Nothing on My Mind

by Erik Storlie

  We load our pick, shovels, and gold pan back in the Jeep. As we drive back to the ranch, I fret that soon the Forest Service will send an inspector demanding to see the valuable mineral in my discovery hole. “We’ll deal with that if and when it comes,” says Barney. “The Forest Service has bigger problems than you. Already this summer some crazy old coots bulldozed the hell out of the streambed up in Jack’s Gulch looking for gold. Naturally, they didn’t bother to apply for permits. They muddied the Bitterroot River for thirty miles downstream. The fishermen and the Sierra Club types are hopping mad. It’ll take years for the Forest Service to get around to you.”

  A few days later, I’m ready to move out to the cabin. I load up the station wagon, and Barney follows behind me in his Jeep, delighted to see me settled in my new estate.

  We wander through the broken-down log building. The doors and windows are gone. It has no foundation. The floorboards are rotted out in some places, in others buckled and broken from the settling of the massive log walls into the soft ground. Mouse turds pepper every horizontal surface. Steady afternoon breezes, sweeping off the mountains, rattle and slap layers of torn plastic sheets that hunters have tacked over the empty, gaping window frames.

  “Jeez,” I think, “do I really want to stay out here alone?” I check out an old log bedstead upstairs. Daylight seeps through the sloping roof boards above. Barney helps me push the bed to a spot where the roof still holds its roofing paper. Later I can throw out my sleeping bag and pad. Downstairs in the back kitchen shed, we examine the broken-down cookstove, the top heaped with mouse turds, the white enamel sides stained and streaked. Finally we walk to the front room and admire the huge stone fireplace. At least I can cook and stay warm.

  We hear a car pulling up the long gravel drive to the cabin. We walk out the front door to wait. It’s a fifteen-year-old Buick station wagon. It stops and a small, wiry man of about sixty jumps out. Patches of his short, rumpled white hair stand up straight, and his thin red cheeks sprout a week’s worth of bristling white whiskers. He wears dirty slacks and a crumpled, sweat-stained dress shirt.

  Angrily he demands, “Are you Earik Storkey?”

  “Yes,” I say, taken aback, unsure what the trouble is.

  “I’m Roscoe Ray. I’ve got the hard rock claims all up and down the mountain there.” He waves his hand to indicate the hills behind the cabin. “These here are my claims, too, as if you didn’t know. You jumped ’em. Now, I want you and your perfesser friend to clear right out of here. Fast!”

  “Now, wait a minute,” I say. “I’ve bought this cabin and I’ve staked the claims. If they were your claims, it’s not my problem you didn’t pay your taxes or do assessment work.”

  Roscoe’s face turns scarlet. “You’re a goddamn liar!” he fumes. “The work is done. It’s been done every year and it’s filed. And I’ve got witnesses. Go ask the county clerk, if it’ll make you happy. But meantime, I just want to see you two getting yourselves into those vehicles and getting the hell off my claims. Right now. And take this crazy goddamned cabin, too, if you think you own it. Maybe it’ll fit in the back of your goddamn station wagon. Otherwise, I guess you can just leave it there where it’s been sitting for the last thirty years.”

  I glance over at Barney, who observes Roscoe quietly, noncommittally. I glance back at Roscoe. He’s about five foot seven, like Barney and me. This doesn’t look like it could shape up into a fistfight.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Mr. Ray,” I say. “There’s no recent assessment work done anywhere on this place. I’ve checked that out pretty carefully. And I’ve staked the claims and done discovery work. As for the cabin, you know it went at auction last fall. I bought it. I’m staying. I’m sorry if this is a surprise to you, but . . .”

  Suddenly there’s a black six-shooter in Roscoe’s right hand. I glimpse lead peeking out from the four exposed chambers.

  “I ain’t talking to you two sons of bitches anymore,” he shouts, dancing from one foot to the other. The gun barrel jerks menacingly. “Do you know what we do with claim jumpers around here?”

  I’m in shock. But I hear Barney speak slowly, gently, in a tone of hurt surprise, “Now, Mr. Ray. Just what in the hell do you think you’re going to do with that thing? Let’s all be reasonable, here. Why don’t you just put it away? Something could happen that we’ll all regret.”

  Roscoe comes to rest squarely on both feet. The gun still points at us, but it’s steady now, dropped to his waist.

  Barney goes on. “I don’t think my young friend Erik here meant any harm to you. In fact, I know he didn’t. And I’m sure he wants to do the right thing by you. There’s going to be some kind of a deal you two can strike here. But before we get into anything like that, I’m guessing he could scare up a few drinks of good whiskey out of that load of gear he’s got in the back of that wagon. Then we can all sit down here with a drink and begin to work this thing out so it’s good for everyone.”

  Suddenly sheepish, Roscoe drops his arms to his sides. He turns and throws the gun through the open window onto the front seat of the Buick.

  “Well,” he says, “I suppose that’s about right. Maybe I’m a little overagitated. No harm in just sitting down here and talking everything over.”

  Shakily, I head for the car and start digging through my gear for the bottle and three tin Sierra Club cups.

  It’s a few weeks later. Lon and Farmer arrive at the cabin. Lon’s beard is now full and wild. His dark hair drops to his shoulders. Farmer’s blond mustache droops at the ends. Now and again he thoughtfully strokes a sparse goatee several inches long. I sport a scruffy Abe Lincoln beard. In this mountain valley of cattlemen, lumberjacks, and miners, we’re clearly on a mining claim under false pretenses, a scandal to the locals.

  It’s not gold we’re after this summer, but the meaning of life. We will practice the precipitous psychedelic yoga and achieve Perfect Enlightenment. Leary, Alpert, and Metzner announced the plan at Harvard. Guided by their example and the ancient Tibetan wisdom in their manual, we’ll take LSD once each week. We’ll concentrate this experience by sitting meditation. Here in the mountains, free from city corruptions, we prepare for our imminent enlightenments.

  In the back of his little Hillman Husky station wagon, Lon has brought three zafus—round black meditation cushions—and a tatami, a rice straw mat a few inches thick and about three feet by seven. We place the tatami mat against the north wall in the front room opposite the big windows. It helps bridge some of the rotted floorboards.

  Here we will do zazen. Here we will eat meals formally seated on our cushions, even washing our traditional Japanese oryoki bowls individually at our seats with hot water, as is done in Japanese monasteries. Our diet will be simple and strict, mostly rice and beans. We have a twenty-five-pound sack of each, bought at a distant grain elevator to conserve money.

  But I’m uneasy. Zen meal practice is going too far. Doing things Reverend Suzuki’s way at Sokoji Temple was one thing. But this feels like doing it Lon’s way.

  Farmer, however, is cheerful about the experiment. “Yeah, that’s cool. I like sitting on zafus for meals. We don’t have to come up with any more chairs. And you know, washing our bowls at our seats saves trouble. We don’t have to do dishes except for the pots.”

  Inwardly I fume. I’m trying to keep up some appearances in the nearby mountain village, where I’ve come to know a few of the locals. And I don’t want to embarrass Barney and Lucy. I know that the locals think the mining claim just a lark. But I sure don’t want to look to everyone like a drug casualty on some cult trip.

  I’m outvoted, however. “We’ll see how this all works on acid,” I think to myself grimly.

  The day before our first trip, we discuss details at length. My approach is basic. “Well, let’s drop after breakfast, do zazen, and hang out in the cabin until we’ve come down enough to hike a little bit, maybe up to the mine. Later we could head to the hot spring.”

  “Yeah, that’d be c
ool,” says Lon. “But listen.” He takes a serious, conspiratorial tone. “Let’s really push this thing as far as we can tomorrow. You know how hard it is to stay one-pointed. The lamas say it’s like rolling a needle down a taut thread. We’ve got to keep perfect balance. Why don’t we fast for the rest of the day? Then tomorrow we can get up at five and do zazen. At five-forty we can read the section in Leary’s book about holding on to the Clear Light. At six let’s drop and keep on sitting—and then just do as much sitting as we can for the rest of the day.

  “We’ve got to break out of karmic game playing. I know I’m into ego games all the time. We can break free into the Clear Light. That’s where it’s at. If anybody gets into a bad place, we’ll read sections from the book.”

  “Yeah, but what’s the point of fasting that long?” I ask.

  “Well, you know, it’ll clean out your system and the stuff’ll hit harder.”

  “Hey,” I say, “it’s not like it isn’t hitting pretty hard anyway.”

  “Hey, come on you guys,” urges Lon. “You don’t know what can happen. Unless we really push the limits, we’ll never get there. You guys know the incredible groove you can get into when you’re not trapped in ego games.”

  Farmer casts his vote. “Yeah, it’s okay with me. I’ll do it. Why not try? It’s worth it.”

  “Well, okay, man,” I say slowly. “But let’s forget this five in the morning stuff. It’ll still be near freezing.”

  “Right on man, good point,” says Lon. “Let’s get up when we get up and then do it.”

  We roll out the next morning about eight, hungry and shaky at the thought of what we’re about to do. Yesterday our disagreements absorbed some of the dread we know we all feel but don’t discuss. Lon gives us each two large capsules filled with a lumpy white powder.

  “How much is this?” I ask.

  “Well, can’t say exactly,” Lon smiles. “It’s from a good source, and he says take one for a little trip and two if you’re serious.”

  “We’re damn serious,” I laugh, nervous as hell.

  We wash the big caps down with icy water from the spring. I shiver at the lumpy feel of the cap going down, a slight nausea rising to meet it.

  We clear our sleeping bags out of the front room and line up the black cushions on the tatami mat. We bow toward our cushions and then away, sit down, and spin around to face the wall, just like at Sokoji Temple.

  I settle into sitting in the chill, empty room, my stomach growling with hunger, then filled with butterflies.

  Minutes pass. Nothing happens. Have we been ripped off? My stomach is queasy now. Then I shut my eyes and see streamers swirling behind my eyelids, intricate patterns dancing in vivid colors. I open my eyes to orient myself and find the straight yellow-brown lodgepole logs two feet in front of me beginning to ripple along the edges, as if I’m gazing down through a current of clear, rushing water.

  Yeah. The stuff works. And it comes on fast. Lon’s right about the fasting. Sitting on my zafu, legs crossed, thumb tips touching, I’m solid, grounded, a mountain giant watching the descent of glaciers over eons of time.

  I shut my eyes again to enjoy the intricate dance of colors unreeling behind my eyelids, fiery gasses incandescing in the embers of a fire.

  A doubt intrudes. Where’s the Clear Light? Leary says it should come first, the first Bardo, the first dimension after the ego dies. I’m seeing colors and patterns. Is my karma so bad that I flip immediately into hallucinatory visual forms? On either side of me, Lon and Farmer breathe deeply, erratically.

  Suddenly signals arrive from my intestines. Urgent signals. I’ve got to shit.

  Panic strikes through me. My God! Now I’ve got to break the spell. Lon will think I’m just trying to fuck up his trip. He knows I didn’t want to do it his way. He’ll be angry. I don’t want anger right now.

  But my guts are on fire. A huge mass of heavy, hot, dark mud moves slowly, glacially, undeniably down through caverns in my lower being. I feel a child’s panic. Something’s going to happen—I’ve got to do something—quick!

  Breaking the deep morning silence, I grab for the straw mat with my fingertips, spin around on the cushion like a phonograph record, and leap to my feet in a crescendo of morning light. I bolt through the back door in my socks and run a hundred feet to the privy.

  Fumbling with buttons, dancing from leg to leg, clamping buttocks tight, I stoop, kneel down, and gingerly apply bare skin to the chill, rough, unfinished boards of the old privy hole. The dark, warm stuff floods from my body through wriggling tubes and pipes that cry out in sheer pleasure—a visceral, stupendous relief.

  Jeans around my ankles sweeping dirt and cobwebs off the floor, hands resting idly at my sides, I’m five years old. My body does what bodies have done for millions of years. I lightly stroke the rough-sawn lodgepole pine boards with my fingertips. I watch a spider make repairs to her web, spun over a gap between two logs that lets the morning light shaft through, then gaze wonderingly out the open privy door toward the Flute Reed Mountains.

  Sudden panic. The other guys! They’re going through this, too. They’ve got minds, too. What are they thinking? About me running out the back door? Of course, Farmer doesn’t care. But I can feel Lon thinking dark, ugly thoughts: “That asshole Storlie. Always trying to control the trip. Just had to fuck it up.” Or maybe he’s thinking, “The poor son of a bitch. He’s freaked. Just couldn’t handle it!”

  I wipe, carefully get up, painstakingly pull up my jeans, button buttons, and start slowly around the cabin for the front door, walking cautiously between the woody sagebrush plants, eyes on the uneven ground. Tiny pine twigs and needles stick to my wool-socked feet.

  At the front door, I grip the wooden handle and hesitate, looking up. Ten miles away through a blue-brilliant atmosphere, snowcapped peaks explode into the sky. Muscular cliffs and bare rocky slopes softened by green valleys writhe and twist and transform into flowing colored patterns, re-form into themselves, then dissolve again.

  My hand rests on the door handle, but I can’t move. My eyes sweep down from the peaks to a red, rusted-out thirty-gallon trash barrel sitting by the Studebaker. Erupting on those surfaces are a million shades of red, of brown, blood flowing, blood drying into dusty, fine-sandy rust, ready to powder off at the touch of a finger.

  Still gripping the door handle, somehow, by a tiny, sensitive adjustment of something in each eye, I see the trash barrel go out of focus, and I’m looking back toward the jagged Flute Reed Mountains dancing their ten-thousand-foot peaks into a blue sky. White puffy dragon and whale clouds sail proudly off the tops and over my head.

  Another slight adjustment in each eye and I see the empty middle distance—empty yet blue tinged—the empty basin cupped by foothills behind me and mountains ahead of me and meadowlands below. Pure empty air, yet filled with a glistening, pulsing, transparent energy field working its work, a million acres of empty capillary beds of retina and visual cortex registering no color, no thing, registering only itself.

  My hand drops from the door handle. I move myself slowly over to a stump upended a few feet from the door and slowly sit down, intricate neurological adjustments piloting a titanic body across the gulf between door and stump. Again and again with that slight, magical adjustment inside each eye, I flick between filigreed red trash barrel, dark exploding peaks, and bluish empty middle distance. The visual elements break into my consciousness like surf into a cove, the energies of eternity, of continents building, mountains rising, tides sucking, the earth in massive orbit circling the sun.

  I heave a great sigh, drop my elbows to my knees, my chin into my hands, and smile at the peaks. Again, everything’s all right. It’s really all right!

  I notice Lon and Farmer now, carefully coming through the front door, walking with slow steps that feel ahead for the solid ground. I rise to my feet. No words are spoken. We gaze at each other with shocked and frightened eyes—and quickly look away. Together we gaze on the mountains. Then slo
wly, awkwardly, we drift and wander apart. We can’t bear each other. Rivalries and resentments can’t inhabit these spaces. Within a few minutes they’ve each melted into a different part of the woods and I can’t remember what direction they’ve taken.

  We don’t find each other again until afternoon, and it’s evening before we really talk about what happened. We fire up the old wood range back in the lean-to kitchen, start water for tea and dishes, and heat up leftover rice and lentils. Sitting on our zafus in the front room, slowly eating, we quietly talk.

  “Man, what an incredible trip,” I say. “I can’t believe it. Did you see the mountains? You know, I didn’t want to stop doing zazen, really. I had to take this horrible shit. I almost didn’t make it.”

  Lon and Farmer laugh nervously. “Yeah, I hung in there for as long as I could,” says Farmer, “but the logs started crawling around so bad I couldn’t look at ’em anymore. I just had to move around.”

  “Those are mighty caps,” says Lon. “I could’ve sat longer, maybe, but it would’ve been hard.”

  “Where’d you go?” I ask.

  “Down in the meadow. I just kept wandering and wandering until I was down by the creek, and then I sat for a long time watching it. It’s not much bigger than a trickle, but I kind of fell into it with my eyes. Well, and with my ears, too. I’d watch it swirl around little bars of sand and gravel and hear the slurpings and gurglings, over and over again. It was like my whole body flooded with that one little creek.”

  “I went up behind the cabin onto that high outcrop and lay out in the sun,” says Farmer. “The sun got hotter and hotter and I flipped into some nightmare place where I was Prometheus stretched out and chained for the vulture. I could feel the beak ripping out my guts. I wanted to come down and find someone, but I was sure I’d never find the cabin. Things finally cooled out and I walked through the woods and ended up over by the pond. It’s full of frogs. I bet I watched them for two hours. It was like I could see a whole little society—there were a king and queen and all their courtiers.”