This journey happened today. I can even still feel it in my veins it was so recent. I can feel it like you feel a roller coaster.

Dustin is leaving for Alaska tomorrow. He's decided that he wants to move down here and so he will be putting in his two week notice upon arrival back to work on Monday. So today is his last day, and so I decided that we should go out and journey one more time before he goes. He's such a great tripping partner that I didn't want to let the opportunity of another trip with him before he leaves. He understands the substance in the same way that I think I do. We have that mutual respect.

The weather has been beautiful today too, so I made the choice to drive up to the base of SnowBowl--the local ski resort--and hike out into the field where we'd find ourselves a place to throw a blanket and pillow.

And so it happened just like that.

We arrived up the mountain at around four o'clock. These were the things that we had with us: A buffalo drum, a blanket, water bottle, eucalyptus oil, a pillow, a pipe and the key. The key we brought was the one we'd "cut" ourselves, and this would be my deepest journey and a true test of what we'd made. I would learn that what we made was at least as strong as what I bought.

We walked through the field for a little bit of time, trying to find a place that was isolated and fitting of our needs. When we did, the place was out in the middle of the field, facing north towards the Grand Canyon, and deep in grasses and shrubbery. We were quite pleased by the fact that when sitting down it was impossible to see us, even from the nearby trail. We watched some people walk by on that trail, but it was more reassuring than anything, because we could see that we were invisible to them.

Dustin journeyed first. That wasn't the plan, per say, but there also wan't a spoken plan at that point--only the idea of what we were probably going to do up there. But dustin seemed comfortable in a way that I did when it came down to it, and the unspoken communication between us was leading me to believe that that's where his thinking was headed. So i asked--"Do you want to go first, or do you want me to hit it first." By this point it had been loaded with the same wax we'd had last weekend. He didn't answer for awhile, but I could feel that he was going to go first.

Dustin took one solid hit off the pipe and laid back. As soon as he closed his eyes he said, "Wow, it comes on so fast." Then he moved his tongue around and said "taste." That was all he said while he was tripping in the peak. I could see his eyes move behind his eyelids. He opened his eyes some four or five minutes after closing them and got up and walked around in the grasses. He was so happy, and it eased my anxiety substantially. I was still trepidatious when my time came though.

We waited some fifteen minutes after Dustin's journey before I went. I wanted him to be fully down, and I wanted to be comfortable.

I didn't beat the buffalo drum, but I did bathe in eucalyptus oil.

When it was time I brought the torch lighter up and smoked.

The first one was big. Dare I say that it was the biggest I've ever had. I had watched Dustin smoking it and noticed that he held the lighter much closer to the pipe, and even though I'd been warned that this could burn the "key," it didn't seem to adversely affect his trip. So I did the same, holding the lighter right up to the pipe, and the hit I took was long. It was as long as I could take, and the effects started almost immediately. I held the first hit for a short time, it felt, and when I exhaled, I really pushed the vapors from my lungs. Dustin said something like "wow; you ghosted that." It was mostly true, but I could still see some of the vapors, and I knew that I was going for a second hit, even though I was already heavily under its trance.

I took the second hit until the pipe was empty--had I had more in the pipe, I would have taken it, but that was it, and so I report that I had one massive hit, and one adequately sized hit. At that point I had to hand the pipe and lighter over to Dustin and I laid back.

When I closed my eyes my first thought was that the visuals are already here. I could see the chrysanthemum behind my eyelids, but the visuals were so powerful that I almost immediately opened my eyes.

I would like to interject an outside perspective here--Dustin later told me that I never exhaled the second hit. He became slightly worried and even scared, even though he knew that everything was probably fine. He said that when I laid back I just held it in and never actually exhaled smoke. I just let my jaw drop open and my breathing slowed. I was tripping harder than I'd ever tripped before at this point.

When I closed my eyes, my thought was, "the visuals are already here." But then I opened my eyes, and to my great surprise, and perhaps horror, the visuals were equally as strong with my eyes open or closed--there really was no difference, so this became my first "open eye-break through." The first thing that I noticed was the extremely bright pink and green and white and yellow and purple and black that everything became. Then the branches of the tree above me beacon to twist and fall in on me.

Dustin had opened the eucalyptus oil and began waving it back and forth. This caused me some troubles, because I couldn't tell if he was moving or not--the tracers and visuals were stronger than anything that I'd ever seen before. I was completely overwhelmed! There was no difference between having my eyes opened and closed. And then the chrysanthemum broke. The tree broke through it.

The tree became this stream of energy up towards the sky. I knew inside that it was the tree bark that I was looking at and tripping on, but I looked sooooo hard and couldn't see tree bark in any way. All I could see was the machine elves that had become the tree. All of the pine needles transformed and took on new significance. I was in absolute awe, horror, terror, epiphany, and ecstasy. It came on so fast and so heavy that all I could do was lay there. There was no way that I could make noise or get up or control my actions. I was about 85% detached from my body, and as I moved my hands around my chest, I wondered how this could actually be my own body.

My eyes were as wide as they'd ever been opened, and my jaw was too. Every now and again I would remember that breathing is important and I'd gasp for air. I think that this scared dustin a bit. He told me, after I was back, that he wanted to ask if I was okay, but knew that he couldn't do that in the trip.

What I saw was the tree breaking through the chrysanthemum. It moved, and danced, and glimmered in a way that I can never imagine. I was horrified, because I knew that it was my job to report back what I was seeing, and I knew that this was an impossible task.

I started talking probably 5 minutes into the trip. I was still tripping extremely hard! I said "If I could only explain it." Later, when I was more coherent, I started a recording on my phone and started explaining things. I accidentally deleted that recording, but talking it through became helpful in my writing of this piece.

I do wonder now, and I did once I hit baseline, what it would have been like if I'd looked around. All I looked at was the tree branches above me, and they became such a heavy visual that I could barely stand it.

That was the third time that I smoked DMT.