Part three in my West Coast Trail (WCT) dairy. So far I’ve shared: WCT 1 – The Sun Gods Smiled On Us, and WCT 2 – Fellow Hikers. Now I’m going to share a magical trip we did inside of our WCT trip. I mentioned that it was always our intent to spend one full day on the beach, a ‘rest’ day on the trail, but our timing wasn’t working until we decided to add one more day to the trip. From WCT -1:
Long Beach Wisdom
We arrived at Tsusiat falls on the 5th day, typical for people starting on the south end like us, and planning to spend just one more night on the trail. That’s when we remembered the wise words Kristen shared with us on Long Beach, near Tofino, just a few days before:
“I’ll give you my Retirement speech: Retirement allows you to be in the moment for as long as the moment lasts.”
We are both retired. We don’t have work to get back to. We can stay an extra day.
Creating The Time and Space
While the Tsusiat falls are beautiful, it’s a very busy campsite, and that’s not what we wanted for our day off.
That’s when a fellow hiker gave us some advice, instead of the 13km hike to the next suggested campsite, go an easy 8km to the Tsocowis campsite, which also has a waterfall, and is not very popular because it’s going too far for people starting in the north, and makes the last day too long for people going north like us.
To understand how special this day was, it is best framed by the start of the day, receiving gifts, watching whales, and connecting with amazing people. Re-read the Serendipity and Generosity section of WCT 1 to understand that before our ‘trip inside of a trip’ even started it was a special day.
What we planned for this day was a magic mushroom trip.
I had purchased, (legally from a Vancouver dispensary), a mushroom called Poseidon’s Finger, ‘a high-potency hybrid Psilocybin cubensis mushroom strain created by crossing Tidal Wave and Albino Penis Envy’. Users report, ‘intense visual distortions, warped perception, deep emotional introspection, and waves of euphoria.‘ I’m going to use these descriptions as heading for my experiences, but put them in the order of my experiences, although there were many overlapping moments.
But first: Our goal was to set up everything for the evening (our tent, food prep, purifying water, gathering firewood, etc), and make it so that we had an entire day free of any responsibility. We had successfully moved from a crowded beach to one that only had 4 of us on it, and we knew the other two campers, although on this day we did nothing more with them other than share an occasional greeting wave.
Our set-up was perfect, our setting was perfect, we just had to think about our dose now. I had only ever micro-dosed with Poseidon’s Finger before, so I wasn’t sure how strong they would be. I took a full package of 3.5 grams, which is a dose I’d taken of another mushroom, but as I discovered, Poseidon’s Finger was much more potent than anything I’d tried before. My buddy took a little less than me, but still quite a high dose.
Four hours later we made a joke that might not be funny now, but for us at the time it was gut-busting hilarious. My buddy said something like, “We took Poseidon’s finger right up to the elbow.” To which I responded, “Up to the elbow and it tickled our tonsils.” This was a four-plus hour trip and, throughout it, just when you thought you were coming down a new wave of euphoria or heightened visuals would hit you and remind you that Poseidon still had a grip on you. While I made jokes like, “OK, that’s enough, let me off this planet.” I never actually felt uncomfortable or scared. There were times when I felt things were out of my control, however I always felt safe… but I’m getting ahead of myself.
As I said, the day was already magical, we set up everything to make our environment as simple as possible, and the setting was a stunning beach with a waterfall nearby. All the conditions were perfect. We had a late lunch with the mushrooms because dried mushrooms on their own can be a bit hard on your stomach. Then we hung around our tent for a while.
Warped Perception: Every time estimation from here on in is approximate, part of the warped perception we experienced was that the concept of time was inconceivable. Somewhere around 30-45 minutes after taking the mushrooms, I suggested walking over to the falls. We had already done this 3 minute walk to collect water earlier, but walking to the waterfall on mushrooms felt like a journey somewhere between 10 minutes and 3 days. Yes, that’s an exaggeration but my first instinct was to say ‘forever’… I felt like no matter how far I walked, the waterfall seemed continually far away.
At the waterfall there was a very large log lying on it’s side and it had about 25 feet of a flat groove that my buddy and I laid down on, about 6 feet apart, (he was about 6 feet below my feet, on the same flat section).
Waves of euphoria
The amount of laughing we did to start the journey was almost too much. I had tears pouring out of my eyes as pure joy overwhelmed me. I felt elated about being retired. I felt honoured to be doing this journey with my buddy. I thought of how lucky I am to have the incredible family that I do. I was delighted with the stunning surroundings. And I felt the gift of being alive! We laughed on and on for a very long time. I think we were at the waterfall for roughly 1.5 to 2 hours and during that time about 50-70% of the time we were laughing and joyous.
Intense visual distortions
The waterfall was absolutely stunning. On it’s own it was beautiful, but add the intense visuals of the mushrooms and it was out of this world. The rocks around the upper part of the falls were getting pixilated for lack of a better word. The brown tones shifted and danced. For a while I saw, on the right side of the falls, a face with the waterfall coming out of it’s mouth. But again, this wasn’t a stationary face, it was animated and the shifting tones gave it expression.
My buddy was having a completely different experience. He was seeing hexagons and geometric shapes, and when he shut his eyes very tight and re-opened them he felt like he changed channels and was watching a completely different version of the landscape. He told me to try too, but I couldn’t get myself to squeeze my eyes tight. When I tried, it felt like I was going to temporarily blink myself out of existence. This should probably be scary, it wasn’t… but it did feel like too much to try.
I should preface this with the fact that I’ve tried a heroes dose of a similar drug with a guide, and I’ve never been able to have an out of body experience. I don’t know if it’s a stubborn ego or what’s blocking me, but I can’t seem to do it. I tried a couple times on this trip. We were chatting and I could see the world distorting, and I’d say to my buddy, “I’m blinking out right now, if I don’t respond, don’t worry, I’m just not going to be here for a bit.” Then I’d let go, but somehow my body wouldn’t. During this time I said a number of times, “The world is unzipping!” – This felt like a very real experience, like reality was going to be unfastened and stripped away… but not like watching a zipper open up, rather being the zipper between this world and another. Disorienting and a bit uncomfortable but again, not scary.
One thing was very unsettling for me, and that was the horizon. We were on a beach with about 160º view of the open ocean. Turning around to face the ocean was destabilizing. The horizon didn’t seem real. The clouds seemed way too close, and too geometric to be real. I felt like I was looking at a hologram from the wrong angle and seeing a part of the matrix that I wasn’t supposed to be seeing. At one point I stood up to pee, but that statement sounds too sudden to be truly descriptive of the experience. First of all it felt like it took me 20 minutes just to talk myself into doing this monumental task, then another 10 to actually do it. Shifting from lying down to standing was almost too much to handle visually. I was relieved to lie back down.
Deep emotional introspection (Part 1 – The Tree)
At one point I looked over towards the near end of the beach and fixated on a single tree at the headland of the beach cove we were in.
I had a moment of time distortion and imagined a thousand years going by, and thought of the tree dying and falling into the ocean and the ocean eventually eroding away the land it sat on. I was overwhelmed by the beauty and thought of how sad it would be that no one in this distant future would be able to witness this beautiful scene that I was seeing right now.
Then I went really deep.
It occurred to me that this beautiful scene is only beautiful because a conscious mind looked at it. All over the universe there are profoundly beautiful things to see that nobody sees and thus there is no beauty in them at all. Without ego about my personal consciousness I realized that consciousness IS the purpose of the universe. There is no meaning, no appreciation of the sound of the waves, no sense of the warmth of the sun on my face, no beauty at all without consciousness. WE bring purpose and meaning to the universe. Thinking of this made most of my daily, trivial concerns seem comically insignificant, and I had a new appreciation for the beauty of the natural world.
Deep emotional introspection (Part 2 – The Post)
The clouds got more frequent, and combined with the proximity to the falls it started to get very cold. I was probably quite annoying with my complaints, the chill made me feel like life was leaving my body. Then after too long a wait, and much complaining, we finally went back to our campsite and crawled into our sleeping bags. I stayed like a wrapped mummy for a while but staring at the tent was boring so I leaned my upper body out of the tent to see the beautiful landscape. I could see the same headland tree, but from a different angle. I also had an upright post right in front of me.
The post morphed into a kind of totem. It didn’t change shape but I could see how an indigenous artist could find faces and shapes in the wood. Except for me none of the shapes were static. It wasn’t like Michelangelo seeing an angel in the marble and carving to set it free, but rather like a series of dancing shapes bringing the post alive.
Then I focused past the post and thought of the tree, time, and the importance of consciousness in the universe again. Except the post was there in front of me transcending my time warp. The post suddenly took on a feminine presence, like a symbol of Mother Earth. Then femininity. Then my wife. I thought of her standing up against all the challenges she ever faced, I saw her beauty and strength. I saw the gift she gave us of two beautiful and amazing daughters. All this love and joy overwhelmed me. I didn’t realize just how wonderful I felt until I felt blissful tears running down my face.
Integrating and Decompressing
Shortly after this I turned my phone on, we didn’t have reception, but I tried to make a video describing my introspection. The words wouldn’t come to me, they didn’t match the feeling.
I think I laid there, half in and half out of my tent for another 30 minutes to an hour. Fortunately, my friend willed himself to get up faster than me. He adjusted all the tie-downs on our tent, since rain was forecasted, then he started the fire. I literally was not capable of doing these things when he was.
He ate first then I boiled water and had my freeze dried dinner too. We sat by the fire until well after dark. We laughed a lot. And we sat in awe and appreciation of the environment we were in. The campsite we chose had an incredible fire pit that looked like a movie set.
We didn’t talk much. We were still high on life. The joy and laughter we had experienced throughout the day still resonated in us. It rained a little, but that didn’t dampen spirits. The fire was warm and our jackets were almost dry when we finally went to bed.
And to conclude a perfect day, it wasn’t until minutes after we were safely tucked in our sleeping bags that the rain began to downpour.
We couldn’t have asked for anything to have gone better.
A perfect trip. A perfect day.
