting. [00:13:50 - 00:13:53] Some ran one way and some another. [00:13:53 - 00:13:57] To the first person who reached us, we asked for Dr. Guzman. [00:13:57 - 00:14:04] Surrounded by people giggling and whispering, we reached the anomalous house. [00:14:04 - 00:14:10] It was made of leaves woven expertly between long, arched sticks. [00:14:10 - 00:14:17] It was windowless and rested on the ground, looking vaguely like a loaf of brown bread. [00:14:17 - 00:14:25] We all recognized it as a maloka, the traditional type of house peculiar to the Wittoto people. [00:14:25 - 00:14:34] Inside, resting on a hammock which hung between two smoke-darkened supporting posts, was Dr. Guzman. [00:14:34 - 00:14:43] The immediate impression was of an unnatural gauntness, deep-set dark eyes and skeletal, nervous hands. [00:14:43 - 00:14:49] He did not get up, but gestured as an Indian would for us to sit on the ground. [00:14:49 - 00:14:56] Only then, in seating myself, did I see beyond the hammock to the shadowed rear of the maloka. [00:14:56 - 00:15:02] A woman sat cleaning pebbles from beans in a stone-polished Wittoto pot. [00:15:02 - 00:15:06] Only after we were all seated did she look up. [00:15:06 - 00:15:11] She was plump, wearing khaki pants. She had blue eyes and even teeth. [00:15:11 - 00:15:16] Seeming to address us all equally, Guzman spoke. [00:15:16 - 00:15:20] "My wife shares my professional interests." [00:15:20 - 00:15:25] "How fortunate. It must make it much easier," Vanessa offered. [00:15:25 - 00:15:30] "Yes." The flat reply became an unnerving pause. [00:15:30 - 00:15:33] I decided to face the issue directly. [00:15:33 - 00:15:40] "Doctor, our apologies for disturbing your solitude and the local social environment here. [00:15:40 - 00:15:48] We are anxious to push on to La Churrera, and we hope that you will help us to arrange bearers here to go with us. [00:15:48 - 00:15:52] Also, we are here with a special purpose. [00:15:52 - 00:15:57] I refer to the Varola hallucinogens that you reported to Schultes." [00:15:57 - 00:16:00] I am telescoping my account, of course. [00:16:00 - 00:16:04] It all took longer and moved less directly toward revealing its meaning. [00:16:04 - 00:16:07] We talked for perhaps twenty minutes. [00:16:07 - 00:16:16] At the end of that time, we had learned that Dr. Guzman would help us find bearers and depart, but that this would take some days. [00:16:16 - 00:16:22] We learned that Guzman was an ardent structuralist, Marxist, and male chauvinist. [00:16:22 - 00:16:26] That his involvement with the Wittoto approached being a mania. [00:16:26 - 00:16:32] That he was regarded by his colleagues back in Bogota as slightly bonkers. [00:16:32 - 00:16:42] He gave us no encouragement that we would find the ucuje, which he said was a secret of the man that was slowly dying out. [00:16:42 - 00:16:49] At the end of this discussion, our small party and a dozen of the village people walked back to the river with us [00:16:49 - 00:16:56] and helped us carry our gear to a run-down, unused hut on the edge of the village. [00:16:56 - 00:17:05] As we set up camp, Annabelle Guzman approached us with several cups of steaming coffee and chatted with us as we worked. [00:17:05 - 00:17:10] She seemed more relieved than dismayed by our presence, unlike her husband. [00:17:10 - 00:17:13] As she talked, a picture emerged. [00:17:13 - 00:17:20] She had gone to the London School of Economics, studied anthropology, graduate work in Columbia, [00:17:20 - 00:17:30] meeting impassioned older men in similar profession, now living a pendulum life going between the striving, contentious world of the university in Bogota [00:17:30 - 00:17:34] and the tiny village of San Jose del Encanto. [00:17:34 - 00:17:39] Her husband's addiction to chewing coca was much on her mind. [00:17:39 - 00:17:43] Like the males of the tribe, he was a coca enthusiast. [00:17:43 - 00:17:46] He was quite paranoid from chewing it. [00:17:46 - 00:17:51] When one saw him in the morning, he always had coca staining his lower chin. [00:17:51 - 00:18:00] The tribe was very hard on women, so Annabelle had been told by Horacio that in order to integrate into this society, [00:18:00 - 00:18:04] she had to take the women's role upon herself. [00:18:04 - 00:18:12] This had to do with pounding yucca root with stones and also making coca, which the women are not allowed to chew at all. [00:18:12 - 00:18:16] The men lie around in hammocks and listen to transistor radios. [00:18:16 - 00:18:23] The women live with the dogs and the children under the houses, and the men live in the houses. [00:18:23 - 00:18:29] At five o'clock in the afternoon, the women are all sent to the sleeping place with the children and the dogs. [00:18:29 - 00:18:37] The men all retire into the longhouse for storytelling and coca chewing until 4.30 in the morning. [00:18:37 - 00:18:45] We lived with these people elbow to elbow. The fart is the most highly appreciated form of humor. [00:18:45 - 00:18:53] There are 10,000 variations on the fart, and all are riotously funny. [00:18:53 - 00:18:59] We stayed in that uncomfortable setting until the morning of the 13th of February. [00:18:59 - 00:19:11] It took that long, nearly a week, to arrange two young boys willing to leave the hunting and help us carry our supplies over the trail to La Chorrera. [00:19:11 - 00:19:19] We were grateful for the pause in travel as the voyage on the Faviolita had left us rather worn. [00:19:19 - 00:19:25] I spent part of each day collecting insects or writing or thinking in my hammock. [00:19:25 - 00:19:35] We saw Dr. Guzman very rarely. He treated us with the same remote disdain that the other male leaders of the community affected. [00:19:35 - 00:19:46] Not everyone was so shy. There were always several wito-to of all ages intently watching whoever of us was most active at any given moment. [00:19:46 - 00:20:00] In one of his oddest moves, Dr. Guzman had asked us to answer any of the people's questions concerning the relationships prevailing within our group by saying that we were all brothers and sisters. [00:20:00 - 00:20:07] This assertion brought the expression of amazement that any reasoning being would expect, [00:20:07 - 00:20:22] and so I think that we were especially interesting to the people of the village because they were asked by their expert informant concerning all things in the outside world to believe that such a disparate group as we were all sibs. [00:20:22 - 00:20:28] It was only one of the good doctor's peculiarities. [00:20:28 - 00:20:44] Once in the heat of the afternoon when I was alone collecting insects in the forest, I came around a large tree to surprise Dr. Guzman who was standing absolutely still, poised above a small ditch with a fish spear in his hand. [00:20:44 - 00:20:50] We walked back to the village together, and as we walked he told me his view of the world. [00:20:50 - 00:21:15] "Never swim alone in the river. Danger lurks everywhere. Never swim alone in the river. Huge forms move beneath its surface. There is the Anaconda. The rivers abound. Snakes are everywhere. Be aware of this as you make your way to La Chorrera. The forest is unforgiving of error." [00:21:15 - 00:21:26] I had spent many months in the jungles of Indonesia and had been collecting insects every day in these Amazonian forests as we had made our way to San Jose del Encanto. [00:21:26 - 00:21:40] I had my own idea of the risks of the forest, not nearly so dark as the thoughts of the wildly gesticulating small man who strode raving at my side. [00:21:40 - 00:21:50] He had apparently been ruling his wife with an iron hand when we had just happened in on what was a very peculiar scene. [00:21:50 - 00:21:56] He lived in a nightmare world of hallucination brought on by extreme coca addiction. [00:21:56 - 00:22:01] His wife had not had any anglos to talk to since arriving there. [00:22:01 - 00:22:04] Naturally, she was wondering what was going on. [00:22:04 - 00:22:10] She wasn't allowed to chew coca and he was behaving like a male Wittoto member of the tribe. [00:22:10 - 00:22:13] I saw him freak out one afternoon. [00:22:13 - 00:22:15] He was talking to some people. [00:22:15 - 00:22:21] "It is a very macho culture and your woman is always expected to be right there." [00:22:21 - 00:22:25] There was a small group talking and it developed that they needed a machete. [00:22:25 - 00:22:29] And he stood up and said, "Annabelle!" [00:22:29 - 00:22:30] Annabelle! [00:22:30 - 00:22:32] She didn't come and he yelled again. [00:22:32 - 00:22:33] Annabelle! [00:22:33 - 00:22:34] Annabelle! [00:22:34 - 00:22:36] He wouldn't go look for her. [00:22:36 - 00:22:37] Annabelle! [00:22:37 - 00:22:41] He was just standing there and all the people were standing looking at each other. [00:22:41 - 00:22:44] He kept calling and finally she came. [00:22:44 - 00:22:45] Annabelle! [00:22:45 - 00:22:49] He was by that time white with rage and he was shaking. [00:22:49 - 00:22:51] Get the machete! [00:22:51 - 00:22:55] He roared in exasperation. [00:22:55 - 00:23:00] After about five days or so, Sia developed an abscessed tooth. [00:23:00 - 00:23:05] His teeth were rotting out of his head and we gave him all the codeine we had. [00:23:05 - 00:23:08] It was intended to last us three months. [00:23:08 - 00:23:10] There were incidents. [00:23:10 - 00:23:18] A bushmaster, most deadly of vipers, was killed near the village and brought back and shown around. [00:23:18 - 00:23:23] Incidents, say rather omens or ominous events. [00:23:23 - 00:23:27] One morning an enormous tarantula, the largest I have ever seen, [00:23:27 - 00:23:35] made a dash through the village or so it seemed since it was suddenly discovered very much in the middle of things. [00:23:35 - 00:23:37] Had someone released it? [00:23:37 - 00:23:42] Two nights before we were to leave the village, a tree burst into flames near our hut. [00:23:42 - 00:23:50] This seemed unambiguously unfriendly and we hastened our plans for departure. [00:23:50 - 00:23:57] We could not continue on without bearers and only when the men came back from the hunting party would we get bearers. [00:23:57 - 00:24:00] Guzman would tell us almost nothing. [00:24:00 - 00:24:05] About the ukuhe he said, "Ridiculous, you're not going to get it. [00:24:05 - 00:24:07] These people don't even speak Spanish. [00:24:07 - 00:24:09] They speak only hui toto. [00:24:09 - 00:24:13] There were forty thousand of them killed here fifty years ago. [00:24:13 - 00:24:17] They have no reason to like you and the drug is super secret. [00:24:17 - 00:24:19] What are you doing here? [00:24:19 - 00:24:25] I urge you to leave the jungle while that is still possible." [00:24:25 - 00:24:34] Finally, on the fifteenth, we departed, the six of us in the company of two witoato adolescents. [00:24:34 - 00:24:38] The kapitan of the village turned out to wish us a good journey. [00:24:38 - 00:24:46] Even Dr. Guzman was smiling, delighted no doubt at the prospect of the village returning to normal [00:24:46 - 00:24:54] after a long week playing host to a delegation from the global electronic tribe. [00:24:54 - 00:24:58] There was no one more pleased to leave the village than I. [00:24:58 - 00:25:03] As we strode along the wide trocha, I felt my spirits rise. [00:25:03 - 00:25:07] At last we had put all the encumbering obstacles behind us. [00:25:07 - 00:25:10] Only Sia remained to plague me. [00:25:10 - 00:25:15] I decided, milquetoast or not, I was going to have to break the bubble. [00:25:15 - 00:25:18] Because it was becoming too odd. [00:25:18 - 00:25:20] He was doing things. [00:25:20 - 00:25:22] He insisted on going first. [00:25:22 - 00:25:26] He was sharpening sticks and putting them into the ground. [00:25:26 - 00:25:27] Fetishes. [00:25:27 - 00:25:34] When we were going down the river before we got to El Encanto, we were smoking weed all the time. [00:25:34 - 00:25:38] He would just sit staring for hours and hours. [00:25:38 - 00:25:43] And I finally understood that he was probably going to kill me. [00:25:43 - 00:25:47] And that he was completely deranged. [00:25:47 - 00:25:57] That, strange as it may seem, it was my fate that I was going to be bumped off by somebody's old boyfriend who was psychotic. [00:25:57 - 00:26:01] Who had somehow sneaked into this Amazon expedition. [00:26:01 - 00:26:11] At this realization I stopped on the trail and observed something to the effect that he was the world's most outrageous jackass. [00:26:11 - 00:26:16] In other words, I just pitched the shit into the fan. [00:26:16 - 00:26:19] We were going to punch each other out right there. [00:26:19 - 00:26:21] Vanessa was yelling and shoving. [00:26:21 - 00:26:25] We toto bearers were standing around open-mouthed. [00:26:25 - 00:26:27] It was a standoff. [00:26:27 - 00:26:32] But as the day wore on, Sia decided to turn back. [00:26:32 - 00:26:34] Actually, he had no money. [00:26:34 - 00:26:36] He was also in terrific pain. [00:26:36 - 00:26:39] There was no reason for him to be there. [00:26:39 - 00:26:44] He was really disturbed and was capable of anything. [00:26:44 - 00:26:50] The stress of isolation and bad food can push a healthy person to the edge. [00:26:50 - 00:26:54] He did chew coca, but that didn't cut the pain. [00:26:54 - 00:26:58] He needed medical attention. [00:26:58 - 00:27:01] Around us, the jungle. [00:27:01 - 00:27:04] Ahead of us, the secret. [00:27:04 - 00:27:14] After Sia's departure, I hefted my butterfly net and felt very van Veenish as we winded our way toward La Churrera. [00:27:14 - 00:27:28] Under the liana tangled canopy of the climaxed Amazonian forest, iridescent morphos would occasionally be surprised lounging languidly on broad leaves overhanging the trail. [00:27:28 - 00:27:37] They would start upwards suddenly, an amazing show of watery, splendorous sapphire quickly lost in the gloomy heights. [00:27:37 - 00:27:41] We set a brisk pace as we moved along. [00:27:41 - 00:27:50] I turned over in my mind the seemingly prophetic lines of the apocryphal American poet John Shade. [00:27:50 - 00:28:15] That rare phenomenon, the iridule, when, beautiful and strange, in a bright sky above a mountain range, one opal cloudlet in an oval form reflects the rainbow of a thunderstorm which in a distant valley has been staged, for we are most artistically caged. [00:28:15 - 00:28:24] That night, we made our camp at a thatch-roofed shelter with a marker that indicated we had come 25 kilometers during the day. [00:28:24 - 00:28:31] We ate well that night, and in the morning we were back on the trail as the ground fogs of dawn departed. [00:28:31 - 00:28:40] It was a day of hard work, carrying the heaviest loads by a method that allowed each person two hours on and then an hour off. [00:28:40 - 00:28:43] It was quite a physical feat. [00:28:43 - 00:28:50] I think that we were already feeling the effects of the phenomenon, but it is impossible to say. [00:28:50 - 00:28:52] We didn't eat. [00:28:52 - 00:28:56] The women announced that we would eliminate breakfast and lunch. [00:28:56 - 00:29:05] It was their decision since they were doing the cooking, and it was impossible to make a fire because the Amazon jungle is so damp. [00:29:05 - 00:29:07] It was too much of a chore. [00:29:07 - 00:29:16] We would get up at 4.30 in the morning, have coffee, and walk 25 kilometers until about 3.30 in the afternoon. [00:29:16 - 00:29:20] It was an ass-buster, absolutely. [00:29:20 - 00:29:23] It was up and down, up and down. [00:29:23 - 00:29:27] We would arrive at a river to find no bridge. [00:29:27 - 00:29:30] We would have to figure out how to cross. [00:29:30 - 00:29:37] We had to be aware of the possibility of the bearers stealing something or deserting us. [00:29:37 - 00:29:48] In spite of the exertion, it was a day of exquisite immersion in the sense of the truly immense and vibrant forest through which we were passing. [00:29:48 - 00:29:52] All day long we pushed forward against our flagging energies. [00:29:52 - 00:29:57] At last we reached a shelter similar to the one we had used the night before. [00:29:57 - 00:30:05] It was set on the top of a small hill just beyond a rude bridge arcing a small river. [00:30:05 - 00:30:13] After dark, around the fire, we anticipated a total eclipse of the moon said to be due that night. [00:30:13 - 00:30:17] The Wittoto bearers ate their own food apart from us. [00:30:17 - 00:30:24] Friendly but distant, I wondered if they too were aware of the impending eclipse. [00:30:24 - 00:30:32] Sometime in the dead of the night, I awoke in my hammock and after listening to the seething night, [00:30:32 - 00:30:39] pulled on my boots and silently made my way to the bluff of the little hill overlooking the bridge, [00:30:39 - 00:30:45] the river and the way along which we had toiled in the fading light of the late afternoon. [00:30:45 - 00:30:48] Now all was transformed. [00:30:48 - 00:30:52] The jungle eerily silent very suddenly. [00:30:52 - 00:30:58] The moon washed orange red, the eclipse in progress and near totality. [00:30:58 - 00:31:02] The scene and the feeling was profoundly other. [00:31:02 - 00:31:09] Alone in an immensity of jungle, we seemed the witness to the emergence of strange dimensions, [00:31:09 - 00:31:17] the clash of unearthly geometries, lords of places unseen and undreamed of by man. [00:31:17 - 00:31:23] Suddenly, a few miles away, rain was falling from a cloud standing still in the sky. [00:31:23 - 00:31:27] Nearby foliage glistened black with orange highlights. [00:31:27 - 00:31:35] Unknown to me in that moment was that the eclipse that had drawn me as a lone observer from my hammock to this eerie scene [00:31:35 - 00:31:43] was at that same rough instant triggering a groaning shift of billions of tons of impacted rock [00:31:43 - 00:31:47] along the San Andreas Fault in Southern California. [00:31:47 - 00:31:51] Chaos was breaking out in the hell city of Los Angeles. [00:31:51 - 00:31:58] In a pitiless cartoon, we may imagine the Popeye denizens in beehive hairdos [00:31:58 - 00:32:08] pouring out under incandescent lights into choking pollution to wail their hysteria to mobile news teams. [00:32:08 - 00:32:15] I knew nothing of it, and so returned to my hammock oddly cheered and exalted. [00:32:15 - 00:32:19] It had seemed a portent of great things. [00:32:19 - 00:32:27] Toward the afternoon of the fourth day, the bearers were visibly in anticipation of arrival at La Churrera. [00:32:27 - 00:32:34] During one of our breaks, Vanessa pointed out a rainbow that laid directly over the path we were traveling. [00:32:34 - 00:32:39] The appropriate jokes were made, and we wasted our loads and hurried onward. [00:32:39 - 00:32:49] In a few minutes, we were walking through secondary forest, and shortly thereafter emerged on the edge of a huge clearing of rough pasture land. [00:32:49 - 00:32:54] The mission buildings could be seen at the opposite side of this expanse. [00:32:54 - 00:32:59] As we started across the open space, an Indian came to meet us. [00:32:59 - 00:33:02] He and we spoke haltingly in Spanish. [00:33:02 - 00:33:10] He spoke to our bearers rapidly in Wetoto, and then started off with us in the direction from which he had come. [00:33:10 - 00:33:15] We passed through a wood enclosure and across a semi-enclosed courtyard. [00:33:15 - 00:33:21] On the wall were paintings in temper of absurd elves with pointed ears. [00:33:21 - 00:33:29] We saw no children, and a sense of its being school vacation hung over the empty rooms and playing fields around us. [00:33:29 - 00:33:34] We were led finally to the back porch of what was obviously the priest's house. [00:33:34 - 00:33:39] A huge man, bearded and bearish, emerged in his shirt sleeves. [00:33:39 - 00:33:43] A bastion cabot could have played him to perfection. [00:33:43 - 00:33:48] A basically merry person, he nevertheless did not seem happy to see us. [00:33:48 - 00:33:52] Why are these people always so withdrawn? [00:33:52 - 00:33:56] Something about not liking anthropologists. [00:33:56 - 00:34:00] And we are basically botanists. How can we put that across? [00:34:00 - 00:34:04] Our reception was hospitable and correct. [00:34:04 - 00:34:10] We asked no more, and as we hung our hammocks in the empty guest house to which we were shown, [00:34:10 - 00:34:17] there was a sense of relief among us all at having reached our destination. [00:34:17 - 00:34:25] [music] [00:34:25 - 00:34:54] [crow calls] [00:34:54 - 00:34:58] [chimes] [00:34:58 - 00:35:02] Chapter 4, Camped by a Doorway [00:35:02 - 00:35:08] Most of the Amazon Basin is alluvial deposit from the Andes. [00:35:08 - 00:35:13] La Charrera is different. The river narrows and flows into a crag. [00:35:13 - 00:35:21] It begins to flow very rapidly. Then it flows over an edge, a lip, and there is a waterfall full of power. [00:35:21 - 00:35:26] Not exactly a waterfall, but a chute, not a direct drop. [00:35:26 - 00:35:33] This violent flume has made a sizable lake a very unusual situation for the Amazon. [00:35:33 - 00:35:42] Very rarely can one rise above the treetops, but at La Charrera there are actually hills and one can get up some altitude. [00:35:42 - 00:35:48] There were no stinging or biting insects. It is a paradisical place. [00:35:48 - 00:35:54] You push very hard and suddenly you are there, and it is beautiful. [00:35:54 - 00:36:03] The mist drifting across the pastures. There are white cattle, the mission, the huge lake, the jungle, but white cattle, [00:36:03 - 00:36:08] and therein lies a peculiar twist of the story. [00:36:08 - 00:36:16] The afternoon following our arrival, at the edge of a large pasture cleared at the order of the succession of Spanish priests [00:36:16 - 00:36:21] who had managed Mission La Charrera since its establishment in the 1920s, [00:36:21 - 00:36:29] I held and turned over in my hand perfect specimens of the same species of mushrooms [00:36:29 - 00:36:33] whose lone representative I had eaten near Florencia. [00:36:33 - 00:36:38] In the pasture before me were dozens of these mushrooms. [00:36:38 - 00:36:43] After examining several, my brother pronounced them Stropharia cubensis, [00:36:43 - 00:36:52] one of the largest, strongest, and certainly the most widely distributed of any of the known psilocybin-containing mushrooms. [00:36:52 - 00:37:01] What to do? Our expedition's thinned-down drug and plant file was concerned with flowering plants, not with fungi. [00:37:01 - 00:37:12] We had no data on a proper dosage of psilocybin, but collectively seemed to remember that in the Oaxacan mushroom rituals described by Gordon Wasson, [00:37:12 - 00:37:17] the mushrooms are eaten in pairs, and several pairs are consumed. [00:37:17 - 00:37:21] We determined to eat six mushrooms each that same evening. [00:37:21 - 00:37:26] My journal entry for the next day spoke clearly. [00:37:26 - 00:37:30] 23 February 1971. [00:37:30 - 00:37:35] Are we indeed now in some way camped on the edge of another dimension? [00:37:35 - 00:37:44] Yesterday afternoon, Dave discovered Stropharia cubensis in the damp pastures behind the house where we had hung our hammocks. [00:37:44 - 00:37:51] He and I gathered 30 delicious psilocybin-saturated specimens in about half an hour. [00:37:51 - 00:38:02] We all each ate approximately seven and spent last night on an enormously rich and alive, yet gentle and elusive trip. [00:38:02 - 00:38:13] In between strange lights in the pasture and discussion of our project, I am left with the sense that by penetrating the local psychedelic flora this way, [00:38:13 - 00:38:17] we have taken a giant step toward deeper understanding. [00:38:17 - 00:38:29] Multifaceted and benevolent, as complex as mescaline, as intense as LSD, the mushroom, as is said of Peyote, teaches the right way to live. [00:38:29 - 00:38:37] This particular mushroom species is unclaimed, so far as I know, by any aboriginal people anywhere, [00:38:37 - 00:38:42] and thus is neutral ground in the tryptamine dimension we are exploring. [00:38:42 - 00:38:49] Through this unclaimed vegetable teacher, one can gain entry into the world of the elf chemists. [00:38:49 - 00:38:58] The experience of the mushroom is subtle, but can reach out to the depth and breadth of a truly intense psychedelic experience. [00:38:58 - 00:39:03] It is, however, extremely mercurial and difficult to catch at work. [00:39:03 - 00:39:13] Dennis and I, through a staggered description of our visions, noticed a similarity of content that seemed to suggest a telepathic phenomenon, [00:39:13 - 00:39:19] or some sort of simultaneous perception of the same invisible landscape. [00:39:19 - 00:39:25] A tight headache accompanied the experience in its final stages, but this was quick to fade, [00:39:25 - 00:39:33] and body strain and exhaustion often met with in unextracted vegetable drugs is not present. [00:39:33 - 00:39:44] This mushroom is a transdimensional doorway which sly fairies have left slightly ajar for anyone to enter into [00:39:44 - 00:39:50] who can find the key and who wishes to use this power, the power of vision, [00:39:50 - 00:39:57] to explore this peculiar and naturally occurring psychoactive complex. [00:39:57 - 00:40:04] We are closing distance with the most profound event a planetary ecology can encounter, [00:40:04 - 00:40:09] the emergence of life from the dark chrysalis of matter. [00:40:09 - 00:40:18] Such were my impressions after only one exposure to the realm of vision over which the mushroom holds sway. [00:40:18 - 00:40:22] The reference to strange lights in the pasture should be explained, [00:40:22 - 00:40:27] since perhaps it has some bearing on some of what followed. [00:40:27 - 00:40:36] After we had eaten the mushroom and an hour had passed and everyone had become comfortable with the pleasant plateau of hypnagogic imagery, [00:40:36 - 00:40:42] someone initiated a discussion. It was Dave or Dennis. Dennis, I believe. [00:40:42 - 00:40:51] He said that we were now loaded in the home territory of the secret and so should not remain in the confined space of our dwelling, [00:40:51 - 00:40:57] but move out into the foggy night, the warm and folding fog over the pasture. [00:40:57 - 00:41:03] Discussion. Not all should go. A delegation. Who should it be? [00:41:03 - 00:41:10] Dennis nominated Dave and myself, calling Dave, the least skeptical, me the most. [00:41:10 - 00:41:18] Vanessa objected to me as most skeptical, suggesting instead that Dave and Dennis should go. [00:41:18 - 00:41:25] I heartily agreed, not actually wishing to visit the dark and dewy pasture myself, [00:41:25 - 00:41:32] and having no faith, so skeptical was I, in the transcendental potential of the errand. [00:41:32 - 00:41:38] Off they went, first loudly proclaiming the total enveloping power of the ground fog, [00:41:38 - 00:41:50] and then in a theatrically absurd short time and from off stage, they hollered out that they saw a hovering, diffuse light in the pasture nearby. [00:41:50 - 00:42:00] Investigation pursued. Hollering continues, but fades. Light persists. Diffuseness persists. [00:42:00 - 00:42:07] I decided it was time for cooler heads to intervene. Off into the unfolding, wet-ish night I went. [00:42:07 - 00:42:16] I crossed carefully through the barbed wire, wet to my fingers, but warm-seeming even at night, so steamy as Amazonas. [00:42:16 - 00:42:24] Once united with Dave and Dennis, I found the situation far closer to their description than I expected. [00:42:24 - 00:42:33] There was a dim light on the ground a few yards away. It seemed to retreat slightly as one walked toward it. [00:42:33 - 00:42:39] We moved in its direction for several dozen meters in a series of short advances. [00:42:39 - 00:42:47] At that distance we felt far from our companions back at the house, an enveloped and dense drifting fog. [00:42:47 - 00:42:54] We can follow this light, but we better not get too far away or we will get lost because we don't know the area at all. [00:42:54 - 00:42:59] It was Dave pleading for a retreat, but we continued to follow it. [00:42:59 - 00:43:06] Sometimes it would seem as though it was just twenty feet ahead of us. It seemed as though it was hovering in the air, [00:43:06 - 00:43:12] but then it seemed as if it had fallen into the grass. The light would come filtering back through the grass. [00:43:12 - 00:43:20] We would run toward and then it would be ahead again in the air. Finally we decided to go no farther. [00:43:20 - 00:43:27] As we turned to depart, I seemed to see a flickering in front of the diffuse light that to my mind suggested [00:43:27 - 00:43:36] someone dancing before a fire. Thoughts of UFOs left me and I recalled instead the ominous incidents preceding our departure [00:43:36 - 00:43:44] from San Jose Del Encanto. Was this a shaman dancing around a small fire? Was it something to do with us? [00:43:44 - 00:43:53] No understanding was ever shed on this incident, but the general eeriness of it anticipated all that was to follow. [00:43:53 - 00:44:02] But the words of my journal entry are revealing. I speak matter-of-factly of gaining entry into the world of elf chemists. [00:44:02 - 00:44:09] I call the mushroom a trans-dimensional doorway and link it to a transformation of life on the planet. [00:44:09 - 00:44:19] A younger, more naive, more poetic self is revealed, a more intuitive self at ease with proclaiming wild unlikelihoods [00:44:19 - 00:44:29] as hallucinogenically derived gnosis. Very little has changed. Then I was eager to be convinced by demonstration [00:44:29 - 00:44:37] and demonstration was given. I was changed and was obviously eager to be changed.