People of the Clouds
People of the Clouds
My two friends and I wind through the mountains, speeding across the Oaxaca Sierra. We snake our way through the Mexican state toward the highlands where the magic mushrooms grow. Here, the hallucinogenic spurs are known as hongos. The people who live amid these impressive mountains are referred to as “People of the Clouds.” Their experience of consuming hongos has been going on for centuries and for that of ceremony. For many, it is a ritual or rite of passage. Today, the harvesting of mushrooms is also for visitor consumption.
We reach a mountain village, park the truck, and walk into a small café. Within the café’s dimly lit interior, we speak to a barista and ask her to brew tea with the fresh herbs we had purchased earlier in the day. We then settle into a corner table and await our warm beverage.
The café patrons talk among themselves about work and weather. Although we are visiting gringos, nothing is alarming because the local men understand that the gringos have been visiting their small town for decades, just to eat the prized mushrooms.
One lone American expat appears to be the connection for scoring the magic mushrooms. He looks to know everyone in the establishment. Dressed like a 1950s beatnik, his eyes are hidden behind dark sunglasses. He doesn’t present himself as a menacing entity, just that he’s the obvious character connected to the purchase of the psychedelic spurs. He is the go-between, the one who negotiates business with those who grow the indigenous fungus and those traveling North Americans and Europeans who buy the mushrooms.
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The expat eventually approaches our table and asks if we’ve come to eat hongos. I can see his eyes twinkle behind those dark sunglasses. We nod in compliance and he unwraps a sheet of plastic that contains about ten small mushrooms. The hongos are covered in dark soil. The customary consumption of mushrooms is to refrain from knocking too much dirt off before ingesting as the soil is loaded with psychedelic energy.
After our cordial business encounter and payment, we finish our tea, depart the café, and drive off in our Chevy truck.
We travel for about twenty minutes, the truck winding its way through the tall trees and into a mixture of clouds, sun, and mountain peaks. We navigate to a secluded location and decide that a beautiful wooded hillside will be a good place to partake of the hongos. The chosen hillside overlooks some monumental valleys, and the mixture of clouds and a blue sky is revealed in a cosmic fashion. Yes, People of the Clouds….
We divide the stash into three portions and all gingerly chomp our organic snack. The shrooms take a short time to digest and within half an hour we are smiling and commenting about how our senses of sight and hearing have become greatly enhanced.
We begin to enter our own individual sphere. We share stories and comments but know we are entranced within our consciousness. Time seems to be a factor because whatever is spoken appears to be perceived from another perspective, one from a deep hidden realm that we’ve all recognized, but haven’t employed before.
It is difficult to know if our conversations are three minutes or thirty minutes in length. The time element isn’t essential; it is just something we note. We make occasional comments that appear genius or highly philosophical. All of us are very comfortable in the surroundings and contented with the elevated high we are experiencing.
Blast off time! I abruptly realize that I’ve been laughing hysterically at something my friend stated, but I can’t remember what was so funny! I don’t care because something else is said that induces all three 0f us into fits of laughter!
We now become amused with everything! The ground we are sitting upon, the conversation, the stupid look on our faces– everything is entertaining. The ingestion of the mushrooms has made for intense merriment!
A flash of memory sets us off in rounds of thoughtful and metaphysical discussion. Our conversations end abruptly when one of us commences to laugh and sets all three of us off in blissful amusement again!
An atmosphere of euphoria and an aura of self-realization becomes sensational! Other than the present moment and being here now, we become disassociated with other facets of the day.
In the span of a few hours, we move from the hillside’s bright sunshine to the shade of the trees. And then ultimately back into the sun’s warmth, and then back out of the day’s heat into the coolness of the shade. This back-and-forth passage to sun and shade goes on all afternoon.
A local man suddenly appears and stops to talk to us. I’m not sure where he came from but he is now part of our conversation. My companions and I can’t understand a thing he is saying because his native dialect is incomprehensible to us. In my present state of consciousness, it sounds like Martian to me!
I notice the man’s feet are enclosed in old leather sandals and believe I have never witnessed such expanded feet! The width, from toe to toe, seems to be spread for fifteen inches! I surmise that it is because this man has never worn anything but leather sandals his entire life. I detect my friends also observing the man’s feet. The man eventually smiles and walks off. We decide the sun is too warm for us and retreat to the shade. Laughter ensues!
By mid-afternoon, the mushroom rapture has begun to fade, so we make our way to the truck and begin the long drive back out of the mountains and down toward the City of Oaxaca.
Arriving on the outskirts of town, we swing the Chevy onto a small street. Here, alongside the street, a gathering of indigenous women roast yams on homemade grills. The women, with their long jet-black hair, wear their colorful customary native attire. The evening’s images are worth a hundred photos, although we do not take one.
The women bake and sell the yams, and then the sweet potatoes are presented to us hot and well-roasted. The yam’s reddish contents and skin are delicious!
I recall the evening and the poetic vista of a night lighted only with the barbecue’s glowing embers, the faded colors from an early rain, and the way life rendered itself here in the land of “The People of the Clouds.”
Selection from In the Light of the Jungle Moon
Copyright Lorenzo Lago
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