"Through the great canyon a large river flows from the north to the south and falls into the northern end of the Gulf of California. Now, in the useful translations of the Spanish authors of 1540 AD we find that the scribe of the Conquistadors placed near the Colorado River, in a small island, a sanctuary of Lamaisra, or of Buddhism. He mentions a divine personage living in a small house near a lake upon this island, and called, as he says, Quatu-zaca, who was reputed never to eat."

VOYAGES: l'Histoire de la D'couverte de l'Amerique, Vol IX, Henri Ternaux-Compans (1836)

MEETING QUATU-ZACCA

PRELUDE: BEFORE THE DIVERGENCE

For those of you who may have read The Curandero and the Magic of the Mojave Desert Creosote Ring the first of the following few paragraphs below may have a familiar ring to them. It is sort of a Part One or a Prelude to what I present here. So, if you have read it please bare with me or take the paragraphs as a refresher as we will be getting into the meat of the subject soon enough. It's just that for those who may not have read the Curandero page, for the meat to make sense, some minor groundwork needs to be laid, to wit:

My mother died while I was quite young. Not long after her death, as hard as my dad tried I experienced at least two failed attempts at being placed with foster couples, including the last place where I lived that I actually ran away from. After being found by my grandmother my father sent me to live with, in a third attempt overall, a husband and wife couple, of which at the time, at least reunited me once again being with my younger brother. He had been living with the couple for sometime when I showed up and in the end it worked out not to bad for all of us, especially for me because of reasons unexpected.

The couple's house was located in a no sidewalk mostly dirt-street rural area some distance east of San Diego not far from the Mexican border. It was built on a corner lot, with the front door facing the street to the north and the east side of the house facing the cross street. The closest neighbors lived just to the west of us, our houses separated a short distance apart by a dirt field created by the joining of our two adjacent yards with no fence or markings dividing either of the properties. Our house was set back from the street quite some distance giving it a fairly good size front yard while the neighbor's house was built practically on the street giving them instead, a huge, long back yard.

More-or-less centered clear at the very end of the neighbor's property was an almost falling down three sided rough-hewn wooden board and sticks lean-to shack or shelter, with the opening of the shack in front and higher with the flat roof sloping down toward the rear ending a foot or more lower in the back. An old man, at least old to me, and appearing to be of Mexican descent, who at the time I guessed lived in the front house, although I never saw him there or go in or out, spending most of the day in and around the shack or under the shade of a nearby tree and/or a fire pit late into the night. During a lot of those hours, coming and going from morning till night, all kinds of people of all ages, individuals, couples, mothers with kids, women that were clearly pregnant, would come by to see him.

One day while playing in the back yard I came across a rather large black bird, either a crow or raven, that acted like it had a broken or damaged wing. When I tried to get close, thinking I might be able to help or render aid in some fashion the bird began running and jumping around, squawking, screeching, and making all kinds of noise. The noise attracted the attention of the old man and soon he was over to see what all the ruckus was. As he got close he took a long stick or staff he was carrying and gently reached out and barely touched end of it to the bird's shoulder. When he did the bird quieted down and just stood there looking at him. Apparently not wanting to scare the bird anymore than it was, without a word he motioned to me to pick it up, which I did without any fuss from the bird. Then, still without saying a word, the old man motioned me to follow him, stopping me just outside the shack.

All three walls on the inside of the shack, that is, both sides and the back, were covered with rows of rickety shelves from one end to the other stacked almost full with all kinds and all sizes, big to small, of bottles, cans, jars, jugs, glasses and cups. Some with liquid, some with powder, and some with seeds, dried sticks, and leaves including I was to learn later, insects. Some containers had corks, some were open at the top, some had lids. Some were marked with labels and some weren't. Some even had the skull and crossbones of poison on the labels. While I waited outside comforting the bird as much as I could, albeit docile since having been touched by the stick, the old man selected two or three containers off the shelves, then after going through several pre-Columbian looking stone apothecary style grinding bowls he picked out a rough, mottled, ancient looking three legged lava grinding bowl. He put a small amount of ingredients from each of the three containers into the bowl, grinding it by hand with a stone tool into a fine powder. When he was done he dumped the contents of the bowl into the palm of his hand, flicking aside a couple of the larger grains.

With that he stepped out of the lean-to speaking to me for the first time, telling me to hold the bird at arms length toward him and away from me and to turn my head. When I did he a took in a huge gulp of air into his lungs and exhaling hard and fast through pursed lips blew the powder into the bird's face and nostrils. The bird wiped it's beak back and forth a few times on itself then tried to wiggle free from my grip. The old man motioned as if I was to throw the bird into the air, which I did. Even in the short distance between bird and the ground, with my upward thrust the bird was able to extend it's wings and catch enough air to fly. Circling a few times at first cautiously then in an ever widening radius, the bird was soon gone. The old man clasped my shoulder in a reassuring fashion and said, "You did good, boy. The bird liked you."

I ran back to my house as fast as my legs would carry me all excited yelling at the top of my lungs about the bird and what the old man had done. Not showing even the remotest interest to the contents of the story or what I was trying to say, the woman of the couple told me in no uncertain terms, "Stay away from that old man, he's evil." Then her husband, only slightly more interested in the events, seemingly able to accept them more at face value, albeit without any response specifically, interjected, "That old curandero, he's harmless." It was the first time I ever heard the word curandero. You could have hit me with a hammer. Just hearing the word curandero, with me not having any knowledge behind the meaning, imbibed my soul with deep lingering aftermath of heart pounding results. I couldn't wait to see the old man again. Besides, I thought, healing an injured bird didn't seem anywhere near being evil.

WITHIN SIGHT OF THE DIVERGENCE

I learned over time that in the old man's culture he, the curandero, was almost thought of as being a medical doctor. He would put together some mixture or potion using different kinds of indigenous plants and weird stuff and give it to a person after hearing their problems. If they followed his directions, most of the time, just like I saw with the bird, their ills or whatever would be cured. The people who came to see him day after day, the men and women, boys and girls, women with babies or going to have babies, adults with their ancient and decrepit grandparents, all came seeking a remedy or cure from some ailment, create or improve a love life, and sometimes simply to totally just eliminate someone. Although I was told not to go near him I started watching him more thoroughly, at first from a distance, then closer and closer. Pretty soon he was asking me to get him something or hand him something or bring him water from the spigot or bring him a certain jar from a shelf --- which was big because under no circumstances would he ever let anybody even close to his shed let alone in it.

"The curandero, with forbearers springing from the pre-history of Mesoamerica constructing and building temples for a series of unknown Olmec, Mayan and Aztec kings, had as well, a centuries old unwavering blood-line on both the Spanish and Native American side, leading straight back into the past to ancestors who worked directly for the Franciscan Father, Junipero Serra, during the period Serra was establishing and building the Alta California mission system. Most of his ancestor's efforts circulated around the first of the missions, Mission Basilica San Diego Alcala, and in doing so, as peons, they were not much more than lower level worker bees, doing a lot of the early grunt work digging, cutting, gathering, transporting, moving, and making materials needed in the actual construction and building of the mission."

The Curandero and the Magic of the Mojave Desert Creosote Ring

At the time, the young boy that I was, when it was brought to my attention the curandero's ancestric blood line harkened back to the peoples of the early Mesoamerica cultures such as the Olmec, Mayan and Aztec, I didn't really have knowledge of those cultures. The closest I came circulated around a Captain Midnight Radio Premium offer called the Mystic Aztec Sun God Ring I basically only received free from Ovaltine just before being sent to live with the couple. The ring had a fairly well written informative brochure with all kinds of, but brief, run down on the Aztec sun god the ring was associated with. Armed with that information, slim as the brochure was, it still gave me enough Aztec info to talk to the curandero about as well as for him to expand back on even more. Because of our discussions he requested to see the ring. When I showed it to him he burst out loud in laughter saying at least I got my money's worth since it was free.

(please click image)

THE WANING AWAY OF THE DIVERGENCE

Both of the backyards, the one that the couple I was living with owned and the yard the curandero lived on, had a bunch of chickens that just ran around between both yards with neither party making claim to any of them or who they belonged to. Late in the day of the afternoon the curandero requested to see my ring he made a rather large fire in the fire pit and at the same time had me go around gathering up a half dozen eggs from the nests of the more-or-less free range feral chickens. Going through the eggs he selected three of the six and put small pin holes in each end of each of the three eggs. Putting the eggs one at a time to his mouth he blew into the egg through one hole forcing the inside of the egg out the other hole, the insides falling into a small three legged stone bowl. He stirred up the insides blown from the three eggs into a single consistency as if making scrambled eggs. He then took my Aztec sun god ring and dropped it into the egg batter. Before I was able to ask or say anything, or even attempt to stop him, he instantly turned toward the fire and threw the stone bowl, eggs, and ring directly into the now raging fire, flaring up big time as the ingredients hit the flames. He then put the six eggs, three regular and three supposedly empty into a cut in half egg carton telling me to have the woman of the house, calling her by name, to scramble all the eggs together at one time for breakfast.

The next morning the woman of the couple began breaking the eggs into a bowl one at a time. When she reached the fourth egg, which should have been empty since the other three were intact, it was a whole egg just like the first three. So were the last two, except when she cracked open the last one. It was not only a regular egg but it also had the Mystic Aztec Sun God Ring inside it. The man of couple pulled the ring out of the egg mixture and handed it to me, wanting to know what the hell was going on. I just shrugged my shoulders not knowing any more about than he did. The thing is, even though at a quick glance the ring that came out of the egg looked like my Captain Midnight free premium offer I gave the curandero, there was a huge difference, so much so even the man of the couple noticed it when he handed to me. He couldn't believe a ring with such quality and craftsmanship could be something they just gave away. And he was right.

The first glaring difference was the fact that the Mystic Aztec Sun God Ring I handed the curandero, like all of the Mystic Sun God rings sent out for the free Ovaltine radio premium offer, had an adjustable sliding ring band designed to fit any finger as can easily be seen in the photo below. However, the ring pulled out of the egg batter was one piece solid, that is, non-adjustable. Plus as well, later the ring proved to be solid gold and not just the gold plated brass of the original.

A little over ten years after the incident surrounding myself, the curandero, the fire pit, and the ring, found me having graduated from high school and waiting for a draft notice from ye olde friendly Selective Service System. During those few years between graduation and the draft I landed a pretty good job that paid pretty good wages, at least in those days, working for a seemingly innocuous little aerospace firm with a huge reputation only a short distance up Pacific Coast Highway from the little southern California beach town where I lived. I had been hired as a trainee technical illustrator for an even smaller offshoot of the company that helped design and build the high altitude breathing equipment for the then super-secret U-2 spy plane --- which basically meant I got paid for my drawing ability.

After having been there for a respectable amount of time and began to know a few people I started hanging out with a small, sort of loose-knit but quasi-exclusive group of people that fancied themselves artists much as I did of myself. Nearly every Friday after work we would meet in some small out of the way place like the Iconoclast Coffee House just up from the pier in Redondo Beach or the Insomniac across from the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, and depending where we were, order some wine, beer or coffee and talk art, philosophy and politics late into the night just like artists and beat poets did, we thought, in the West Bank sidewalk cafes of Paris.[1]

A couple of miles from my job was the Mattel Toy Company. Some of the people in the group knew some people at Mattel who also fancied themselves as artists and some of them joined us as well. One of the people that used to show up at those get togethers was Carlos Castaneda, who just happened to be working at Mattel at the time. Now, most people, especially those who know little or nothing about Castaneda's pre-Don Juan background, find themselves at a total loss as to why Castaneda would even bother to show up at our small, unprestigious, under-the-radar, and unheralded group of so-called artists. He did so because in those pre-Don Juan days, Castaneda likened himself as an artist --- and truth be told, our group was openly receptive to artists that had not made it simply because none of us had.

Castaneda, while admittedly higher ranking in the overall scheme of things and some ten years older than me, was not yet the cipher of an undergraduate student lost among the hundreds enrolled in the anthropology department at UCLA of his early years. Nor was he close to the later controversial figure he was destined to become. Matter of fact, as far as his academic career was concerned, he was really not much more than a vacuous-faced student enrollee at Los Angeles City College struggling along with everybody else to hammer out the 60 units of general education requirements needed for an AA degree all the while sleeping on sofas and on the floor of a variety of friends apartments. It was still about a year or so before he would transfer to UCLA and many more after that before he would meet the nearly white-haired Yaqui Indian shaman sorcerer he called Don Juan Matus at the Greyhound bus station in Nogales, Arizona --- the powerful shaman sorcerer that eventually became the focus of Castaneda's dozen or so books and that made Castaneda rich and both of them famous.

DON JUAN MATUS AND THE NOGALES BUS STATION MEETING

On one of the nights when both Castaneda and I was there at the same time, I just happened to be wearing, for no particular reason, the post-curandero Mystic Sun God ring, the one that went through the fire and in the eyes of the curandero became "real." Castaneda noticed the ring and asked if the bright red gemstone was a ruby. Castaneda was born in Peru and spent his growing up childhood there. So said, he most likely had zero knowledge of anything related to Captain Midnight Radio Premiums, so in seeing the ring he drew or saw no analogy between my ring and a 1940's give away toy offer. As I took the ring off and handed it to him I told him I had taken the ring to have it appraised and was told the gemstone was an Aztec sacred stone called a Mexican fire opal, the purest most flaw-free unblemished example the appraiser had ever seen. As a matter of fact, no sooner had Castaneda examined the ring, after what I would call nothing less falling into a minutes-long trance after somehow being locked into gazing into the Aztec's legendary fire opal and me having to shake him out of it, than he, although he didn't and it wasn't for sale, offered to buy it.(see)

Several years after my mother died my father remarried. In the process of that marriage he called the family back together, that is, me and my two brothers, to live together as one family under one roof. However, it didn't quite work out that way. The woman he married, who was his age, had never been married nor ever had or been around kids to speak of. When she married my dad she basically had three upper age kids sprung on her full time after never having raised us from babies or toddlers. She was at the time quite wealthy and in her life style she paid everybody to do everything. Her solution, to do the same with us until she learned the ropes so to speak.

For me, at least as I saw it then and still do now, it couldn't have worked out any better. My Uncle, who had spent most of his adult life operating in and around the Taos, Santa Fe, New Mexico area as well as a good part of the rest of the desert southwest, was asked to come to Los Angeles, on what he thought would be a short-term basis by my Stepmother to oversee me. Under my stepmother's ever watchful eye and buckets full of money my uncle was given complete guardianship as he so chose as long as I received extensive education in the sciences, hard academics, philosophy, and the arts. As my uncle saw it travel, if done right, by it's very nature was educational. In that he had extensive knowledge and experience in the desert southwest, for travel he decided to start there, which meant basically a series of road trips all over the desert southwest as they could be fit in.

During many of those road trips we used Route 66 as our main thoroughfare. In doing so Meteor Crater was always within striking distance, of which we took advantage of many times. In those days access to the crater was pretty much wide open as it wasn't "owned" nor particularly regulated or monitored by anybody. No sooner had school let out for the summer of 1947 than it found us working our way across the desert after having holed up for some minor exploration at the Elden Pueblo where prehistoric Native Americans had buried in a ritual fashion an extremely rare type meteorite called primitive achondrite --- sometimes known as winonaite --- thought possibly to have come from the surface of Mars or the far side of the Moon. From there we camped near the pit houses along the rim of Meteor Crater including a rather long discussion around the campfire about Albert Franklin Banta, the man who reportedly discovered the crater and the fact that he was involved in what has come to be called The Long Walk endured by the Navajos and Apaches, for him and me all actual hands on educational stuff.

One daylight visit I hiked down into and on to the crater floor as part of a sanctioned university field trip, of which was duly authorized and recorded (see). Otherwise, except for a basically unrecorded layover along the rim in the summer of 1972 related to the death of a friend of my uncle, movie actress Rochelle Hudson, the last time I had been to the crater was in 1989. As my uncle was nearing the end of his life he had called me to his side and given me a huge black feather that, as young boy, had once belonged to me that I thought had been lost forever to the ravages of time --- and of which, as I remembered correctly, was nearly as wide as the span of my hand and as long as I, a ten year old boy, was tall.[2]

Without my knowledge he had kept it carefully wrapped and tied in soft buckskin, hidden away from prying eyes all these years. He told me he "was getting up there" and wanted to ensure the correct "passage" of the feather. He said for me to secrete the feather away and arrange to have, upon my death, someone very close to me take it to the crater and in a certain rite, burn it. Instead, not for me, but in deference to my uncle and his legacy, unbeknownst to anybody, including any crater authorities, on a windy night at exactly midnight June 19th, on the closest full moon to the Summer Solstice following his death, using a special box kite based on a design by Leonardo Da Vinci, as the cold wind howled down the crater wall and up the other side, I tied the feather to the string as close to the kite as I could and ran it out hundreds of yards into the night sky. As the full moon passed directly overhead and the pull of the kite and string was taut and nearly straight up, I let the string slip from my fingers, eventually allowing the end of it to pass from my hand. The design of the kite soared the string and feather high into the silver illuminated black sky, beyond the horizon of the crater rim, carrying it aloft higher and higher until it disappeared from view, following backward toward the southwest the incoming trajectory of the meteor those thousands of years ago and replicating in thought and deed it's original wind-swept loss from me as a young ten year old boy.

Finishing my almost ritual-like task I gathered up what few things I had stuffing them into my shoulder bag then began wending my way back up out of the crater the best that I could in the dark. Cresting the top I noticed in the still dark, yet relatively well lit full moon night, some distance away along the crater edge, what appeared to be the flickering red-orange glow light from a fire dancing off the stone remains of the ruins of the one time long ago visitor center.

After making my way closer to the ruins in the dark I could see a lone man sitting in front of the fire on a log-like one time roof support beam, with his back toward me. As I entered the structure carefully making my way around the rubble from the mostly collapsed building as best I could, the man turned slightly in my direction making eye contact. Startled, I could easily see the man was the curandero, dressed all the same as he was the first time I ever saw him when I was an eight year old. An unwashed looking pullover string tied white shirt with no buttons, baggy white pants with the bottom back of the cuffs heavily ragged along the edges because of always dragging in the dirt, and a well worn pair of beat-up old sandals --- except now the curandero would have to be a hundred years old or older. I sat on the log next to him for the longest time without a word passing between us. As the fire continued to burn unchanged all the time I sat there with no new wood or kindling added the curandero, without turning toward me or any prompting said, "107," followed by another long period of silence and no change in the fire. Then, again without any prompting, he asked if I had the ring. At first, having no clue, my response was, "Ring, what ring?"

He clarified it was the Mystic Aztec Sun God ring born of an egg with a yolk of pure gold. I told him I hadn't seen it in several years, that somehow along the way I had misplaced it, and although I looked for it many times I hadn't been able to run across it. He asked me if anyone had shown an excessive interest in it. I told him throughout the years many had admired the ring, mostly out of curiosity, but the only person who expressed a continuing desire for it was about thirty years before when a funny little Peruvian guy, who later became quite famous and quite rich in things shaman, appeared adamant about having it. The curandero asked if he had put the ring on and when I said I thought that he had the fire instantly went out in a sudden whoosh, and except for the full moon sitting off over our shoulders low in the west, leaving us in a thick blanket of darkness.

The wind that had been howling so powerfully up the crater walls earlier vanished as well, engulfing us with an incredible silence and stillness. The curandero asked if I still carried my signaling mirror. When I nodded yes he asked me to hand it to him, which I did. He held the mirror face high in front of himself slowly angling the mirror's reflective surface towards me at eye height, telling me to say stop when I saw the moon. I knew the trick. It was the old Japan's first female Zen master Chiyono Mugai Nyodai moon in the water thing. The moon in the mirror was a reflection of the moon, not the moon itself so whatever he did I would never see the moon. I turned and pointed to the moon with one arm knowing it too was a reflection, the light taking a little more than a second to reach my eyes from the moon's surface, the light having bounced off after sun's nine minute or so trip. Still pointing I touched the moon's reflection in the mirror with one finger of my other hand. The knowing realization of the truth for the both of us and oneness of it all flowed through me like an overwhelming surge of electricity, stunning the curandero with me in between as a conduit, throwing me into a trance-like state, only breaking the spell within seconds when the weight of my arm caused my finger to drop from the surface of the mirror. With the dropping of my arm, curled closed in the three fingers below my pointing finger, seemingly out of nowhere, was the legendary fire opal.

Even with the totality of he ring nowhere to be seen, having the fire opal itself, it didn't just pop up out of nowhere as it seemed. In those few seconds the something which is me shot through the empyrean time shield slowing to a crawl when I came across a point when I saw the ring last, a few minutes of time in the spring of 1982. I was in my room unpacking after a flight from northern California to visit Adam Osborne, a childhood friend who recently moved to Silicone Valley. When I went to see him I took my Captain Midnight Photo-Matic Code-O-Graph that figured so prominently in both of our lives when we were little kids running around the ashram of the venerated Indian holy man the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi in Tiruvannamalai south India. I had put the decoder in my shoulder bag because I didn't want it away from my person while traveling. For whatever reason, when I got back, instead of putting the decoder in its glass-door display case with the others I took it out of my shoulder bag and put it in a red metal toolbox-like container from my old college days that I now used as a handy place for small valuables, a jewelry box as it were for tie tacs, cuff links and other stuff I never used. The toolbox come jewelry box was designed so when the lid was pulled back it raised a little cantilever shelf along with it that had several distinct areas for small items. When I opened the tool box to put in the Photo-Matic Code-O-Graph I saw the ring in one of the sections.

While still in the room and the apparent electrified trance-like state, a feeling came over me like I had all the time in the world. I wanted to do more than I was sent to do, like go outside of the room to see what was on the other side, run to the beach, swim to Catalina, fly in the sky. But the curandero would have no part of it, telling me I was being seduced by the euphoria. Guiding me to remain on task he asked if I was alone in the room, was I sure it was the last time I saw the ring before reaching the crater, that I had not given it to anybody else, and wanting to know what I did next. I told him I was alone and sure it was the last time I saw the ring before the crater, that I put the Code-O-Graph in the tool box never touching the ring, closed the lid and put the box back on the shelf in the closet shutting the door. The curandero, closer to being three-dimensionally shadow-like than solid as if a body of fog in structure and color, had me move through to the point in time I put the decoder in the tool box, but instead of closing the lid and putting the box back in the closet the curandero put his hand on the now fully superimposed me over the other me guiding my arm until I picked up the ring, closing my hand and palm into a fist tightly around it with his other hand, then backing away. The other me, the real-time me for that frame of reference, except for a glance around as if there was something there, was otherwise totally unaware, putting the box on the shelf just as before, closing the closet door as done previously, except for now, unknown to him, sans ring, it being securely clutched in my hand with the curandero gone.(see)

After clinching my fist, what I perceived as even less than a micro-second, the setting instantly morphed from standing where I was and what I was to again being in the ruins standing in front of the rock strewn onetime hearth of the fireplace. The curandero edged the fingers of my hand open to see my time-trip trophy. Mysteriously however, if such a term as mysteriously could be applied to such circumstances, the metal ring portion was not there, only the fire opal. The curandero, unconcerned and holding the gemstone, turned toward the fireplace and began fiddling with the logs, poking at them with a stick, the logs rolling over throwing sparks into the air then slowly reigniting itself eventually returning to as it was before going out. With the return of the flames the surface of the fire opal began catching the light, then as if absorbing power, glowing a brilliant bright red as if from an inner light of it's own. The curandero, using his thumb and index finger to form a circle and holding the opal positioned between the tips of both thumb and finger he thrust his bare hand toward the fire's orange almost golden flames. When he did a single extended flame-arm of it's own leaped from the fireplace toward him wrapping his wrist and hand in a grip of fire. Jumping back thrusting his arm lengthwise outward from his side and half-spinning in a circular fashion away from the fire he was able in that single move to gain freedom from the fire's grasp and extinguish the flame by cutting off it's source. However, in the process of thrusting his arm out combined with the circular turn he let loose of the gemstone flying across the ruins hitting me in the chest, dropping to the rock and stone covered dirt floor. When I began searching through the rubble for the gemstone I found it and the ring was whole again, the metallic portion of the ring that the gemstone set in fully returned. Seeing such, the curandero motioned for me to hand him the ring and when I did he handed me my signaling mirror, which I had owned since a young boy, only now the unbreakable surface had been shattered as if hit with a sledgehammer.[3] [4]

APPORTATION REVISITED

Settling back in the ruins as best we could the curandero asked if I remembered anything about Aztlan, the legendary home of the Aztecs prior to their migration and arrival in Mexico that he had spoken with me about many times when I was a young boy. I told him yes, but it had been years since I had thought about it in any concentrated manner and that the specifics were no longer clear. Briefly, as he brought them forth, the Aztecs were one of seven tribes that lived many leagues north of their final destination into Mesoamerica, and more specifically for the Aztecs, the location of present day Mexico City which at the time of their arrival was not much more than an empty island surrounded by a marsh-like lake or swamp. According to Aztec tradition their departure from their original homeland of Aztlan as correlated against our present day calendar was on May 24, 1064 AD. Their departure was sparked ten years earlier by what was taken as an omen, the appearance of a "guest star" that was so bright it could be seen even during daylight hours. The year was 1054 AD, but by 1056 AD, two years later, it was nowhere to be seen. Then in 1066 AD, two years into their years-and-years migration south a second omen appeared, what we now call Halley's Comet. The big thing though for the curandero was what happened in the northern reaches where it is thought the peoples who became the Aztecs originally migrated from and why. If you remember the traditional departure date of the Aztec forebearers from their homeland was May 24, 1064 AD. Their original homeland in the north has never been specifically pinpointed, but for a variety of strongly associated reasons, Aztec historical descriptions of their lands on one side and language on the other, it has for many historians and others been narrowed down. Classical Nahuatl, the Aztec language, belongs to the Uto-Aztecan family of languages found throughout the Southwestern United States, that is, an area what is now comprised of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, an area of which the curandero was in agreement with.

After having been refreshed or semi-determined for me by the curandero as to where the Aztec ancestors may have originated, he introduced a third event besides the two astronomical events previously cited. Stating the first two events could have been observed from almost any human inhabitable area, they most likely would not have had any or enough impact to drive an established civilization from their homeland. However, the third event was not an astronomical observation, but a geographically physical event that occurred in a given area at a given time. That event was a series of volcanic eruptions that before it was done had blanketed a large portion of the Southwestern United States with lava and volcanic ash, an eruption that reached one of its strongest explosive discharges between the growing seasons of 1064–1065 AD, right where the Uto-Aztecan ancestors of the Aztecs lived and had to evacuate in order to survive. Hence, on May 24, 1064 AD, their migration south.[5]

The largest vent of the eruption along a miles long fissure was Sunset Crater, the source of the Bonito and Kana-a lava flows that extended 1.6 miles NW and 6 miles NE. Another fissure extending 6.2 miles SE produced additional lava flows 4 miles to the east. Besides the solidifying hard packed lava spreading out all over, the Sunset Crater coughed up a blanket of ash covering an area of more than 810 square miles, with the main portion covering large sections of the local inhabitants already barely arable land used primarily for subsistence farming under several feet of ash.

Now, while the curandero more-or-less capsulized the above because I was already familiar with what he was trying impart, for our purposes here I have elaborated it somewhat. What he had to say only took a few minutes without any background explanation. However, just as he was finishing we heard the sound of a vehicle in the distance along with headlights slowly crawling along the rim, apparently authorities attracted by the fire. Some way off the vehicle stopped, the headlights went out, then we saw what looked like flashlights being carried by two people headed our way. The curandero waved the fire out and the two of us quickly headed along the rim in the opposite direction putting as much distance between us and the people with the flashlights. When it was obvious they would never be able to catch us or find us we slowed our pace with me wondering how a 100 plus year old man was even able to walk let alone traverse the terrain of the crater rim in the dark. When we stopped we saw the vehicle lights heading back in the other direction. When I asked the curandero what now, he said he wanted to go to the Pit Houses situated along the crater rim. It was then I knew we were, or at least I was, in trouble, curandero trouble.

-----

I figured it must have been maybe sometime around two in the morning when we settled in on the remains of one of the pit houses floor. The curandero entered into a deep trance like state while I sat flush against the back wall of the ruins directly opposite of the entrance across from him dozing on and off. Sometime over an hour later he shook off the trance, got up, and headed out of the pit house ruins with me following. Before stepping up on to the rim proper I remembered I had removed my canteen belt. Stopping to retrieve it, across the ruins with my back turned away from the one time pit house entrance I heard what sounded like a commotion or scuffle between the curandero and someone. Thinking the men with the flashlights returned and confronted the curandero I grabbed my canteens and moved quickly as I could toward the front edge of the ruins with all plans to intercede if need be.

Instead of any kind of a confrontation the curandero was part way down the slope walking in a northwest direction with no sign of anybody else and me some distance behind playing catch up. Soon we reached the more level ground of the Canyon Diablo Scatter Field still headed northwest, but now with no sign of the full moon, coming of a sunrise, or stars in the sky. Then, almost as if I had been walking on a stationary treadmill for I don't know how long, my peripheral vision returned after having been gone because of the darkness, the terrain was back albeit changed, and stars were once again in the sky except now the constellations were of another season than the June night sky when I left the crater. Easily seen was Sirius the Dog Star, Orion the Hunter with his three star belt, and much different than I had ever seen, some distance from Orion's shoulder the brightest star I had ever seen in the night sky, a star that as we continued to walk slowly became less and less bright only to disappeared altogether when none of the other stars did.

I could tell the curandero was on a mission and pushing himself well beyond his normal endurance. It was also clear that his strength was continuing to diminish, beginning to wane and fade in his ability to go on, yet still he pushed. I was sure he was drawing power of some kind from beyond the edges of the conventional plane. The source or strength he was tapping was taking its toll, taxing the connection between what he could draw on and what he would have to pay back. Nothing is free, he was becoming weaker and emaciated as time wore on, looking more and more to me like the semi organaform-being called the Death Defier I encountered as a young boy traveling with my uncle in the same desert southwest.

I knew in his present state I could help but he wouldn't let me close knowing I would be weakened in the process, something he didn't want to happen, even though I knew I could recover and he might not. He told me assisting him out of the pit house and offering him water was enough, he had to do the rest on his own. The thing is, without his resources and abilities, who I voluntarily followed to where we were, if his life force were to evaporate or dissipate, he would be gone and I could be stranded. When I told him besides I was behind him back at the pit house and couldn't have helped him out or offered him water, he said, "That's what you say now."

Finally we arrived at the place and time he sought. Because of a strong innate feeling of familiarity between myself and immersion into the environment I had a developing good insight into where we were, just not when we were or why. We had left Meteor Crater headed northwest across the Canyon Diablo Scatter Field and I knew the Sunset Crater that figured so prominently in our conversations about Aztlan and the ancestors of the Aztec people migrating south played a big part in what we were doing. Sunset Crater is roughly 35 miles in a northwest direction from Meteor Crater the same direction we were headed. I'm not sure how far we walked or how long we walked, but I was pretty sure the bright star I saw some distance from Orion's shoulder that dimmed and disappeared before my eyes as I walked was in the same location as the Crab Nebula should have been. My guess as to what I saw was the super nova of 1054 AD that was visible in the daytime sky for twenty-three days and in the nighttime sky for over six hundred fifty-three days before it dimmed from view and of which the remnant remains created the crab nebula. Seeing the "star" placed my point in time as well as, relative to me, how fast time was moving. It only took only a short time, maybe a half hour or so as I judged it for the star to disappear while walking, when in the conventional passage of time it took close to two years.

I figured the time was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1064–1065 AD when what came to be the Sunset Crater began reaching towards its strongest explosive discharges said to be around 1084 AD. I say so because what I saw and deemed to be the Sunset Crater was in an early development stage, a proto-crater infant state prior to becoming the cinder cone we know today that rises some 1,000 feet above the surrounding lay of the land with the summit topping out at 8,042 feet above sea level. The time I was talking about here, the crest or top edge of the crater had not yet reached very high above the surrounding ground surface it was oozing from.

"This eruption heavily affected prehistoric inhabitants over a wide area, forcing migration and dramatically altering settlements, subsistence, economics, and rituals.

"The eruption developed in three distinct phases: an initial fissure phase, followed by a highly explosive phase, and a final low explosive waning phase. The first phase was characterized by the opening of a 10-km-long fissure (6.2 miles), which produced spatter mounds (Gyp Crater), and an effused lava flow from the southwest end of the fissure (Vent 512).

"During the second highly explosive phase, the activity migrated to the northwest to evolve into a single vent eruption, which formed the main scoria cone (Sunset Crater). The central vent activity was initially characterized by variable eruptive styles, which started the process of cone building, deposited a second pyroclastic layer starting the effusion of the two main lava flows (Bonito and Kana'a)."

Sunset Crater, San Francisco Volcanic Field

The curandero, had no real overt need for a specific knowledge of calendar dates, which in reality are not much more than human made conceptual constructs superimposed over perceived to have existed, existing, or somebody's idea of yet to come phenomenon. So said, without me realizing that he was, the curandero had been observing a continuing thinning of the crescent moon over a period of several nights --- to a point of it basically disappearing if you didn't know when or where to look. I found out why early on the morning following maybe his third night of watching. He had been waiting.[6]

With the coming of the sunrise following the end of his wait, as I remained some distance back on the cool dirt soil of the surrounding terrain, I watched the curandero heading toward the lava field wondering what he was up to. Then, for whatever he was up to, I saw why. The bright orb or the sun had only just begun to show itself a short distance above the far away eastern horizon when it began to dull then darken significantly. It just so happened on what one day would coordinate to the calendar date October 2, 1065, there occurred a total eclipse of the sun. The future location of the Sunset Crater where two of us stood as well as the future home of the Aztecs in the distant, yet to be Mexico City, were at the same time, direct recipients of being well under the half way mark above the central path of the full shadow of the eclipse. The curandero had been timing the disappearance of the waning moon to becoming a new moon with that of the daily rise of the sun knowing the end result would be an overlapping conjunction, otherwise known as an eclipse.[7]

With the sun becoming more and more covered by darkness, the curandero, like an Indian Hindu fakir walking across hot coals in his bare feet, albeit still wearing sandals, stepped up onto the narrowest width side of the recently formed lava closest to the growing crater and started walking across it. Blatantly disregarding any common sense as I viewed it, he pushed himself closer and closer to the crater's glowing edge, with the temperature not only rising and radiating out in all directions the closer he got, but so too, grappling with the uncomfortably warm to increasingly hot solidified lava beneath his feet. When he reached a point he could safely go no further he turned and showed me he had the Mystic Aztec Sun God ring held between his thumb and index finger. Then, gripping the ring in like a major league outfielder throwing a hardball to home plate he tossed the ring as hard and as high and as far as he could toward the crater with the ring landing right on target, the center of the crater. The instant the ring touched the bubbling surface of the lava in the volcano than a super powerful explosion-like thin flat circular disk of searing-hot high speed wind expanded outwards from the center, laying horizontal to and only a few feet above the ground.

Before I was even able to respond the rounded leading edge of the plasma disk expanding away from the crater center at an incredible high rate of speed hit the curandero just above his hips mid-body, the disk edge slamming into me almost just a quick. As the thick hot air of the plasma disk plunged against my body while attempting to turn away and drop to the ground the curandero flew past me back through a wider open area beside me while I was thrust at an equal high speed into a bunch of bushes and scrub brush directly behind breaking any further backward momentum.

I came around from a knocked-out or unconscious state sometime later, seemingly unscathed with no broken bones, burns, or apparent bodily harm, although unsure how long I had been out. I immediately began searching for the curandero, finally finding him face down in the dirt some distance from me and the volcano. Still alive and breathing with no signs of burns he too seemed unscathed but unconscious. I dug a four to six inch deep body-length body-width hole next to him filling it with boughs from surrounding trees and rolled him into it face up. Any of you who have come across my works on the internet have probably read that even as a very young boy traveling in the desert I invariably wore or had with me close by a two-canteen G.I. belt along with a couple of "Carlisle" first aid pouches in of which was full of all kinds of stuff. Stainless steel pocket knife with a fold-out fork and spoon. Compass. Signaling mirror. Waterproof matches. It was still true when I accessed the crater floor. Left unsaid elsewhere, except perhaps in The Roswell Ray Gun, was the fact that one of the canteens had a standard G.I. issue fold out handle cup that fit snugly on the bottom of the canteen with both fitting into the canvas carrying case. The other canteen had what the Army called a canteen stove that fit the same way as the cup and case. On the other hand, in another vein completely, I write in Travels in the Yucatan that I had a couple of small packets of some really powerful herbal medicine from Southeast Asia or India stashed away in my shoulder bag that was intended for emergencies only that when taken together you could pull the skin off an elephant --- herbal medicines I have purposely left here unnamed, but fall under the much broader Sanskrit word of Aushadhis. I had a handful of the same with me on this trip.[8]

-----

Although I have been with and around spiritual elders, curanderos, and Obeah, and have watched, seen, and participated in any number of their practices and rituals, including the supernormal perceptual states known in Sanskrit as Siddhis via Indian holy men and others, I don't claim to be one or at the level of any of them. However, I knew I had to get the curandero up and around and strong enough so he could cure himself, if nothing else with my assist. If he never came to or died I could be trapped in time wherever I was. I took the canteen stove, couple of heating tablets and some water along with a good helping of both the herbs and brewed them together into a strong hot tea forcing the curandero to drink it. Then, after making and drinking a minor amount of the tea myself, saving back several helpings of the herbs as a precaution I sat back and waited. Nightfall came and still nothing. I climbed into the rocks a little ways up above the curandero making myself as comfortable as possible watching the ever turning slow grind of the circumpolar stars wending their endless track around the north star. Soon after so many hours I just fell asleep. The next morning just as the sun was coming up I stirred awake from the rustling sounds of the curandero up and about. I made more tea, this time much stronger and brought him up to date with the events that transpired. He was no longer emaciated, appearing a lot more robust and for sure much younger, especially after nearly two full days or rest and sleep, although truth be said, some of that time was in an unconscious state. The two herbs mixed together making a strong tea, herbs not from my minor expertise but concocted by a man of spells, gave both the curandero and myself huge amounts of endurance, manual and physical dexterity, keenness of vision and mental acuity. For how long neither of us knew, but we both hoped the effects would endure long enough for the curandero to gather up what he needed to do his thing.

As mentioned elsewhere, the original Mystic Aztec Sun God ring was a free Captain Midnight Radio Premium giveaway circa 1946. They were made out of brass, with the outer surface covered by a thin gold plated veneer. It was then topped off by a faux gemstone, made of plastic and designed to resemble a red Mexican Aztec fire opal, in reality a rare and expensive stone, especially after being cut and polished. The ring's gemstone, called here a gemstone by me even though it was neither a gem nor a stone, was designed to slide back exposing a hollowed out secret compartment. The design also allowed the gemstone to be completely slid off the ring and unknown to me prior to the curandero tossing the ring into the fire pit in the back yard next to the couple's house that night is exactly what he did, slide the gemstone off. Later, when no one was around, and again unknown to me or anybody, the curandero carefully and meticulously, almost surgically somehow, slit the gemstone through the center-middle into two equal right and left pieces, the two sides fitting back together like two pieces of bread.

ORIGINAL FAUX GEMSTONE MADE OF PLASTIC
(please click image)

Several days after the curandero threw the ring into the fire pit when I was a kid back at the couple's house, and unrelated to the incident, an older woman came to visit him. She said she was the grandmother of a young girl he had treated in some fashion and that her granddaughter had been brought to him by her mother, the older woman's daughter. The grandmother was aghast that her daughter would take a sick child to such a person as a curandero and strongly advised against it causing a huge rift between them. However, when the woman's granddaughter health returned, seemingly miraculously cured, although still an avowed non-believer in such things, she had to come and thank the curandero and asked him if there was anything she could do in return. As the curandero was walking the woman back to her car he told her all of that had been dealt with between himself and the young girl's mother.

In 1946, which was not many months after the end of World War II, domestic automobile manufacturers were far from being up to speed building new cars, so seeing or having a new car in those days, was a little on the rare side. The woman that came to see the curandero actually had a brand new car, one of the few new cars available at the time, a full size four door sedan called a Hudson Commodore. The curandero, taking sight of the car told the lady maybe there was something she could do. After a short explanation she was all in.

That afternoon not long after the woman left the curandero went into his lean-to shack and began searching through his ingredients and materials gathering together a variety of special things from different shelves including two perfectly matched earthenware terracota tea pot like vessels with lids but without spouts or handles. That evening, sitting on the ground cross legged in the dark in front of the firepit alone, under the dim light cast from the fire, the curandero smoothed out two animal skins in the dirt. In the very center of each animal skin he placed one half of the red faux gemstone from the Mystic Sun God ring. He then took two very ancient looking pieces of linen slightly longer than a foot square one way, tearing them into strips the full length of the cloth, each strip ending about inch wide until he had twenty strips. He put ten with one of the terracota pots and the other ten with the other pot. He then took two small wide-mouth cork topped glass bottles, and from a couple of larger bottles mixed together some sort of liquid, pouring even amounts of each into each of the smaller jars. From a closed lid tin can he removed a hand grip of dried weed-like plants, dividing the plants into two even groups. After having removed one of the half gemstones from one group and dropping it into a small bag around his neck while leaving the other, he took the otherwise evenly divided groups of items putting each group into separate matching drawstring cloth bags.

A couple of days slipped by, and in no way authorized by the couple I was living with because I forgot to ask, found me riding in the backseat of the Hudson along with the curandero comfortably sitting in the front passenger seat and the woman driving, the three of us headed eastbound on Route 66 out toward the middle of the desert about 150 miles from where I lived. Our goal, Amboy Crater, an 80,000 year old cinder cone volcano that rises about 250 feet above the surrounding lava field and unknown to me at the time, an almost duplicate to the Sunset Crater that figured so prominently later in my life. At the time we are talking about here Amboy Crater did have in it's favor, as opposed to Sunset Crater, being within a few hours driving time from where the curandero and I lived while Sunset Crater was well over 350 miles away in Arizona..

-----
AMBOY CRATER, CALIFORNIA-----------------------------------------------------------------SUNSET CRATER, ARIZONA

After arrival the curandero got out of the car carrying the cloth bags clearly laden to the top along with a bunch of other stuff including two bota bags full of water, one for each of us, with the curandero telling me not to take it off under any circumstances after putting it over my shoulder. With that the two of us headed toward the crater with me following in his footsteps. The woman, who had told the curandero of her intentions previously, drove off to the nearby small town of Amboy to see what was there and get something to eat. The curandero, with me right behind him, went around to a spot in the crater that was much lower than the rest of the rim looking as though the side had been breached somehow. We climbed up the side of the breach then down into the crater. The crater floor had what looked like two dry lakes or one dry lake divided by a lava wall. Both lakes were scattered here and there all around with lava rocks. The curandero walked out into the center of the first of the two dry lakes, sat down and proceeded to remove items from one of the bags, placing them in the dirt in front of him. He dug a small hole in front of himself the best he could then wiggled the terracota not a tea pot looking vessel in the hole. He then carefully pulled the ten pieces of linen out of a pouch, showing me the linen saying it had been made by the ancestors of the Aztecs centuries ago. With that he put the strips into a bowl of the previously mixed liquid one at a time leaving them to soak. After the last one had soaked for awhile he started putting the strips into the terracota pot one at a time. When half of the strips were in the pot he stopped and took of all things one half of the faux gemstone he had cut in two from my original Mystic Sun God ring he had thrown into the fire back at home and dropped it into the pot. Then he resumed putting the remaining half of the linen strips into the pot. When he was done, using the dry grass he brought with him, he started a small fire in an ancient and traditional way dropping the burning grass into the pot. Immediately, whatever the liquid was burst into flames settling down just burning in the pot. Then we waited.

An hour or so after the flames settled below the rim of the pot than a thick dark smoke looking all the same as a DNA helix began wafting out of the pot. The curandero took two straw-like wheat stems he brought with him putting one end in his mouth indicating with a hand gesture for me to follow his lead with the second one. He then stuck the free end of the straw into the thick helix like smoke drawing a huge big puff into his lungs motioning me to do likewise, which I did.

It wasn't until three days later, possibly more, before the curandero and I were found by state troopers showing up out of nowhere in Needles, California, a small desert community located along the Colorado River some 70 miles almost due east of the Amboy Crater. In the officers words we were sitting in the hot sun on the curb along Route 66, incoherent, with no substantial identification nor clearly knowing how we got there. The curandero in his own inimitable way feigned not being able to speak or understand English leaving it to me to come up with an explanation why we were there. I told the officers the old man was my grandfather and was like a doctor to his people. He had come to the Colorado River to obtain some special plants that only grew along the river in order to cure a sick patience and I came along. Then I added that the person who was supposed to pick us up never showed leaving us stranded. I gave the officers the only contact number I had, my grandmother, who lived in the mountain resorts about 100 miles east of Los Angeles. Contacting my grandmother she asked if instead of a jail cell could we be put up in a motel for a night or two until she got there. The police said they couldn't do that, but the wife of one of the officers, after hearing our tribulations and talking with my grandmother, decided to take it upon herself to deal with it. The curandero and I were put in an actual, real in 1946 Route 66 motel right on the Mother Road itself, staying a night, a day, and a whole other night before my grandmother came and got us.

You may remember back at the the just forming Sunset Crater on the morning of the total eclipse when the curandero threw the Mystic Aztec Sun God ring born of an egg with a yolk of pure gold into the hot lava, there was an explosion of sorts that impacted the two of us to a point that it required a day or two for the two of us to recover. Once recovered we slowly began exploring and reconnoitering the surrounding area in ever widening circles. Even though we saw no people, we continually came across inferences and signs that others had been there before. Stone fire rings. Remains of one time wikiup-like shelters. Maybe not recently, but signs non-the-less. We both knew there were large groups of tribal people somewhere, we just weren't sure where because neither of us knew where they were during the specific era we were in. The curandero said because of the "guest star" and the eclipse it had to be close to or around the time his people migrated south. He figured Sunset Crater was maybe 1300 miles northwest of where Mexico City would someday be located. He figured once I was securely back in my own time he would travel to Mexico and become his own ancestor. I asked him if he didn't make it would his blood line disappear and then he wouldn't be. He told me that couldn't happen because he was here now and all signs point to him being able to go there. If he didn't make it he wouldn't be standing before me. I suggested rather than such a long journey, 1300 miles say at the most 25 miles a day (52 days) why not go to one of the tribal groups migrating south and just impregnate one of the women as the same rules would apply. He said he hadn't thought of that, but he might do both.

The curandero ended up where he was with no plans that it would run into any chronological or otherwise length of time being there. What that meant was when he arrived he did not have nor had he brought any extensive paraphernalia or materials to practice his craft with, a craft he not only used to help others, but also himself. His decision after arrival to join or become one of his own ancestors, which to me had all the trappings of what is known as a Bootstrap Paradox, changed the equation. Our explorations, or his explorations with my assist as the case may be, of the general area was for the curandero to obtain some of the ingredients and stuff he needed, medicinal plants, herbs, and insects for example. Since his curandero skills had been propagated in and around the environs of the desert southwest most of his life he was in no short supply of basically everything he needed.

(please click image)

Unknowingly, on what turned out to be our last excursion into the close by and surrounding hinterlands, the curandero noticed a small white trumpet-shaped flower all by itself or possibly with others, high up along a rock ledge and asked me to climb up and get it. Even though at his age the climb could be construed as being a little on the kind of "iffy" side, like most of his kind, he insisted in obtaining his herbs and medicinal plants himself, at least when it came to the primary or main ingredients anyway. He did know in my specific case, after all the years traveling with my uncle, who was a renown biosearcher, that on many a plant expedition I had long since learned all the ins-and-outs, rituals, and sacred details about how to dig up and obtain plants --- not using a metal tool, using branches from tree-friends of the plant, and even apologizing to the plant-spirit every time for taking them and assuring them that someday the diviner's own body will serve as food for them so, all in all, the plants and ourselves are even --- are all things my uncle taught me. When I got up among the rocks as close as I could holding on with one hand and reaching for the plant with the other, from above a round wooden staff about an inch and a half in diameter pushed against the top of my hand stopping me. Visually following the length of the staff upwards I could see it was being held by a man. I was so startled I let go of my grip falling clear to the ground landing on my back, albeit with the plant fully grasped in my hand. Looking up to where I fell from and still on my back I yelled to the curandero that I saw a man in the rocks. When I turned to my hands and knees to help myself up while looking for the curandero he was standing some distance away talking to the man as though they were long lost buddies. Stuffing the plant into my shoulder bag, which included several of the flowers and leaves from the same plant that couldn't be seen from ground level, I thought, am I some kind of a dumb fuck or what.

As I got closer, even though the man showed no indication that he had ever seen me or knew me, I realized the two of us had met before. We met under some unusual circumstances during one of my first real excursions into the desert southwest on my own and without my uncle. I was traveling to a place called Supai Village in the center of the Havasupai Indian Reservation located in the Grand Canyon at the bottom of an offshoot canyon about ten miles from the main canyon rim. Supai Village is one of the most isolated and remote communities in the lower 48 states. The only way into or out of the village is either to hike eight miles to or from the trailhead, ride a mule along the same trail, or take a helicopter --- the helicopter option not even existing back in the days I was hiking the trail. I had heard there were pictographs, or petroglyphs if you will, in an area of the canyons that have been identified by some as a Diplodocus, a huge plant eating dinosaur from the Jurassic Period, as well as a depiction of an elephant or possibly a Mastodon and several ibex --- and I was hoping to see them for myself.

INCIDENT AT SUPAI
A SHAMANIC JOURNEY OUTSIDE THE TRADITION

Now here, at the time of the basic creation of Sunset Crater, was the same man. The curandero was speaking to him in some language I had never heard before. As the curandero finished his conversation he put something into the man's palm which he in turn put into a small leather-like draw-string pouch he had around his neck. The curandero then told me the two of us were done, he was heading south to be with his people and that the man would return me home. With that the curandero turned and walked across the clearing toward the forest while the man and I headed in the other direction. Just as the curandero was entering the more wooded area I turned to look at him one last time. By then he had been joined by several people including women and small children. I watched him until the ability to see him became clearly inhibited because of the thickness of the overlapping trees. He never looked back.

The man I was walking with was old, just how old I couldn't tell. He set a brisk yet maintainable pace that I was easily able to keep up with. The thing is he never stopped once until it reached nightfall. I was glad I had my canteens of water and I was also glad they continued to loose weight around my waist as I consumed the water. As it was I had the bare minimum of survival stuff as I viewed and was reluctant to shed any of it. All the time we walked I never saw the man take a drink or stop to relieve himself. At nightfall when we finally stopped he washed his face in a small creek nearby and sipped a few drops from the palms of his cupped hands, but that was about it.

As far as I was able to tell the man sat upright in a seemingly meditative state most of the night with neither of us having anything to eat nor any attempt on his part to do so. Even though I made a small fire he showed no interest in any warmth it provided sitting some distance away with his back toward me. Not sleeping well, very early before the man stirred awake and feeling when he did he would just get up and start walking, I brewed myself a strong portion of my pull the skin of an elephant tea and wolfed it down without sharing thinking at least, without any real subsistence and the man showing no sign of needing any, it would give me at least an edge for the second day, of which it more than sufficed. While I was kneeling cleaning my stuff and filling my canteens the old man came up behind me and tapped me lightly on the butt with his staff indicating it was time to go. By now I was thinking he was lucky to know or have the resources needed to return me home or I would have struck out on my own.

The thing is, in that I recognized him, I had a good handle on where we were most likely going. What I didn't have was enough topography or ground coverage distance knowledge of how far it was from having left Sunset Crater to where I figured we were going, that being the rim of the Grand Canyon.

Photographs of the plateau from such sources as Google Earth showing the canyon rim toward our direction would seem to indicate there was no way any of it was passable and most likely for the uninitiated such would be the case. However, on the ground, to the trained eye and the truly knowledgeable in such things, they were aware the ancients before them, following the instincts of small and large animals searching for food and water, had long carved out almost invisible trails and paths over some segments of the seemingly impassable terrain, in some cases clear to the canyon rim and beyond.

Years later by map and more recently using Google Earth I have measured the distance from Sunset Crater where we started to the Grand Canyon rim overlooking the Colorado River, The distance is easily 90 miles. It was very rugged and time consuming territory so it was nearing sundown of the third day before we reached our goal. That goal, which I had actually seen and been to before when I saw the man for the first time, was a stubby promontory right on the edge of the rim and what was behind it. What was behind it was a cave of sorts, not a deep cave with a small opening but more long edge-wise than deep covered overhead by a canopy of rock --- like a smaller version of a cave used for cliff dwelling but without a dwelling. The cave was about 40 feet long, 12 feet high, and 20 feet deep at its deepest, with a curved toward the back ceiling that suddenly turned into a straight up and down flat wall about 8 feet high. If you didn't know the cave was there you would never see it as you had to climb down from the top of the plateau then circle around to it on a foot-wide path along the flat up-and-down cliff-side wall that you had to scoot along by leaning your back against with nothing but a straight down drop hundreds of feet into the canyon. The immaculately clean cave was bare of anything except for one thing along the inside edge of the opening, but still just under the canopy. That one thing was a very well built stone-ringed fire pit which looked like it hadn't been used in years, having a rather substantial amount of unburned wood in it, wood that appeared to be covered with years of untouched dust. The overhanging veranda or porch-like rough surfaced promontory in front of the cave ran out front of the fire pit maybe 12 or 15 feet then ended curving back under itself with nothing but an open air drop into the canyon. Above the top of the canopy the cliff rose up 80 to 100 feet before reaching the plateau. That was about it.

Where we were going was on the deeply shadowed side of the canyon, and that added to the diminishing light of the near setting sun made what I knew would be our next and last part of our trek, since I had experienced before was something I wasn't looking forward to. Even though as time went on I figured more and more the curandero had stuck it to me, perhaps unintentionally, I had no other options open to me that I was aware of. Following the man's lead I scaled down to the rough hewn or possibly natural foot-wide path slowly scooting along face-out with my back against the wall and nothing beyond the tips of my toes but a straight down drop for hundreds of feet into the canyon. The old man continued to expand the distance between the two of us, seemingly unconcerned and able to navigate the path probably twice as fast than I would allow myself to do, with him rounding the corner into the cave well ahead of me.

When I entered the cave, although as I viewed it there was nowhere else to go, the man wasn't there. I hadn't eaten anything of substance in days, living mostly on ultra strong herbs. I figured I would be collapsing any time. I also guessed, wrongly, that the man may have been looking for or finding food. The rock fire pit had quite a number of old logs and pieces of wood, none appearing to have been burnt in any fashion. Thinking it wasn't a good idea to start a fire using all of them at once, with the temperature dropping and not knowing how long I was going to be there, I pulled a bunch logs out including kindling and sticks putting a couple of good size logs back saving the rest. I squatted down and lit the fire shoving the wood around a bit to get it a little bigger fire all the while figuring if I was still alive in the morning I would have to go up onto the plateau and search for something to eat. As I was pushing the logs with a stick I heard a sound behind me toward the opening along the promontory. When I turned I saw a bird, most likely an owl or other nocturnal hunter having just landed carrying a small animal, apparently attracted to the dim light of the cave. As I stood up for a clearer view I startled the bird such that it was unable to regrip it's prey properly, dropping it right at the edge, disappearing into the darkness. I dived for it before the bird could regroup ending up with a fairly adequate size fresh-kill squirrel in my hands.

If you have come across either of my pages The Tree or Franklin Merrell-Wolff you may recall that when I was around eleven or twelve years old or so I spent a couple of summers living lightly on the land like a forest monk on the east side of the High Sierras under the auspices of my uncle. If we went into civilization maybe only two or three times during the whole summer we were lucky. Even then it was just a general store with a small cafe and gas station, although one of the summers we went to the ghost town of Bodie, as well as going to Death Valley and climbing to the top of Mount Whitney. During those summers I learned how to catch, trap, and fish. In the process I also learned how to prepare and eat any number of small game such as rabbits, racoons, skunks, sage hens, and the like.

"Since we were camping for the whole summer like a bunch of feral kids running around the woods all day and night loosly overseen by a couple of scruffy old men (my uncle and godfather) Game Wardens and U.S. Forest Rangers were always coming in and out of our campground. At first, because they suspected there was a possibility we were poaching small game, they would quasi-snoop around to see if we had any pelts or other such evidence as well as checking the trout or fishing limits and licenses and permits. Later, as the summer wore on, they just stopped by to have hotcakes made from scratch over an open fire for breakfast or coffee and chat."

THE WANDERLING AND HIS UNCLE: Their Life and Times Together

In the Sierras we had all the necessary equipment to skin, clean, and cook what we caught along with frying pans, pots, grills, skewers, a variety of knives, and condiments. Saving back my canteen cup and stove for just in case, here in the cave all I had was a few sticks, an open fire, and a pocket knife. Attending the Army's jungle survival school in Panama I learned how to prepare for eating all kinds of what I would call more exotic animals than found in the Sierras and like me in the cave, with no equipment other than a knife, albeit a Ka-bar. So said, I figured I could skin and cook a squirrel over an open fire, of which I did and did so quite well.

----------------------

I curled up the best I could for the night hoping to catch some Z's, but with the old man nowhere in sight nor any sign of him returning, and the prospect of me being trapped in whatever time I was in, I spent the first part of the night in a semi-awake stage thinking what I should do. One advantage I had was that I had a broad general knowledge of the lay of the land. With that knowledge I figured I had a much better chance of survival, especially if I used that knowledge to relocate to some geographical area that was more conducive to maintaining myself in a much easier (for me) habitable zone.

"I picked one of the stone blocks on the inside of the monastery's walls that appeared to otherwise still exist on the outside (of time) and figuring in that someone had been able to carve script into the Kensington Stone without special tools, over a period of time I could carve my initials in it. Which I did. However, the day beyond the walls I was going to check my endeavors my plans were stopped in their tracks. Again, as found in 'Doing Hard Time In A Zen Monastery,' that day, because of the distance round trip as well as the terrain, I had left super early in order to visit the village beforehand, meaning, although it was not an easy trail to traverse and ill advised to do so, I had left the monastery while it was still dark --- too dark to confirm any carvings that may have existed on the walls."

The Code Maker, The Zen Maker

For all of the time travel aficionados out there, of which some may think it's cheating, in light of the above quoted events that transpired while Doing Hard Time In A Zen Monastery it came to me in my half asleep state that if the old man never showed before I made my decision to actually leave I could carve my name and probable date into the cave wall along with something like "curandero," "trapped here," "don't go" or the skull and crossbones poison symbol. That way, as I had it figured, because the Incident at Supai occurred in the chronological order of things before I ran into the curandero at Meteor Crater, it could present a warning to me not to leave with him --- if the probability of such a happenstance were to occur --- and as I have reported, it did. In that I saw no evidence of my name and date nor any other warning carved on the cave wall by me during that visit, either the old man followed through as he should have and I left as I should have OR something interfered in such a manner that it impacted me from making any kind of an inscription. The thing is, because of the chronological order of things I would not have known the difference. Deciding on the more positive former rather than the latter I was able to sleep much more comfortably for the rest of the night. What it meant was, when I visited the cave during my trip to Supai and with nothing in the cave warning me not to go with the curandero, I went as I've reported, otherwise I wouldn't be where I was. After that there was no memory or recall I returned to my normal time as planned, because, in a near Balchowsky Paradox scenario, it hadn't happened yet. Hopefully that normal time, if I did, was at some point in time closely related to, but slightly after my initial departure from Meteor Crater with the curandero.

The cave appeared naturally hollowed out of the cliff wall, was 80 to 100 feet below the basically flat plateau above, the shear cliff wall itself facing in a direction that except for late in the day in late summer never received any direct sunlight, if ever. In the morning when the sun came up and for the rest of the day was in shadow with brilliant sunlight on the massive canyon walls across the way reflecting direct sunlight in the cave's direction all day. When I woke the morning after my gourmet meal there was still no sign of the man. Not sure what I was going to do next I walked out to the promontory edge surveying the depth of the canyon wall and the height up to the plateau. When I was there previously the guide lowered wood down by rope. Thinking there might be something like that tied back somewhere that I might be able to reach I began searching the edges beyond the cave opening. It was then I discovered the foot wide cliff side path to the cave was no longer there if it ever was.

When the curandero, with my assist, was out obtaining some of the ingredients he needed such as medicinal plants, herbs, insects, etc., part of the overflow ended up in my shoulder bag. Some if not most of those ingredients were still there and some I recognized as to their use, especially so the white trumpet-shaped flowers, stems, and leaves I got high up in the rocks. That plant I was sure was Sacred Datura or a derivative thereof. I had first become aware of Sacred Datura as a ten year old boy traveling with my uncle. We had gone to Chaco Canyon in Anasazi territory to visit an imposing natural structure that rises 400 feet above the desert floor called Fajada Butte, the home of the Sun Dagger. Some distance from the butte my uncle picked up a man he knew who was waiting out in the middle of the desert that my uncle identified as a tribal spiritual elder. When we stopped at the base of the butte as close as we could, the man, without saying a word headed out into the desert on foot, not returning until after nightfall and the just inches short of being a full moon was high in the sky. When he returned he had some plants with him he said warriors used sometimes before going into battle in order to make them strong and brave, and if I used some I would be strong and brave too, in turn alleviating any concern I may have had about making my way to the top of the butte. As my uncle nodded an approval, I did as prescribed under the direction of the tribal elder. Then I was told to lay down and rest as there was a difficult trip before us. The next morning when I woke up I was high up on the side of the butte. When I asked how it happened I was told, "Eagles don't climb, they fly."

Further back up the page I wrote that I had been with and around spiritual elders, curanderos, and Obeah, and have watched, seen, and participated in any number of their practices and rituals, including the supernormal perceptual states known in Sanskrit as Siddhis via Indian holy men and others, but I didn't claim to be one or at the level of any of them.[9]

However, not only was I trapped in not my own time I was trapped! If I didn't get out of the cave I would surely die of thirst, starvation, or both. With the outcome of the man of spells high in the mountains of Jamaica and similar results at Fajada Butte I figured, without another solution, I would attempt it myself. The following is how I remembered it after partaking of the warm tea like broth offered me by the Obeahman at his remote jungle-like lair high in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica:

"With absolutely no effort I was able to swoop down the darkened mountain gullies and high into the air, eventually passing above Bamboo Lodge recognizable along the mountain road even in the dark because of a large empty swimming pool. Then, just barely above the treetops I picked up speed and headed toward the lighted streets and tall buildings of New Kingston. Soon I was even higher in the air over Port Royal, Lime Cay, and the Caribbean. Then somehow the exhilaration began to fade. I turned back toward the mountains as a creeping apprehension seeped into my thoughts. Then nothing.

Around ten the next morning a couple of Jamaican kids found me unconscious in a ravine about a mile from Bamboo Lodge and miles from the Obeah's hut, naked, all scratched up, and in the bushes, as though I had crashed through the trees or something. The kids apparently went to their parents or adults and told them there was a naked white man in the gully all beat up. Since I was one of the few white men in the area the adults must have assumed it was me and told Benji, the Bamboo Lodge groundskeeper. After discovering for sure who it was, he brought some shoes and clothes and took me home. Everybody in the village area knew what had happened."

ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT: The Path Unfolds

A few years after my return from Jamaica I was discussing the above event with a few friends and a couple of things came up, of which one was how many miles were traveled that night. I figured having left the Obeahman's lair, crossing out over Port Royal to Lime Cay and being found the the next morning about a mile from Bamboo Lodge that I covered a rough distance of 20 miles. Since then, using Google Maps and their distance measurement tool I've come up with a similar figure. The question was now, could I on my own without an experienced Spiritual Guide duplicate it. A 20 mile radius from the cave would include a lot of territory, plenty to get me to the oasis of water and game around what is called Havasu Falls.

However, it wasn't a distance thing but more of a time thing I was concerned with. I wasn't sure how much time I would have to locate the Havasu Falls area not knowing for sure where the cave was located relative to the falls and not knowing if like in Jamaica a creeping apprehension would seep into my thoughts only to end up in a ravine somewhere hopefully with nothing worse than being unconscious. So too, on a much wider scale, the reason I used the term oasis a few sentences back is because for all practical purposes the whole general area south of the full length of the Grand Canyon east and west is desert, with no easy way out on foot. For any of it to work I had to fall back on the accuracy of the precepts inherent in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Chapter IV, verse 1 states:

• "janma-osadhi-mantra-tapah-samadhi-jah siddayahsamadhi."
  

• "Births, herbs, mantras and tapas can help you to attain Samadhi and its accomplishments."

Thus then the power of Siddhis can come because of genetics (i.e., birth) (janma), from herbs (aushadhis), the use of mantras, the kindling of the psychic fire through the practicing of austerities (tapas), and/or reversely from or the gaining of Samadhi. Regarding potential outcomes through the use of drugs, in the opening quote of AUSHADHIS: Awakening and the Power of Siddhis Through Herbs the following is found:

"In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Chapter IV, verse 1 it is stated that the supernormal perceptual powers of Siddhis can be reached through the use of certain herbs, replicating on the short term a mind-strength ability and potential execution of powers similar to or equal to that of a person versed in Siddhis garnered via the highest levels of Spiritual Attainment."

What that means is for the outcome to reach any kind of success it depends on how far along the path one has become mastering Sila, Samadhi, Jhana, Prajna, and being a frequenter to lonely places, which in turn delineates how strong or successful the outcome of any herb induced Siddhis may be. If miniscule, then miniscule. If all but the bottom of the barrel breaking through a la Chiyono, then close to major. I figured if I didn't OD into an unretrievable mush-mind or flat-out poison myself, the full cumulative experience as found in Dark Luminosity should more than suffice for fulfilling all of the then close to major aspects. What that meant was, if I got past the first part of the previous sentence, then because of the second part I should be as successful as the Obeah in Jamaica and/or the tribal spiritual elder at Fajada Butte.

(please click image)

Be advised, simply going about ingesting Datura or extracts thereof, proves to be for the most part, deadly. If a person is able to get past that, a tea made from Datura can be extremely hallucinogenic. The hallucinogenic effects are reported to be stronger than Peyote, Psyillicibin, or LSD. However, Datura is also very toxic and can cause permanent psychosis. Solanaceous plants such as Sacred Datura contain high concentrations of Tropane Akaloids --- primarily Atropine, Hyoscyamine, and Scopolamine. Tropane containing plant and herb-derived ingredients have been used traditionally since the dawn of time in India, Europe, and by many of the indigenous populations of the Americas. Atropine, Hyoscyamine, and Scopolamine are all major ingredients traditionally sought out and revered in shamanistic practices for their unusual applied characteristics, especially so for incorporation into what is known as Lamiarum Unguenta , i.e., Flying Ointments.

When Datura is used in a Native American ritual, it is always under the guidance of an individual of certain tribal spritual resolve such as a Medicine person or tribal elder. These experts on the use of the plant know what other plants to add in order to neutralize the harmful effects. They also know how much to administer and when and where to pick the plants, such as age, season, time of year, whether under a full moon or no moon at all. Chemical constituents and levels vary greatly from plant to plant, time of year, and from one area to another just generally, but especially so if the plants are obtained through ritual or from a spot known for having special powers like holy places of some sort or sacred grounds. The plants are very toxic, poisonous and lethal, especially if consumed in quantities unmetered by someone not versed in their safe administration. They can, however, when properly dealt with, produce the end result sought after, and quite adequately so, in the spiritual realm.

"The herbs used to awaken this potentiality should be obtained and administered ONLY through the Guru and NOT without a Guru. The reason for such is because there are certain herbs that awaken only Ida and there are others that awaken only Pingala; and there are those that can and do suppress either or both. Aushadhi or the herbal Awakening can be a very quick, albeit risky and unreliable method. It should be done only with one who is a very reliable person, who knows the science of it's use thoroughly, and versed in the arts thereof."

DON JUAN MATUS: Real or Imagined (Footnote [1])

Many years ago when I apprenticed under a Jamaican man of spells called an Obeahman I learned that in the scheme of things all things must return to a balance. If a person is such that they can act upon in some manner creating movements or disturbances in the normal flow of events at a level surpassing or beyond the edges of the day-to-day conventional plane, somehow somewhere and sometime there must be a return to the equilibrium. Simply put, if a person inherent in manifesting such movements acts as a Medium or go-between in behest of another for the other's own behalf, the person requesting the behest is responsible for the consequences. If, on the other hand, you are the perpetrator of the behest for your own reasons on your own behalf, then YOU must accept and bear any downstream consequences. Nothing is free, there is always a payoff somewhere. It is something I am fully cognizant of when interfering with the normal flow of events.

"Soon a cool breeze fell across my face even though it came from a direction from across the fire. The Obeahman took a vessel of water and tossed it onto the flames. A huge cloud of steam burst forth followed by a thick cloud of smoke. I jumped back and turned away, stumbling to the ground while covering my face and eyes. Then it got cold, very cold. The breeze began to blow harder and I could no longer feel the ground underneath me. It felt as though I was moving very fast, yet as far as I knew I was still on the ground by the fire. I moved my arm away from my face just barely squinting my eyes open. For an instant I was still in the billowing white smoke, then suddenly I broke through to clean, fresh air. The smoke was no longer smoke, but clouds high in the night sky. I wasn't on the ground, but hundreds of feet in the air, soaring through the night, arms along my side, wind in my face, stars over my head."

The Wanderling's Journey

Whatever the Obeah did as described above I hoped to duplicate. If I was successful I would be out of the cave and on my way to Havasu Falls. After that I would figure out what to do next. If my experiment worked at least I wouldn't have to walk if I was brave enough or dumb enough to try again, and depending on the amount of range or distance I covered would determine my next move. There was more than a good chance though I would be nothing less than a heap of shattered bones and rotting tangled sinews at the bottom of some unnamed canyon or ravine that the vultures would be leery of and that coyotes couldn't even get to.

I knew Datura could be extremely hallucinogenic, so not knowing if using it I would be going off on some trip or equally similar facsimile I gathered all my stuff together, putting on my canteen belt, my shoulder bag over my shoulder and anything else I could think of just like I would be leaving --- and did so in case I ended up tripping out, at least I would have some survival gear with me. With that, having never done it myself, only observed, after taking the next to last full dose of my pull the skin off an elephant tea, I began setting up and making the preparations for the concoction I intended to use by macerating the leaves and stems.

"One of the things I learned in the Peace Corps and the military is that just about everything in the tropics disintegrates rather quickly if left unattended, especially paper. Even though the reasons for my being in Jamaica were considered to be highly humanitarian in nature, humanitarian or not, when you travel, you are still only who your paperwork says you are. Because I was planning on living in Jamaica a couple of years some people concerned with my overall well being insisted I take my old military dog tags with me. That way, since I always seem to find myself in places I shouldn't be, if I ended up rotting away someplace, so their theory went, at least my metal dog tags might survive long enough to identify me."

The Zen-man Flies

Because of the more-or-less personal, but not necessarily universal acclaimed edict within the above quote I had my military dog tags with me. Such dog tags come in pairs. One is typically on a full length chain type necklace worn around the neck with the second dog tag on a smaller chain a few inches in length hooked to hang from the longer necklace. On the smaller chain, along with the second tag I also had dangling with it what is called a P-38 can opener, an about a one inch long or so gizmo with a little flip up cutting edge designed to open C ration and K ration cans. Wanting to concentrate the strength and properties of the plant I used the sharp edge of the flip-up part of the can opener and pulled it's edge along the plant stems peeling back the skin.

----------

No sooner had I started than everything I was working on was suddenly knocked aside and trashed by the swing of the same staff that was put on the back of my hand when I began pulling up plants high in the rocks back at Sunset Crater. Doing the swinging was the old man, somehow returned. I stood up and lightning fast in what I'm sure was an unexpected move because he is no doubt highly revered in his realm or community, I pulled the staff from his hands and was about to shove him away and possibly over the cliff when he stepped back. With that stepping back he stopped making a deep bow and moving no further willing to accept my wrath. Having no wrath I threw the staff down and when I did he motioned me to join him sitting across from each other on the promontory as equals, which, after a moment of consideration and scraping together all the residue cleaning the cave floor, I did.

We sat Indian style facing each other a few feet apart. The old man removed a small leather, possibly deerskin, pouch from around his neck pulling the draw string come necklace out of the slits around the top allowing the pouch to completely unfold. The leather square was about eight inches on each side with the inside of the leather skin facing up. The only thing in the pouch was a small, almost square clear red glass-like item that actually turned out to be the other sliced half of the faux gemstone originally part of the Mystic Aztec Sun God ring. The old man took the leather draw string and from the center out, carefully and neatly rolled it into neat circular spiral on the cave floor about five inches across, a diameter that after he finished, continued to increase in size each time I glanced at it. Not only did the spiral increase in size and length the drawstring began to take on the shape and appearance of a weaved leather rope. Like a snake the rope began to move with the outside end slithering around the man's ankle. Soon the end in the center of the spiral was wrapping around my wrist. Once tight on his ankle and my wrist the man stood up walking toward the edge of the promontory and jumped off, the rope uncurling as the distance widened between the two of us. I had the P-38 can opener clutched in the palm of one hand and immediately, albeit fruitlessly began doing what little I could to slice or weaken the rope as I searched for my knife with my other hand. No sooner had I found and opened the knife than the rope turned suddenly taut springing or bouncing the knife out of my hand and over the cliff with the can opener tossed the other direction, landing on the cave floor well beyond arms reach some distance away, before the rope relaxed again.

The rope, having come to it's end, I began being tugged toward the edge of the cave, with me grabbing and pulling anything and everything I could on the flat, blemish free cave floor trying to stop from going over. When I did go over the man wasn't falling at all, but walking along the cliff surface in an upright position. Slowly and carefully mimicking him I got on my knees then stood up, discovering the surface of the cliff side was not a sheer up and down vertical wall, but horizontal, totally flat and level, perfect for walking. With the rope having disappeared I was standing on the horizontal cliff wall maybe 50 feet from the cave when I turned back to look at the what should have been above or beyond the cave thinking, even though it was much rougher terrain some distance from the top of the cave if I went in that direction at least I might be able to find the falls, water, and small game. Then I turned to look back toward the man some 400 feet away standing at what should be the base of the cliff wall. He had stuck his staff into the ground, taken off all of his clothes, threw them all in a pile around the pole and lit them on fire. He then walked away beyond the larger rocks of the talus slope disappearing from view.

A few moments before, when I thought I was going to be pulled over the edge, ending up falling straight down some 400 feet and started grabbing everything I could to stop that from happening, one of the things I focused in on that had completely overridden my specific need for survival at the moment was the the bright red sliced other half of the faux gemstone originally part of the Mystic Aztec Sun God ring that the old man had placed on the small deerskin-like pouch. Once in my hand and nothing else to do with it, falling and needing my hands as I did, I stuck the faux gem in my mouth. Laying with my stomach down, with chest, and cheek being pulled flat across the cave floor, my eye sight was as well along that same flat level. Quickly sliding toward the cave-cliff opening I could just see the P-38 can opener laying open across the floor as the distance between it and I continued to grow in length, the can opener staying in the cave with me going over the edge. So, there it is, if not retrieved in some fashion, an object from the future with all of its atoms, electrons, positrons, and minerals from that future dragged back to the past and if left, where those exact same atoms, electrons, positrons, and minerals already exist, but in in an uncohered state, yanked from its own time and stopped from going forward as proscribed in that time, leaving a hole to eternity in its wake. Mountains could disappear, people might not ever be.

When I went over the edge and discovered I could stand upright my mind snapped from survival mode to a more relaxed mode. In doing so, with my thoughts coming back to a more normal pattern it dawned on me I had the faux gemstone still in my mouth. So said, I unsnapped one of the first aid pouches on my canteen belt ensuring it being in a secure place.

Since I had all my survival gear on including my canteens and first aid pouches that I so dutifully put on before I started making my concoction back in the cave and since he had a few things with him, especially a knife, mine having disappeared over the cliff and with no sign of it, plus a gourd canteen drinking vessel, I thought I would see what could salvaged before it was all gone and the cliff was no longer horizontal. Actually there were a few things I was able to save including I hoped, some of the liquid that was left in the gourd. Whatever was in it practically made me gag, clearly discovering it wasn't water but a putrid deep algae green in color goo the consistency of a thick soup. After taking a drink thinking it was water I spit out as much as I could throwing the gourd against the old man's staff, the goo oozing into the fire creating a smoke that turned into a small particle-droplet laden green haze. Before I could respond the inhalation of the particle filled green haze began take a toll on me because the next thing I knew I started to get queasy and dizzy, quickly losing my equilibrium and the ability to think clearly. The cliff wall that had been flat and easy to stand on and walk across suddenly shifted from the horizontal to a regular upright vertical position, catching me some distance up the surface. Since I was no longer able to stand on the wall I fell hard on the now below me talus slope, continuing to tumble in a downward direction deeper into the canyon at fairly good clip covering quite a distance with no real physical ability to be able to stop myself.

I woke up in an early morning sunrise laying flat on my stomach with my right cheek on some kind of almost beach-like sand with both my eyes staring off across what turned out to be a sandbar not far from a close by rushing river, actually so close my feet and parts of my calves were still dangling in some of the water. Going in and out of short spurts of consciousness while still laying there I could see the sun was bright and felt quite warm as I finally got the strength and wherewithal to roll over on my back and figure out where I was and what was going on. It was then I suddenly discovered I wasn't on the sandbar alone. Standing next to me only a few feet away were three people, two men and a woman, all three, to me, because of their looks, garb and demeanor, appearing Asian. The two men were dressed as if they were wandering Chinese monks, the woman both in her action and clothes as though she was possibly a person in servitude.

The three were on their way downstream on an inflatable animal skin push-pole rudder-steered raft carrying themselves and a number of tied down large laden canvas like bags when they apparently came across me on the the sandbar and came ashore. Finding me still alive and breathing they were in the process of deciding on what to do when I rolled over. At first the three were openly startled seeing a tall heavily bearded man of white complexion and totally different facial features than theirs or the indigenous people they may have typically come in contact with. However, after seeing I was truly in a weakened state and barely even able to get up, the compassion ingrained in the Buddhist nature revealed itself, with the two monks soon lending a hand and offering me some hot tea brewed over an open fire they made down the sandbar closer to their craft and the rivers edge.

(please click image)

For the whole of the trip I had no clue as to our final destination, but before eventually reaching it, several days floating down river had elapsed. To me it seemed fairly clear that the three, or at least one or two of them, had done a similar trip previously, although it wasn't clear why the trips were necessary, where they came from on the river or where they were going. It was also not clear how they made it back upstream, a practically impossible job. In the late afternoon of each travel day we stopped at what appeared to be a well timed preordained spot along the river because each of the locations had a smattering of near shelters, more like a lean-to than a wikiup, fire rings, and even a few stashed away stores and survival gear. The first day on the raft I was pretty much out of it, but by morning of that second day I was feeling pretty good. In that I had been washed up on a sandbar the day before sand had gotten into my pants and undershorts chaffing my skin so that morning before we left I got up, took off all my clothes and went out into a slow part of the river rinsing off me and the sand out of my clothes. The woman. seeing what I was doing came to lend a hand and did so by placing my rinsed clothes on sticks over the fire so they would dry. Soon she was back with my shorts and pants and a little later my shirt. When I turned to face her to put on my shirt she saw my necklace and in doing so, after coming up to see it close flipped out ---- running in circles pointing and yelling like a chicken with it's head cut off. The monks, thinking I may had done something untowardly, after calming her as much as they could, started coming in my direction carrying their staffs in a threatening manner. The woman circled around in front of them on her knees backing up as they walked forward trying to clarify what she saw. Finally getting through the monks stopped throwing down their staffs and when they did I came forward. Without touching the necklace, both looked very carefully at the small gold medallion and when they did, in unison dropped to their knees bowing towards me with their arms outstretched and their faces in the sand. I pulled both up and with me in the middle I put my arms around their shoulders and began walking towards the raft.

The Colorado River, after spending most of it's long journey flowing miles and miles in a primarily southwest direction suddenly turns due south for the rest of it's trip to the Gulf of California. It does so in a spot where the last of the high canyon walls of the Grand Canyon suddenly come to an end with the river opening into plateau where it is bordered on either side by basically flat desert land. Exiting the last of those high canyon walls onto the plateau the river begins to slow, it's southbound pace spreading out into a relative large lake. Ten miles into that lake we came across an island that the eastern side hugged closer to the eastern riverbank, the immediate north end covered with upstream debris such as logs and broken trees.

Half the length of the island, starting at the north end, which was roughly five miles long and at the most one mile wide at any given point along it's north-south axis, was covered with a thick grove of fairly healthy cottonwood trees. As you moved south along the island the cottonwoods gave way to a gradual thinning out of other varieties and toward the south end, because of lack of water, the north end being flooded regularly, barely surviving low height tangled trees replaced by scrub brush and mainland desert species.

Coming around to the southern end of the island we pulled the raft well up out of the water and in doing so, surprisingly enough, I discovered there was a fairly wide well cleaned dirt path that went from the boat landing area to a very well built permanent stone fire pit about three foot across and maybe a foot and a half high. Beyond the fire pit the path was paved with flat stones that led to a stone structure that appeared to be a onetime small house or a long time unfinished one. No Chichen Itza, but well done none the less, using readily available native stone quarried from across the river and built in the shape of a rectangle with no mortar, it was completely open at the front with no facing forward wall. The right and left walls were stepped starting with an about one foot high block, reaching toward the back, eventually ending the same height as the back wall at about five feet. The structure had no roof but did have an added lean-to type covering with the poles holding it up stuck in the ground beyond the walls. The covering offered not much more than shade and surely no protection from any sort of inclement weather. Inside was a bench made of the same stone as the structure that stretched almost clear across wall to wall. Although the back of the bench was stone the seating portion was composed of lashed together small bark free round logs and easily as uncomfortable to sit on as it sounds. Attached to the other side of the back wall was a full length stone shelf built as a cooking mess area as well as a couple of rough hewn wooden tables and a second albeit more functional cooking-like fire pit.

With the woman running well ahead of us, as the two monks and myself walked up the path a man, clearly a Buddhist monk, was coming toward us from the structure only to be stopped by the woman going on hysterically it would seem about my necklace. Keeping his composure the monk calmed the woman and continued walking in our direction, but stopping at the far side of the fire pit. The fire pit had two stone benches on the far side, both built to match the curve of the fire pit. Using a hand gesture the monk motioned me to sit down on one of the benches, he doing so on the other bench, but only after conferring with the other two monks for several minutes.

Then he turned his attention toward me. Although neither of us specifically spoke each others language I knew his primary interest was in the necklace. Relative to him, it was mine too. The quote below, from the source so cited, refers to an Asian warlord by the name of Khun Sa. After the monk saw the necklace the quote pretty much cuts to the quick regarding it's properties as well as the monk and his almost duplicate reactions:

"On the return trip we stopped for a couple of nights at a military encampment or compound of Khun Sa. At first I thought we had been captured and taken to the camp, which for all practical purposes, we were. However, once we were inside the perimeter of the compound it was quite obvious the Australians and Khun Sa knew each other. He wanted to see the man under the protection of the Lord Buddha. After a quick introduction I was told I was under HIS protection now. Everybody laughed. Then Khun Sa motioned me closer, almost immediately dropping his eye contact from my eyes to that of the the small gold Chinese character dangling around my neck. Reaching forward he softly took the tiny medallion between his thumb and index finger, looking at it very carefully and rubbing it for what seemed the longest time. The background noise and the overall din of the soldiers in the camp became quiet and the air stilled. As a man who could have and take anything he wanted I thought he was going to yank the chain from my neck. Instead he allowed it to gently fall against my skin and stepped back and the sound returned to normal. Basically a tribal person seeped in superstition, Khun Sa, and no doubt along with a good part of his camp as well, knew that for the necklace to have the intended power vested in it, it had to either be given freely and without malice or found after having genuinely been lost. Otherwise, if taken or stolen, its intent would be reversed and what would befall the person so involved would be quite the opposite of the protection it provided."

KHUN SA: SOUTHEAST ASIAN WARLORD

So now, who was this monk walking toward me down the path with such an intense interest in my necklace, he appearing all the same as an ancient Zen master might in some high altitude lost-in-the-clouds remote Himalayan monastery, yet instead, found here in the middle of the suffering heat of the desert on an island in a lake created by the waters of Colorado River, thousands and thousands of miles from any Zen homeland?

In 458 AD the Buddhist monk Hui Shen left China for the Americas. After reaching present day Point Hueneme between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, California, where the Santa Clara River exits into the Pacific he disembarked his ships following the Fu Sang trail, crossing the Mojave Desert to see and/or pay homage to a highly deified priest or lama called by the name Quatu Sacca (Quatu-zaca) reportedly living in a small house on an island near the Colorado River --- oft said in the writings by Coronado's scribe Pedro de Castaneda de N'jera to exist or to have existed. Again, who that deified priest or holy man was is not known specifically, as only vague references to him can be found. However, whoever he was, he was important enough for Hui Shen to leave the comparable comfort and safety of his ship and hike 300 plus miles inland across the scorching desert to pay homage to him.

ON THE LEFT OF THE MAP IS THE WORD CHUMASH. ABOVE THAT SANTA CLARA R. AND A DOTTED LINE LEADING
TO SOLEDAD PASS THEN TO MOJAVE RIVER. THAT IS THE BASIC ROUTE USED BY HUI SHEN TO THE COLORADO.

Drawing from a strong claim backing up the fact that the monk Hui Shen did in fact leave China for the Americas in 458 AD and made it besides, the paragraph in quotes below this paragraph, as found in the book Inglorious Columbus, {1885} and written by Edward Payson Vining, is presented. The overlying premise of Vining's book, after what looks like to me must have been months and months if not years of exhaustive research, is that Buddhists arrived in the Americas long before Columbus. In the quote, Vining is speaking of the above mentioned Buddhist monk, Hui Shen, who traveled to the Americas sometime in the latter half of the 5th Century AD into the early part of the 6th Century before returning to China. In Appendix B of An Inglorious Columbus, Vining, includes a copy of a letter to the French Academy of Sciences by Charles Hippolyte Paravey de Chevalier dated April 26, 1847. In Paravey's letter the following is found:

"One of the countries of America which was first converted by the shamans of Cabul, arriving from the southern point of Karatchatka at the excellent port of San Francisco, in California, to the north of Monterey, must evidently have been the country upon the banks of the Colorado River, a large river which flows through these same regions from the north to the south and falls into the northern end of the Gulf of California. Now, in the useful translations of the Spanish authors made by M. Ternaux-Compans, we find that Castaneda (Pedro de Castaneda de N'jera) placed near the Colorado River, in a small island, a sanctuary of Lamaisra, or of Buddhism. He mentions a divine personage living in a small house near a lake upon this island, and called, as he says, 'Quatu-zaca.'"

In much of Vining's works he cites an author of an earlier work by the name of M. Ternaux-Compans, mentioning him in the above quote. Vining is referring to the following:

"Through the great canyon a large river flows from the north to the south and falls into the northern end of the Gulf of California. Now, in the useful translations of the Spanish authors of 1540 AD we find that the scribe of the Conquistadors placed near the Colorado River, in a small island, a sanctuary of Lamaisra, or of Buddhism. He mentions a divine personage living in a small house near a lake upon this island, and called, as he says, Quatu-zaca, who was reputed never to eat."

VOYAGES: l'Histoire de la D'couverte de l'Amerique, Vol IX, Henri Ternaux-Compans (1836)

On Friday, March 12, 1909 the Arizona Gazette, the leading evening newspaper in Phoenix, printed a small story about a man named G.E. Kincaid completing a one-man voyage down the Colorado River in a small skiff, having traversed the full length of the Grand Canyon and the river clear to Yuma, Arizona. On Monday April 5, 1909, the evening edition of the Arizona Gazette printed a much longer follow up article that appeared on the front page. The article said that on the previous day, Sunday April 4th, Kincaid "related to the Gazette" he had been journeying down the Colorado River searching for signs of minerals. About forty-two miles up river from the El Tovar Crystal Canyon area, on the east wall about 2,000 feet above the river bed, he observed stains on the surface of the sedimentary formation that to his trained eye was of such an unusual nature that it indicated there was something going on well out of the ordinary. Unable to find an actual trail, after great difficulty he finally reached spot, which turned out to be an opening in the cliff wall. The article goes on to say:

"Over a hundred feet from the entrance is the cross-hall, several hundred feet long in which is found the idol, or image, of the people's god, sitting cross-legged, with lotus flower or lily in each hand. The cast of the face is oriental, the carving shows a skillful hand, and the entire object is remarkably well preserved, as is everything in this cavern.

"The idol almost resembles Buddha, though the scientists are not certain as to what religious worship it represents. Taking into consideration everything found thus far, it is possible that this worship most resembles the ancient people of Tibet."

WPA Federal Writers Project

In Native American and Grand Canyon lore of the desert southwest there are a number of stories related to mysterious caves and such as found, for example, written about so well in The Haunted Mesa by Louis L'Amour. The foreshadowing of Buddha and Buddha images as it has come down into the hands of the Europeans and their descendants (i.e., the white man) is pretty much limited to Quatu zaca. If Kincaid's yarn is brought into the flay there is more to the story than we have command of. So said, it is my opinion there is some sort of a connection between the potential existence of a Buddha Cave and the deified priest or lama said to have been living in a small house on an island in a lake along the Colorado River. If such is the case then, just what does a sanctuary of Lamaisra, or of Buddhism located on the North American continent around 500 AD in what is now present day Nevada, and of which is clearly stated in the written accounts to exist, have to do with anything? The example I know of personally and offer as an example, is the two Buddhist monks and a woman already in play traveling southbound on a raft roughly around the year 1100 AD on the way to the Lamaisra. The question is, where were they coming from and what were they transporting to the Lamaisra?

In the book The Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542, Smithsonian Institution, 1892-1893, Part 1, author George Parker Winship, on page 406, Winship, speaking of one of Coronado's captains, Hernando de Alarcon questioning Native Americans he came in contact with along the Colorado River in 1540 AD, writes:

"When asked about gold and silver, the Indians said that they had some metal of the same color as the bells which the Spaniards showed them. This was not made nor found in their country, but came 'from a certain mountain where an old woman dwelt.' The old woman was called Guatuzaca."

(source)

That certain mountain where an old woman called "Guatuzaca" dwelt, a mountain that the Indians said had gold and silver, is quite possibly the spawning ground where the stories of the Grand Canyon Buddhist cave first emanated. It is not totally unusual for gold and silver, if not placer driven, to be dug out of the ground meaning a good chance of a cave, i.e., a mine. However, was the old woman really mining for gold or simply gathering it up off the floor of the Kincaid cave and sending it down river a little at a time? Was the cave as big and as elaborate as told by Kincaid or was it just a mine to get gold and silver out of the ground? So too, if Guatuzaca was a Buddhist, it wouldn't be beyond comprehension being thousands and thousands of miles from her homeland and the very core-center of her religion that she might fashion a statue of Buddha as a continued reminder of her faith and to pay homage to. From that one small story, a cave, a carved Buddha, gold and silver, a whole legend could grow. As for Guatuzca, a woman at the mine in the mountains, and Quatu Zacca being deified priest or lama at the Buddhist sanctuary on an island in the Colorado River, I think they were separate people, it's just that the Indians blanketed them all under the same broader term Quatu Zacca.

Kincaid claimed to have discovered the alleged heavily Tibetan-Egyptian themed cave while traveling downstream on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon in 1901. The translators of the Spanish authors of 1540 AD state that the scribes of the Conquistadors placed Quatu-zaca, who they describe as a divine personage living in a small house on a small island in a sanctuary of Lamaisra or Buddhism on the Colorado River, from separate sources and without the other's knowledge, mention Quatu-zaca, each independently reaching nearly the same conclusions about him as provided them by their Native American informants. They also say, other than what Native Americans told them, that they themselves never met him in person. Some 300 years later with the coming of other explorers, exploiters of the land, and settlers, neither did anybody else. After a thousand years Quatu-zaca was gone having left no trace.

So, what actually happened during that block of time that formed instantly when the curandero and I whiffed the smoke from the jar at the crater, with the two of us seemingly yanked from the flow of every day clock time only to be found two days later by state troopers sitting on the curb along Route 66 in Needles, California?

One second we were at Amboy Crater, then, in less than an instant a decoherence in time as well as every fork-in-the-road time stream option available collapsed, disappeared, or evaporated, the two of us finding ourselves high on the side of a steep mountain slope not far from the top peak that overlooked a desert --- without even a mere murmur or suggestion of the possibility of an interface between the singular change. No lightning quick defusion through a semipermeable membrane of time or cognizant sign of a time no-time interface, like we were already there in the first place, and the place, Amboy Crater, instead was now, or always had been, the mountain top.

(please click image)

The curandero took it in stride, but for me, up to that point in my life and probably like everybody else in the world, I had never seen or experienced anything like it. Where we found ourselves was about 80 miles northeast of Amboy at a location called Spirit Mountain, a 5,643 foot high mountain of deep spiritual significance to many of the indigenous tribal cultures, who over the centuries lived, traveled in, and inhabited the larger general mid-lower Colorado River basin area. Although we were fairly high up the mountain not far from the peak, we were still somewhat down on more of a southwest side of the mountain, requiring us to climb to reach the top, something the curandero thought was imperative for us to do. The southwest side for climbing was much different than the northeast side, which not a cliff per se' still dropped precipitously to the desert floor, a desert that stretched out in a huge 180 degree semi-circular fashion from base of the mountain for hundreds of miles in all directions.

About 5,000 feet below at the base of the mountain and seven miles away in that northeastward direction was a river cutting through the desert flowing toward the south. Part of the river widened out to a good sized lake and in the lake about half way up in the wide part was a clearly discernible island The river would eventually be given the name Colorado River, the island Cottonwood Island, the lake, which would disappear one day remained unnamed until replaced by Lake Mohave, a lake that would eventually reach much higher levels in turn completely inundating the island.

-----

When we got closer to the top I saw the why of the curandero's imperative. Sitting among the rocks in a rudimentary camp at the peak were two men, both who stood as we got closer. One of the men was Asian, looking all the same as a Buddhist monk, and although seemingly quite robust in his composure and actions appeared quite old. The other man, albeit deeply tanned was white-anglo looking, tall, dressed in contemporary clothes, slightly worn with lace up boots. He had unkempt medium dark brown hair and a full beard. At his feet was a shoulder bag and a canteen belt with two canteens. The camp looked as though they had been there at least a day maybe more with a small well built circular fire ring, a number of metal cooking utensils, and a pot-like container for brewing tea. As we got close the curandero waved me off, signaling me to stop some distance back. Both men came forward and you could tell the bearded man knew the curandero although the curandero was hesitant in his response, as though if they did know each other he didn't remember. The monk neither spoke nor understood English, but he and the curandero were soon able to communicate with no problem.

On the day I left the house of the foster couple that I was living with at the time, a house located somewhere along the Mexican border east of San Diego, and joined the curandero on his trip to Amboy Crater which was some 150 miles away, the year was 1946 and I was around eight years old. In 1944, two years before going to Amboy Crater, found me in India at the ashram of the venerated Indian holy man the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi in Tiruvannamalai south India. While there I met the exact same bearded man I ended up meeting on Spirit Mountain with the curandero, although at the time in Tiruvannamalai the man was clean shaven. However, during the two years after I left the ashram and showed up on the mountain I experienced what I've given call to elsewhere as mitigating circumstances, mitigating circumstances that erased most if not all of my memory related to my stay at the ashram.[10]

The meaning being of course, that at that particular moment, standing there on the top of the mountain with the man, I had zero inkling as to having met him previously under any circumstances. Many years later all that would change. I would have instead, a fairly good recollection of what happened at the ashram in 1944, garnered over time by adding together bits and pieces learned through others and the normal passage of time. So said, for you the reader, to make sense of it all, I'm pulling backwards some of that future recollection and inserting it here so you will have a grasp as to how he, the bearded man, fits into the picture. The foremost chronicler of me being at the ashram in 1944 is Ramana adherent C.R. Rajamani as found in the quote below from the source so cited. Please note in the quote when Rajamani refers to the woman of the couple as being the boy's "mother" Rajamani had no way of knowing she was not the boy's real mother, otherwise the rest is fairly sound:

"Within an hour of his face-to-face meeting with Sri Bhagavan, his mental barriers were reduced to nothingness. He shed tears for quite some time and later said to his mother, 'I am so happy. I don't want to leave his presence. I want to be always with him!' His mother was most upset. She pleaded with Sri Bhagavan, 'Swami, please release my son! He is our only child. We will be miserable without him.' Sri Bhagavan smiled at her and said, 'Release him? I am not keeping him tied up. He is a mature soul. A mere spark has ignited his spiritual fire.' So, that casual look was a spark of tremendous power. Turning to the boy, He said, 'Go with your parents. I will always be with you.' He bowed to Sri Bhagavan and reluctantly left with his parents, immensely rich with the newly-found spiritual treasure. He spoke in Tamil throughout, but the boy understood him fully. He bowed to Bhagavan and reluctantly left with his parents."

FACE TO FACE WITH SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI: Number 179, page 384

As mentioned previously, in 1944 I was a very young boy living in a small suburban Southern California beach community. Because my mother's health was deteriorating rapidly I was placed in the care of a foster couple, re the following at the source so cited:

"And so it unfolds. My mother died when I was quite young. However, even before her death, because of her illness my father continued to have to work more and more hours to pay for mounting medical expenses. Through it all he found it extremely difficult to care for my two brothers and myself and work the hours he did. At first he dealt with it with regular day-to-day babysitting, then overnight and weekends with my grandparents and neighbors. Along the way a couple that just happened to be visiting our next door neighbors for Thanksgiving dinner, and of which we were invited to, offered to help by taking one of us kids full time. A few days later I was selected and basically fostered out, moving away from my brothers and family even before my mother passed away.

"It didn't work out nearly as well as my father had hoped, as the couple, without getting my father's approval, whisked me off to India over a several months period and then, upon return to the states, giving me up, but not to what was left of my family. Still not much more than a tot I even got caught up in a train wreck out in the middle of the Arizona desert in the middle of the night on the way back to California, a wreck that killed four and injured more than 100. Because of the injuries to the person or persons I was traveling with I was left without adult supervision until a Native American tribal spiritual elder interceded to watch over me --- and watch over me he did with some rather startling results."

The Spiritual Elder and the Santa Fe Chief, footnote [8]

Almost immediately the foster couple took me to India with the three of us eventually ending up staying at or near the ashram of the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi several months. Prior to our departure the foster couple allowed me to select one, and one only, small easy to carry toy to take with me. With no clue as to it's potential long term impact, spiritual or otherwise, I picked my hands-down favorite, a metal decoder badge known as a Photo-Matic Code-O-Graph that had a picture of Captain Midnight mounted in it.

CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT PHOTO-MATIC CODE-O-GRAPH (please click image)

In a seemingly incredible set of coincidences, an American man, who was at the time around age 25 or so, and unbelievably from the same Southern California beach community as me, visited the ashram. Oddly enough, although a full grown man, he had a near duplicate decoder with him, albeit slightly more tarnished than mine, mine having on it's surface a somewhat newer-like sheen. In lieu of the Captain Midnight photo however, the man's Code-O-Graph has in it's place a black-and-white photograph of himself as a young boy. After the boy and the man inadvertently meet each other and discover they both have decoders, with the boy's permission, for reasons no longer known but seemingly valid at the time, they switch the two photos, exchanging the man's for the picture of Captain Midnight and vice versa for the boy.

(please click image)

As stated above, when the man with the beard was at the ashram, albeit without a beard in those days, he was around 25 years old. Now, two years later on top of Spirit Mountain, he was closer to or an actual 50. How do I know? Because, further back up the main text, of the same man I create a timeline for his age by mentioning that on exactly midnight June 19th, on the closest full moon to the Summer Solstice following my uncle's death he visited Meteor Crater. Since I know the year he was at the crater as it relates to my uncle's death I can extrapolate his age. How he was only 25 two years before at the ashram and at the mountain top he was twice that age makes sense once it is all put together.

As the day was pushing toward early evening everybody put together what they had to make a meal to be shared by all. The moon, chosen or selected to be such or not, was full that night. As the sun was receding beyond the mountains in the west the moon was rising in tandem in the east, clearing the eastern mountains completely with the last bit of the sun's rays dimming beyond the horizon. With the moon climbing steadily in the sky I laid on my back after picking out a nice slightly sloping flat rock strategically located somewhat above and away from the men. In the meantime the three of them brought out a mixture of herbs brewing some sort of super strong tea with all three, when the full moon was directly overhead, participating in some ritual that somehow seemed to mutually incorporate them together, but take them away leaving an empty shell of their bodies. The next morning the three were spread all around and pretty much out of it while I, finding there was still a small amount of tea left in the pot, heated it up then sat back drinking it. Like thawing out lizards after a cold night they were eventually up and around nursing headaches with the two men having to leave. The reason we were all there in the first place was that the curandero had to give the two men something of importance to them, especially so the bearded man. When the curandero and I went to Amboy Crater he performed some sort of ritual that transferred us to the top of the mountain. If you remember from above, a night or two before we left for Amboy, the curandero went into his lean-to shack and began searching through his ingredients and materials gathering together a variety of special things from different shelves including two perfectly matched earthenware terracota tea pot like vessels with lids but without spouts or handles. By the time he was done that evening he had two perfectly matched containers, herbs, and materials, except that in one of the vessels he removed half of the gemstone from one group and put it into a small bag around his neck. The first vessel, the one with the gemstone is what the curandero used at Amboy Crater and got us to the mountain. It was the second ritual vessel, the one without the gemstone, the monk and the bearded man came to get.

Everybody gathered up their stuff cleaning up the area around the peak as though we were never there. With me wondering what would happen next the monk and the bearded man stood up on a high edge of the peak, bid their adieu and like a couple of condors flew off above the desert toward the lake and the island. Just as my jaw was falling open seeing such a prospect I was suddenly overwhelmed by an all encompassing totally surrounding bright light while at the same time a hand was put on my shoulder shaking me with someone saying, "Are you OK, son?" The hand on my shoulder was that of one of the state troopers along Route 66 in Needles trying to find out if I was OK. It wasn't long after that my grandmother was picking me up and I was back at the home of the foster couple.

No sooner had the two monks, the woman, and I rounded the southern end of Cottonwood Island and began pulling the raft out of the water than I saw an old man walking toward us looking all the same as a Buddhist monk. Within seconds I put him together as being the deified holy man or divine personage called Quatu-zaca the scribes of the Conquistadors had written about. I didn't need the writing of scribes to convince me either because I had seen the same man on top of Spirit Mountain with the curandero when I was eight years old. Although he would have no cause to recognize me since over 40 years had gone by since that day on the mountain, me having gone from a boy to man, he hadn't changed and the events were still clear in my mind.

In the oncoming red-orange light of dusk sometime before sunset of that very first day I was there, a group of Native Americans comprised of six men and four women along with several post-toddler but pre-adolescent children, came over to the island carrying weaved baskets with a variety of edibles including squash, nuts, and a number of other things as well as two freshly cooked rabbits still on skewers. Going through the paces as though they had done the same thing many times before and with the Buddhist monk taking up the lead spot sitting on the ground in the center of the dirt path, the men sat down around him in an arm-length apart circle leaving space for the women while they, the women, served food to each then to themselves with the children running about grabbing bits of food as they could. I was left out without being asked to join nor was I offered anything to eat, basically sitting some distance back on the stone fire pit wall watching the going ons. By dark the group had gone back across the river as though they never having visited, although the monk did hand me a full portion of food they left exclusively for me.

When I finished eating I went down to the lake to clean up and while walking back under the now totally night sky I could just barely see the monk sitting in the middle of the path a short distance in front of the fire pit illuminated by a small low fire behind him. As I got closer he shifted his position from the center of the path and using his hand patted the ground indicating he wanted me to sit next to him, which I did. On the ground in front of him was an animal skin, backside up, well cured and smooth, possibly deer. I sat next to him for the longest time with no words passed between us nor neither of us moving. Then, in front of us on the center of the animal skin a small red image began to appear looking all the same as sitting on the skin albeit not solid, wavering almost holographic like. It wasn't long after the image appeared than it began taking on a more specific shape, size, and color all of which taken together I immediately recognized. The hologram had taken on all the aspects of the other half of the Aztec Sun God gemstone except solidity that I had grabbed when I began sliding out of the cave a week or so before. I retrieved the real gemstone and set it in the exact same location as the hologram image, and in doing so the gemstone image disappeared. However, no sooner had I set the gemstone down than next to it there appeared in a semi-circle array around it --- in holographic form --- all of the other paraphernalia needed to perform the ritual the curandero had used back at the Amboy Crater. It was then I knew what was going on.

After ensuring the fact that the monk saw the same holographic-like images I saw, using hand gestures I motioned him to follow me down the path to the tip of the island where we were afforded a totally unobstructed view toward the south joined with a wide open side-to-side 180 degree view from the east in the east to the west in the west. The night was just about over and the sun would be coming up over the eastern horizon any time. Before it did I pointed toward the southwest to Spirit Mountain which could be seen darkly silhouetted against the western night sky. Then I turned and pointed toward the eastern horizon swooping my hand across the sky as though the sun came up pointing then directly to Spirit Mountain. Within seconds, before the sun crested the mountains for us to see, the top of Spirit Mountain lit up because of it's elevation being so high above the desert floor and the lake bottom land where we were being so low. Because of same, the mountain's peak caught touch of the sun's first rays, well before it rose above the tops of the eastern mountains and the ability for us to see it. I pointed to the monk then myself and using two fingers to represent the two of us I showed him the red gemstone then pointed to Spirit Mountain indicating the two of us had to go there.

After a slight nod of agreement the two of us turned and strolled back up the path. Only this time it was the monk that wanted to show me something. When we reached the spot where we had been sitting previously he motioned for the two of us to sit again. When we did, using a stick he drew four figures in the dirt, a round circle, a crescent facing left, a second circle, and another crescent only facing right, the four representing the phases of the moon. What the monk wanted to know was at which phase were we to go to Spirit Mountain. Blocking out the first circle taking it as the new moon I pointed to the second circle representing the full moon, remembering back to the night when I was a young boy on Spirit Mountain with the curandero and laying back on the flat rock clearly observing the full moon.

We had all come together that day on Spirit Mountain because of the need for the second or duplicate vessel and all the other paraphernalia used to perform the ritual.

So just why such a high powered level of significance and importance placed on the existence of the second or duplicate vessel? The ritual notwithstanding, the power was somehow stronger even minus a conscious effort or intervention on the part of the curandero and myself. Either way we were whisked from the floor of the Amboy Crater to the top of Spirit Mountain via some mystical or time-fabric necessity, suddenly finding ourselves on the peak when the curandero was right in the middle of performing the so-said ritual with the first vessel. To be truthful, the young boy that I was I wasn't versed in such things and still rather amiss about it, but the curandero must have expected something at some level, otherwise there would have been no need for a second matching vessel in the first place.

The second vessel was the only thing, through a certain set of procedures, that had the vested power that would get me back to my own time. A body is not much more than an assemblage of all kinds of constituent-star-stuff parts, the vast waste of long ago super novas creating heavier constituents than hydrogen that then can make up iron, minerals, and things allowing molecules, atoms, protons, etc, to roam free that come together having stemmed initially somewhere in the remote past. Now the ones that made up me had been yanked from their natural supposed to belong-in environment, pulled back or stopped from a continuous going forward in the manner intended leaving a hole in the preceding future. If I didn't get back the ramifications were much bigger than just myself, let alone having a second set of already existing duplicate minerals, cells, molecules, atoms, protons, etc., side-by-side somewhere in the past moving forward together to the same future.

Think about it. I'm back in the past, roughly 1065 AD, with the total assembled constituent parts that came together to make me, all congealed into one single package that co-joined in the future I came from after being spread out all over, to form me after years, centuries, and millenniums floating around somewhere in the quagmire of existence. Well before that final coming together in the future that I came from the constituent parts were spread out all over, meaning time-wise where I was, a 1,000 years in the past, those exact same constituent parts that made me, that is, the quarks, protons, electrons, molecules, etc, are spread out in the past slowly working their way to meet up and make me in the future, with me at the same time being there, made up of not just a duplicate set, but assembled from the exact same sets.

But, what if the plan was for me not to find a way to come back. What if my constituent parts in the past were the ones that were supposed to come forward and make the future me, but instead of me staying trapped in the past and I figured a way back to my future taking my from the future in the past constituent parts with me then they would not have been there to have come forward to make me. If that was the case I wouldn't be.

The next day after returning from Spirit Mountain with the second vessel and the rest of the ritual material I set it all up and went through all the paces step-by-step just as the curandero had done back at Amboy Crater, even to the point of shakingly, at least for me anyway, placing the end of one of the straws into the thick helix like smoke that eventually arose out of the vessel and drawing a huge amount into my lungs. Then, while still in the process of inhaling before even a chance to exhale came about, I was gone, instantly engulfed and part of if not the whole of a brilliant all encompassing expansion of high speed light that disappeared just as quick as it started, but at the same time, feeling like it would never end only to suddenly crash back in on itself and evaporate as quick as it started. When it ended, totally exhausted, I began to feel very slightly at first my face and body being buffeted with water-mist winds becoming stronger as I became more aware of my surroundings, accompanied by heavy bouncing and what I took as the sounds of a roaring motor. When I opened my eyes, inches away from my face was a young girl, maybe 12 at the most, in a two piece bathing suit and wearing a life vest yelling, "Dad. dad, he's awake, he's awake." With that I sat up the best I could, semi-realizing in a clouded sort of way I was riding in the back of a speed boat, like a ski boat, cutting across a body water at a high rate of speed. The man at the wheel turned to look at me immediately throttling back on the gas with the boat slowing sideways to an almost drift. He asked how I was doing and if I was OK telling me we would be docking any minute and wanting to know if I needed a doctor. Shaking my head no and politely waving off the suggestion he pulled the throttle back to full and off we went.

A few minutes later we were pulling into a marina and a slip. Walking along a rather long dock to the beach we were met by the man's wife and a couple more of his kids. The man told her he found me floating in the lake after nearly running over and chopping me to pieces. They had a room in the hotel right on the beach with a deeply shaded patio built under the same roof as their room which was set back some distance from a large arched entrance. The kids went off to play while the wife scraped up some dry clothes and showing me where the shower was, setting my boots in the sun to dry. When I came back the man handed me a cold beer with the three of us sitting at the patio table under the roof in the shade. No sooner had we opened the beers than we were joined by neighbors from both sides wanting to see and know all about the fully clothed dead man the man found floating face down in the lake that turned out to be alive.

(please click image)

I told them I was glad to be alive and appreciative of being pulled out of the lake still in that condition. After introductions, feigning things a little, I told them I was still a little groggy and unclear of a few things like where I was or what the day, date, or year was. They giving me the day, date, and year I was told I was at a place called Cottonwood Cove on the west side of the upper reaches of Lake Mohave in Nevada just a few miles from where the Colorado River starts to widen out to form the lake. Although I had never been there I knew exactly where Cottonwood Cove was and the day, date, and year were perfect being only a couple of days before I showed up at Meteor Crater to perform the ritual with the giant feather for my uncle. Matter of fact, right about the time they were telling me the day, date, and year I was most likely on the road driving across California to stay overnight at Laughlin a night or two before heading to the crater.

What I told the group of interested people is that I had been on a road trip and stopped at Meteor Crater when I met some people who were on their way to Lee's Ferry along the Colorado River to do some white water rafting down to Lake Mead. They asked if I would like to join them so I did. Some distance down river the raft got caught in some rapids wrong, flipping over, and throwing us all overboard. I grabbed onto the rope on the side of the now upside down raft and just held on. When the water calmed I climbed up on the bottom of the raft now facing up totally exhausted. The next thing I knew I was being pulled out of a water in Lake Mohave. How I got there, passed Lake Mead and Hoover Dam I didn't know. There was no sign of anybody else with me nor any sign of a raft.

One of the group either being skeptical or playing devil's advocate said it was hard to buy my story. He thought it was odd that being a rafter, especially a white water rafter, I wasn't wearing a helmet or life vest. He pointed out I was dressed more like a hiker or backpacker with a canteen belt and lace up boots. I told him it was true, I wasn't a white water rafter, I just joined the group on the fly after meeting them at Meteor Crater. Although all were perplexed how I could have made it past Hoover Dam to where the Colorado River widens into Lake Mohave and I offered no answers the tone of the questioning changed to being less adversarial after bowing my head and lamenting the fact that I had no clue what happened to my fellow rafters, where they were, or their fate.

Of course, what I told the group is not what exactly happened at all. True, stretching the events a tad bit, what happened in reality provided an underlaying blueprint of events in a vague sort of way. After all, I had gone to Meteor Crater only to end up with the curandero, then the old man, then on a sandbar on the Colorado River. From there I was picked up by the two monks and the woman and on their raft went down river, hardly white water river rafting in the classical sense. When I took a whiff of the smoke from the vase during the ritual on Cottonwood Island I suddenly transported basically in the same spot river-wise to the now day waters of Lake Mohave, with no need to have bypassed Lake Mead and Hoover Dam because neither existed at the time of the ritual besides being on Cottonwood Island in the first place. Hence, no helmet or life vest either.

As the discussion proceeded I mentioned that my vehicle and all of my stuff was still back at the crater and now I had to figure a way to get there. With that, out of nowhere, one of the men in the group stepped forward telling me he was headed that same way the next morning, his wife and family having left the day before in their RV. He was towing his boat home and would pass right by the crater saying if I wanted to join him I was more than welcome. Almost as if preordained, the timing was perfect. The next day just at sunrise, after crashing the night in a just returned but vacated houseboat moored in one of the slips in the marina, the two of us headed out. We stopped for a breakfast at the Riverside Casino in Laughlin, then crossed over the Colorado toward Kingman and points east, the sun directly in our eyes most of the morning after reaching I-40.

A few paragraphs back is a click-through graphic of Lake Mohave as seen from the top of Spirit Mountain. In the accompanying text is a discussion about the now fully submerged Cottonwood Island and it's one time above the surface location. Clearly seen in the graphic is a five mile wide downslope outwash plain leading westward from the mountains toward the river as so mentioned in the quote below and found at the source so cited. That outwash plain and the first of the small mountains and rock outcroppings encountered some five miles from the river eastward played a major role just prior to my leaving Quatu Zacca and Cottonwood Island.

I had come in contact with the outwash previously during one of my infamous road trips with my uncle across the desert southwest, this time from the High Sierras to his home in Santa Fe. Our plan to cross the river at Hoover Dam changed suddenly when in discussion we decided to turn south toward the Salton Sea in search of Lost Ships in the Desert. However, no sooner had we crossed the Colorado River at Davis Dam than he got the urge to go north along the east side of the river looking for possible clues from something he had been involved in many years before as found in the following:

"After crossing the Colorado over Davis Dam and reaching Highway 93 --- located some distance east of the river --- instead of turning south to Kingman like I thought we would, he turned north, all the while my uncle glancing off to the left as though he was looking for something. After a few false starts on a couple of dirt roads he finally turned left on at first what appeared to be at onetime a fairly wide graded road that he continued to stay on for ten or twelve miles toward the west through some fairly rugged territory including mountains ending up on a miles long north south downslope outwash plain about five miles wide from the mountains to a rather flat spot that edged up close to river level."

The Kingman UFO

If you click HERE you will be taken to a map that in a dash-line format shows what I believe to be the road my uncle used to go the river from Highway 93 when I was with him in 1970. That road, indicated as being named Cottonwood on the map, can clearly be seen to end along the shoreline of the east side of Lake Mohave. Directly opposite on the other side of the lake another road is indicated, albeit unnamed, that picks up or ends if you will, on the west side of the lake. What I take from it, as found in the Kingman UFO link associated with the quote, is my uncle seemed to think it was the same road he followed the military convoy to the river that night in 1953, with the use of the road on the other side as the docking site once the barge crossed the river.

Our interest here is not about my uncle and what he was searching for, but the outwash plain and me having been there and being familiar with it to a certain extent.

One of the things I learned while in the Peace Corps and the Army is that just about everything in the tropics disintegrates rather quickly if left unattended, especially paper. Even though the reason for my being in Jamaica with the Peace Corps was considered to be humanitarian in nature, humanitarian or not, when you travel, you are still only who your paperwork says you are. Because I was planning on living in Jamaica a couple of years some people concerned with my overall well being insisted I take my old military dog tags with me. That way, since I always seem to find myself in places I shouldn't be, if I ended up rotting away someplace, so their theory went, at least my metal dog tags might survive long enough to identify me.

Continuing in the same vein, as found in Footnote [4] of Return To The Monastery from the book Signal Corps In The CBI, CBI meaning China, Burma, India, a signalman stationed in that same theater during World War II had the following to say:

"You have to revise your thinking about supplies when you are fighting in a part of the world where everything that doesn't rust quickly will corrode or rot away even faster, where batteries have less than half the normal expectancy, and insects do everything but march away with everything you own bodily."

When I was in high school a buddy of mine who lived a few houses up the street from me loved Mad Comics. The only thing was his father wouldn't let him read comic books, let alone Mad. I had a whole collection of Mad Comics in those days and from time to time he would borrow one or two to read. Six months or so after graduation he had taken Mad #5 home and was upstairs in his bedroom reading it when his father walked in. There was a hole in the wall right next to his bed where he was sitting and before his dad could catch him in the act reading a comic book he dropped the Mad Comic into the hole thinking he could get it later. The thing is, the comic fell way down into the wall someplace and we were never able to get it, shifting the whole thing from a hole in his wall to a hole in my collection.

A few days later we went to a local comic book shop we frequented on occasion with me unloading on the owner my sad story. He had an even sadder story. It seems Mad #5 was the rarest of the Mad comics up to that point because a printing error or some such thing caused the publisher to recall all the copies they could get their hands on. Taking him at his word, although he didn't have a #5 we struck a deal for a good price if he get his hand on one if I included in the deal a couple of extra of Mads I had. With that he started calling around while me and my buddy started perusing through some of his comics, used ones in boxes and new ones on spin around racks. In the process a book on a new comic rack titled Adventures Into the Unknown with a drawing on the cover of an Aztec era Aztec in what appeared to be an ancient temple along with some guy carrying a modern day transmitter type radio caught my eye.

(please click image)

Inside the comic book was a story titled Secrets of the Aztecs that centered around a group of explorers who, using a balsa raft, were trying to prove that long ago people from Africa could have floated across the Atlantic using existing ocean currents to South America. Somehow the explorers ended up in the past and met a bunch of Aztecs that took them to their city. One of the explorers gives the Aztec chieftain his gold watch as a gift then depart. Using the raft they head out to sea and return to normal time. Nobody believes their story so they put together an expedition into the jungle and discover the now lost city. Among the artifacts one of the diggers finds is the gold watch.

Several years before any of the above comic book events took place found my uncle and me sleeping overnight on the raw rolling landscape of the New Mexico desert floor on our way to Fort Sumner to see the gravesite of Billy the Kid as well as for me to learn about the the 1862 forced relocation of the Navajo and Apaches called The Long Walk. Exactly three years to the day before the night of the Fourth of July weekend that my uncle and I were sleeping in the desert I had been a passenger on the all first class Santa Fe Chief on my way from Chicago to Los Angeles, traveling with who I do not know. Around midnight the powerful Baldwin built 4-8-4 Northern with 80 inch drive wheels and clocking out at over 90 miles per hour, hit a marked 55 mph speed limit curve, with the the Santa Fe Locomotive #3774 derailing and sliding in the dirt on it's side off the tracks for nearly the length of two football fields before coming to a stop. The rest of the 14 car train ended up in various stages of derailment and wreckage on and off the track, some cars remaining upright with two actually staying on the tracks undamaged. The fireman and three passengers were killed. 113 passengers along with 13 train employees injured, among them the severely injured engineer.

WRECK OF THE NUMBER 19 SANTA FE CHIEF JULY 3, 1944.
(photo from Chris Baird Collection)

Back to the moment though, we had gone to visit the site of the crash for me to pay homage to the dead and injured and pay thanks to my well being. Actually, although it's much more complicated, when Billy the Kid came up we included seeing his gravesite during our trip. While I was fast asleep on the desert floor my uncle was up pondering the stars and possibly his place in the universe when a meteor blazed across the sky all the while leaving a dissipating stream of quickly extinguishing glowing debris or particles in it's wake.

The next morning, because it was a fresh meteor strike he put in a phone call to his friend the famed meteorite hunter Dr. Lincoln La Paz. In those days it was long before cell phones so all he was able to to as leave a series of messages. Eventually the two caught up with each other and La Paz told him it wasn't a meteor he saw that night but an object of unknown origin and whatever it was had left a string of debris across a large swath of grazing land between Roswell and Corona. La Paz also told my uncle he heard some of the debris appeared to have hieroglyphic-like writing on some of the metal scraps. With help from La Paz it wasn't long after that my uncle showed up on the debris field in search of some of those scraps. He never said anything about finding metal scraps with hieroglyphic on them but he did find something else of value he didn't want any of the so called authorities to know about so he buried it some distance away from the debris field. Not knowing when he would ever come back for it he suggested I bury something of value I had with me too, calling what we buried "time capsules."[11]

Putting all of the above together, leaving Quatu Zacca and Cottonwood Island I decided to once again make and bury a time capsule. Since I knew Cottonwood Island would one day be submerged I knew what I buried would have to be up and away from the island and the river. Looking eastward out across the the outwash plain and the mountains and rock outcroppings from Cottonwood Island and seeing there wasn't much change that occurred over the centuries I decided to hike the distance between the lake and the outcroppings to see if I could find a secure spot that was distinct enough to leave a time capsule where I could find it but would be beyond the prying eyes of others.

Present day Lake Mohave runs in a basically north-south orientation flooding over the top of the old at-one-time Colorado River channel as well as the now submerged Cottonwood Island and the onetime shores of the ancient lake that preceded Lake Mohave. Both the east and west sides of the lake have rather extensive outwash plains from higher grounds gently sloping toward and paralleling the north-south length of the lake. The outwash plain on the eastside of the lake is the one I hiked across from Cottonwood Island seeking a spot to bury, secure, or hide my time capsule where the first of the rocky outcroppings and the mountains begin.

In high school, the twelfth grade class had what they called "Senior Ditch Day," wherein a regular school day was officially set aside to ditch and go somewhere as a class en mass. My senior year the class selected Catalina Island as our destination. During that high school excursion I participated in all the usual tourist stuff with my buddies and girlfriend. We went on the inland motor tour, rode the glass bottom boat, and hung out at the beach. My girlfriend and I also went to the Catalina Island History Museum housed in those days on the ground floor of a harbor front building called the Casino. There I saw what was to me, thanks to my growing Buddhist knowledge, a truly remarkable artifact --- an artifact that was on exhibit as though it was nothing special, but for me at the time, really blew my mind. Sitting in a glass case amongst a myriad of other Native American artifacts was two halves of an open abalone or clam shell that had at one time been closed and sealed with natural occurring asphaltum. The sealed shell had been found, as I was to learn much later, in 1922 in an ancient Indian burial site located on the island at a place called Empire Landing. When the abalone shell was opened, inside, and the same thing I saw and was set aback when I did, was a small ceramic fired Buddha-like image, looking all the same as high quality white porcelain. And it was. Again, as I was to find out later, the Buddha-like image was way beyond any of the knowledge or ability to do so or make by Native American cultures prior to it's burial. Re the following:

"Professor T. Y. H. Ma (1899-1979), late of the National Taiwan University, Formosa, and his colleagues reported that the ceramic image was certainly of Chinese origin and that the workmanship showed it to be from the Tang dynasty circa 618-907 AD."

Buddhism In America Before Columbus

In that the artifact was found at an ancient Indian burial site in 1922 and dates back to circa 618-907 AD it could have easily been buried for up to or over 1000 years.

Inspired by both the gold watch as found in the Aztec story as well as the fact that an artifact along with it's protective a clam shell could have lasted 1000 years buried in a Native American burial site right along the edge of the Pacific Ocean --- and knowing full well something made of paper might not last as told in regards to my dog tags back up the page --- I knew I would need something that wouldn't deteriorate over time. One of the things I just so happened to have with me, at least on this trip, was a stainless steel collapsible cup similar to the one pictured below. I also had my stainless steel dog tags with me, and together, with some modification to the cup to allow one of the tags to fit inside and still be able to close the lid and seal it as a secure container from the elements I figured they would last forever, or at least as long as a clam shell and I searched for it.

-------

After walking due east from Cottonwood Island and reaching the base of the mountains as they just start rising higher up out of the outwash I entered a wide flat canyon that the downflow of water off the mountains over the centuries spilt and went around a higher hill forming in a sense a dry island in the center. Continuing to walk east along the base of the mountains on the north side of the wash I came across two separated outcroppings of which one I called The Three Big Sisters and the other The Three Little Sisters. Choosing a position exactly halfway between the big and little sister outcroppings, using my compass to mark due north, I climbed to a small circular rock plateau I chose for the location of my time capsule. All I could hope for is when I returned, barring some major earthquake, volcanic activity, or asteroid strike, there remained enough semblance to the terrain that the spot I selected was more-or-less left both undisturbed and visually discernible.

(please click image)

With Cottonwood Cove, Lake Mohave and the man with the speedboat and his little daughter in the life vest long gone behind me, both in thought and deed and now time and distance, some two hundred miles to the east, the boat-towing truck I was riding in reached the spot where the road to the Meteor Crater leads south from I-40. The driver, offering no real reason why he couldn't or wouldn't, told me he didn't want to tow his boat down to the crater and back, so he simply pulled over, I got out and he drove off, leaving me some five miles from the rim.

The day I drove to Meteor Crater in the first place, that is, to set into motion the feather ritual in memory of my uncle and his wishes, I hadn't seen one person walking along the road in the direction of the crater, and if I had, I would surely offered them a ride, and remembered it besides. On this day, as I was walking down the road myself, which should have been the same day or the day before I drove down the road, a couple of cars passed me with the driver of the third offering me a ride. On the night that I stumbled across the curandero sitting in front of the remains of the stone fireplace of the one time visitor center I had been at the crater from at least sundown because I remember being up among some of the crater's more massive ejecta watching the moon coming up over the eastern horizon while at the same time watching the sun setting in the west. Although my whole effort on that first day was to ensure I was in a positive position to be in the center of the crater floor at exactly midnight of the closest full moon to the Summer Solstice following my uncle's birthday, on this day when I arrived at the rim there was not one sign yet of my vehicle parked anywhere among any of the others.

(please click image)

Maintaining a low profile even in the diminishing evening light to make sure I wasn't seen or come in contact with anybody, I circled around along the base of the lower outside slope of the crater directly opposite of where the ruins of the old visitor center was located until I reached a point I was sure was just down and below the pit houses. Then, making myself as comfortable and as out of sight as possible, I kicked back and waited.

When the moon got closer and closer to the meridian I climbed up, sitting on the rim facing the crater's center and watched the best I could, the box kite rise up out of the crater, and then, when let loose, soar away majestically into the silver illuminated night sky. Sometime later I could see headlights of a vehicle slowly moving along the top of the rim headed in my direction and hear the sound of a motor, only to see the vehicle come to a stop and the lights go out. Then I saw two flashlights some distance from where the headlights had been only to turn back to the vehicle and leave. Sometime around two in the morning I was able to discern two people step into the ruins of one of the pit houses and when I felt it was safe to move closer so nobody could leave without me seeing them I did. A little over an hour after that I was helping the curandero out and offering him water as he started northwest down the outside crater rim. At the same time I also offered him a proposal of which it was quite clear he rejected by a quick two arm flat palm whomp against my chest, shoving me backwards over some boulders and partway down the cliff. Before I could climb back up he was long gone.

Some of the above may sound familiar and it should as it is a second time around view of all of the events I've written about including after my return from Lake Mohave and catching up with the curandero as he stepped out of the pit house. You may recall the following in the main text from farther back after the curandero left the pit house and quickly hiking down the northwest side of the crater with me right behind him:

"I knew in his present state I could help but he wouldn't let me close knowing I would be weakened in the process, something he didn't want to happen, even though I knew I could recover and he might not. He told me assisting him out of the pit house and offering him water was enough, he had to do the rest on his own.

"When I told him besides I was behind him back at the pit house and couldn't have helped him out or offered him water, he said, 'That's what you say now.'"

The curanderos's "That's what you say now," remark was after the fact. When I told him I was behind him back at the pit house and couldn't have helped him out or offered him water, that was before I ended up being pulled out of Lake Mohave. Me helping him out and offering him water was me after I returned from Lake Mohave.

"I figured it must have been maybe sometime around two in the morning when we settled in on the remains of one of the pit houses floor. The curandero entered into a deep trance like state while I sat flush against the back wall of the ruins directly opposite of the entrance across from him dozing on and off. Sometime over an hour later he shook off the trance, got up, and headed out of the pit house ruins with me following. Before stepping up on to the rim proper I remembered I had removed my canteen belt. Stopping to retrieve it, across the ruins with my back turned away from the one time pit house entrance I heard what sounded like a commotion or scuffle between the curandero and someone. Thinking the men with the flashlights returned and confronted the curandero I grabbed my canteens and moved quickly as I could toward the front edge of the ruins with all plans to intercede if need be.

"Instead of any kind of a confrontation the curandero was part way down the slope walking in a northwest direction with no sign of anybody else and me some distance behind playing catch up."

In the above quote where I state I heard what sounded like a commotion or scuffle between the curandero and someone, that someone was me. It was the two arm flat palm whomp against my chest, shoving me backwards over some boulders and partway down the cliff. What I offered, and of which he rejected and didn't like in the least bit, was a suggestion by me that rather than head down the outside crater wall with the me that was in the pit house retrieving the canteens and into whatever they were going to get into, that the me he was talking to now, join him instead while the me in the pit house would just return to the vehicle and drive home.

Of course, as you can tell, it didn't turnout anything like my suggestion. Instead, the curandero gave me quite a nice little nudge, or shove as the case may be, backwards over the cliff. By the time I got back he and the me that had been retrieving canteens in the pit house and who, other than suspectng there was a scuffle, had no clue the returned me had returned. Both the curandero and he were long gone, well on their way in the dark down the outside crater wall toward the Canyon Diablo Scatter Field and points northwest. Letting it go at that I walked back to my vehicle and drove off headed in the direction of the setting full moon and points west.

Chronologically, twenty-five years before, high in the mountains of the Himalayas along the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, I had been confronted with a similar or like situation:

"No sooner had I returned to the outside grounds surrounding the monastery than the door portal was made available to me by other monks. In doing so I was able to enter the main monastery proper. Once inside I was immediately ushered before the presence of the master. Where before he had been harsh and aloof he seemed to be more accepting, a feeling I related in later years as similar to the difference of being an undergraduate student and a graduate student in the hierarchy of a university. Following the master's lead I walked with him along the inside darkened edge of the monastery wall that paralleled the meditation hall, stopping when we reached a certain point. Remaining in the shadows he pointed toward a monk walking among the meditators carrying a shiang ban. After seeing the master point the monk stopped momentarily behind one of the meditating monks. Watching the master's nod, of which I thought was a sign to use the shiang ban, he moved on instead. Then I realized why the master had that specific monk singled out. The meditating monk was me. I had returned back to the monastery before I left. Going back to the master's quarters I could see he was in a quandary. Perhaps we both were.

"It wasn't long after seeing myself sitting in the meditation hall than the man from the village that had a rudimentary use of English was brought into the monastery. It was easy to see he was scared shitless, walking slow and hunched over as though he was a prisoner being brought in in chains. Seeing a familiar face, me, I think he was relieved. The master asked him a few questions to ask me. Not only was the man's English rudimentary at best, his ability to grasp the situation surrounding the questions made his task even more difficult. The master had missed his mark. What he hoped to clarify was it correctable or was what was done stuck that way for eternity? Should he send the me me that I was now to the lady on the farm instead of the me in the meditation hall that he sent originally or send nobody at all? I told him not to change anything, stick to the schedule and send the meditation hall me --- which he must have or I would have remembered it. I asked him when he sent me to see the lady at the farm in the first place, had he at that time not been confronted with the exact same dilemma? Quickly diverting his eyes downward, he smiled and turned away."

Retrun to the Monastery

THE ZEN MASTER MISSES HIS MARK

Within a few days of my uncle's passing a number of high profile people officiated over a public memorial service that was attended by many. Missing, and unknown to me at the time, beyond the outside edges of the traditional, there was also a smattering of others formulating a remembrance of another kind. Most were thought of as nobodies on the fringes if they were thought of at all, but they were big in their own way. Spiritual elders, underground artists, artists never having made it, peyote types, mushroom people, cloud shamans, mothers both young and old. A man having all appearance of being from one of those groups except perhaps the last, who had been lingering on the outside of the services, stepped up to me as I was leaving and told me there was going to be a gathering at shiprock near the four corners area in a few nights and there were high expectations among some who knew me that I would be there. Before I could respond he was gone.

I didn't return to my room until after dark. Before the memorial I had spent a good part of the morning on the patio reading the paper and drinking coffee. On the way back, thinking I would pick up where I left off by propping up my feet and kicking back I stopped by the ice machine then a soda from the vending machine. When I opened the sliding door to go out on to the patio, right in the center of the patio table was a fairly good sized no longer alive rat. Now, any other time it might have been something to call the manager about, but how I viewed it, since it wasn't there that morning, I figured a bird or other animal was sharing their diner with me.

While waiting, apparently I fell asleep because the next morning when the sun came up I was still in the same chair in the same position. Most of the ice had turned to water, the coke was unopened and the rat was gone. In it's place was a partially in it's husk cob of dried so-called Indian corn. As I stood up not getting a connection between the two, corn and a rat, a young woman, age wise possibly post high school or just into college decked out in kind of retro 1960's era hippie regalia, beaded headband and all, came into my patio area carrying two large cups of coffee in a four cup cardboard carrier with the other spaces filled with a whole bunch of packages of sugar, little plastic pull tab mini-cups of last-into-eternity liquid creamer, along with a few wooden stlrrer sticks.

She said she had seen me the morning before from her patio directly across the way and then again this morning, but without any coffee, so she got some hoping to join me. Shoving the cob out of the center of the table asked, "What's with the corn?" I told her the night before it was a rat, this morning it was corn. Glad it was no longer a rat she sat down telling me a few blocks away there was a street vendor who sold corn just like it and that she had been meaning to stop by and get some before she left for home. Shoving the corn towards her I told her she was welcome to it and she responded by saying no thanks, not if had been a rat.

Finishing our coffee she asked if I would join her walking to the street vendor, which, finding the morning to have gone by quite pleasant and her to be around, without any deliberation or hesitation, I did. The vendor turned out to be exact same man that had approached me at my uncle's service. Pleased that I had read all the signs because I was standing before him he told me someone would be by to pick me the following afternoon unless I had other ways to get there. I had no clue as to reading any signs, but it worked out just the same as if I had, telling him to just send someone by. Not knowing how far up the totem pole the man was, but even if I was able to, I wasn't about to commit to him or anybody else I didn't know the use of spiritual means to shiprock or anyplace else. When I returned to my room I found the young woman's room keys on the patio table. After knocking on the door a few times with no results and discounting the keys as a special invite, I took them to the office. The manager thanked me for the keys, but said the room had not been occupied for several days, the last people to stay being an older couple and as far as he knew it was just the two of them.

During the latter part of his years my uncle was slowing down. Before, his interactions with similar types that showed up at shiprock was a regular part of his life, and when I traveled with him the same was true for me. However, in the years leading up to his death his or my coming into contact with them, and especially for me, faded, with any interaction being practically nil if not totally nil. As the years wore on for my uncle and I things widened, and without being under his direct hand, I slowly moved from the more primitive manifestations of different aspects of the same thing into the more refined, an intellectualization of those aspects if you will. At shiprock it all changed, the ancients prevailed and I was brought back.

You may recall a few paragraphs ago I wrote about the time I went with my uncle to Chaco Canyon in Anasazi territory to visit Fajada Butte, an imposing natural landscape existing from non-worn-away left over geologic remains that rises some 400 feet above the desert floor. Before reaching the butte my uncle stopped to pick up a man who had been waiting out in the middle of the desert for us, with me crawling into the truck bed and the man sitting in the cab on the shotgun side. When we arrived at the base of the butte, without saying a word, the man bolted out of the truck and into the desert, not returning until after nightfall and the just inches short of being a full moon was high in the sky. When he returned he had some plants with him he said warriors used sometimes before going into battle in order to make them strong and brave, and if I used some I would be strong and brave too, in turn alleviating any concern I may have had about making my way to the top of the butte. As my uncle nodded an approval, I did as prescribed under the direction of the tribal elder. Then I was told to lay down and rest as there was a difficult trip before us. The next morning when I woke up I was high up on the side of the butte. When I asked how it happened I was told, "Eagles don't climb, they fly."

Surprisingly, mostly because I never thought of it nor did the possibility ever enter my mind, the night I arrived at shiprock the same man I talk about above was there, the first time I had seen him since I was a ten year old boy. Coming forward in my thoughts from the boy I was then to the man I was now I remembered him to be much older than my uncle. If such was the case, then at shiprock he would had to have been well into his late 90's, most likely more, although to me in, the spiritual atmosphere that permeated the group, he didn't appear to have changed much. In any case, the two of us remembered each other fondly, discussing at length my "first journey," which had fallen under his auspices with him laughing heartedly at my then apprehensions. He asked about later experiences and I told him about the man of spells called an Obeah high in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica as well as the two monks from Shambhala as found in Return From The Monastery. He asked if I would like to pick up where the two of us left off. Not quite sure what he meant, especially because of a woman that showed up on the butte out of nowhere when I was a ten year old boy, he pointed to the top of shiprock.

To the average participant sluggishly wending their way through the typical sun up to sunrise everyday day-to-day Samsara world, not a whole lot of an all-in-a-row series of sequential days had gone by between the time I was paying homage to my uncle with the feather ritual on the crater floor and my return to California and being on the road again, at least that would be recognizable on any straight-line calendar. However, having left Meteor Crater I was back in real time, returned to where I should have been all along, as if I had only just climbed up out of the crater floor after releasing the feather and returned to my vehicle with nothing having elapsed in between. And so it was. Nothing seemingly changed except possibly me knowing the curandero had returned to his Aztec forebears and created his own bloodline, which he did anyway.

"Of course, as you can tell, it didn't turnout anything like my suggestion. Instead, the curandero gave me quite a nice little nudge, or shove as the case may be, backwards over the cliff. By the time I got back he and the me that had been retrieving canteens in the pit house and who, other than suspectng there was a scuffle, had no clue the returned me had returned. Both the curandero and he were long gone, well on their way in the dark down the outside crater wall toward the Canyon Diablo Scatter Field and points northwest. Letting it go at that I walked back to my vehicle and drove off headed in the direction of the setting full moon and points west."

After returning home I was soon back out on the road again. This time I was off to Las Vegas to make arrangements for finding my time capsule. In doing so, after all that happened up to this point, I wanted to make it nothing but as easy on myself as possible. The idea, rather than hike out across the desert carrying a bunch of camping gear, was to rent, lease, or charter a helicopter, and together with the pilot, search the outwash plain east of the now long submerged Cottonwood Island for as long as need be to zero in on the location of the time capsule. After narrowing down the area by air I planned to be let off, camp for a couple of days in the desert if need be, then have the pilot come back and pick me up. All of which happened. Because of the nature of the hunt and wanting to ensure my endeavors continued to be infused with a maximum level of spirituality, joining me in the desert was the man from Shiprock. He boarded an Amtrak train in Albuquerque getting off in Kingman, Arizona where I picked him up, the two of us heading west toward a place in the lower southern reaches of Nevada available to a friend of mine who made arrangements for me use it for a few days. The place was located on Highway 95, halfway between I-40 and Searchlight, Nevada called Cal-Nev-Ari about 10 miles line-of-sight west from Spirit Mountain and 50 air miles from Kingman. Set right in the middle of the desert Cal-Nev-Ari is what is known as an air park. People with their own planes have houses right on a private co-op airfield, flying in and out for the weekends or whenever they feel like it, with some staying year around. For me and what I was doing it was a perfect location and easy for a chopper to get in and out of and basically, chopper-wise, right on top of the outwash plain.

"Along the base of the mountains on the north side of the wash I came across two separated outcroppings of which one I called The Three Big Sisters and the other The Three Little Sisters. Choosing a position exactly halfway between the big and little sister outcroppings, using my compass to mark due north, I climbed to a small circular rock plateau I chose for the location of my time capsule."

-----

Within minutes of lift off the copter was easily over large scale generally recognizable terrain even though I had never seen it from the comfort of an aircraft if you can attribute comfort to an open-sided helicopter, or as well, a millennia, give or take a century or two, having transpired since the last time I walked it. All well and good on a semi-general basis, and to me on a macro level it still looked pretty much the same. Once on the ground I could see it was going to boil down to the micro level braided by plain old good luck. In an attempt to strengthen that luck I did have a couple of things going for me in my favor, the spiritual elder from Shiprock and a metal detector.

ONCE NEW, NOW VINTAGE, WHITES 6000-D SR-2 METAL DETECTOR
(please click image)

After I pointed from the air where I thought the time capsule should be the elder picked out a spot for our camp, also from the air, something he had never done before, but of which he felt would ensure a strong positive spiritual intensity for our quest. The chopper set down, we off loaded ourselves and our camping gear and the bird took off leaving the two of us in the heat, sand, wind, and silence of the desert.

THE DUTCHMAN'S SECRET, UNCLE SCROOGE, JULY 2003, ISSUE #319

LOST SHIP OF THE DESERT, UNCLE SCROOGE COMICS, SEPTEMBER 1954 ISSUE #7
--------
(please click image)

THE CURANDERO

AND THE MAGIC OF THE MOJAVE DESERT CREOSOTE RING

(please click image)

ALTUN HA: SACRIFICIAL ALTAR AND THE CHICXULUB IMPACT
(please click image)

TRAVELS IN THE YUCATAN
ASTEROIDS, SHAMANS, AND THE HIDDEN MAGIC OF MAYA TEMPLES

YAMIL LU'UM

THE SUN DAGGER

THE INCIDENT AT SUPAI

MAYA SHAMAN AND CHICXULUB

MAYA RUINS AND THE SPRING EQUINOX

THE SPIRITUAL ELDER AND THE SANTA FE CHIEF

DZIBILCHATUN; SEVEN MAYAN DOLLS AND THE EQUINOX

TIME TRAVEL: MEETING YOURSELF

	THE BEST OF CARLOS CASTANEDA
<<<PREV ---- LIST ---- NEXT>>>

THE WANDERLING AND JAMES JOYCE'S ULYSSES

THE SAME OR DIFFERENT?
(please click image)

CLICK
HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT

ON THE RAZOR'S
EDGE

E-MAIL
THE WANDERLING
(please click)

As to the subject of donations, for those of you who may be interested in doing so as it applies to the gratefulness of my works, I invariably suggest any funds be directed toward THE WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT and/or THE AMERICAN RED CROSS.

CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT'S MYSTIC AZTEC SUN GOD RING

CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT
THE CODE-O-GRAPHS

CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE
BIG BANG TO PHOTO-MATIC CODE-O-GRAPHS

DISAPPEARING DECODER RINGS

CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT'S RADIO PREMIUM OFFERS

Footnote [1]

NOW RISES THE BEAT GENERATION

"For me however, by the time I reached my junior year on into my senior year I had long since morphed outside the fringes of high school haute cultures into more of a Maynard G. Krebs bohemian type, hanging out, at least after graduation, in places like the Iconoclast Coffee House on Wall Street in Redondo Beach or the Insomniac on Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach."

HOPE SAVAGE: Footnote [7]

A year or so before I started high school and unknown to most of my peers and me, a semi-bohemian literary movement began taking root in various parts of the U.S. that eventually grew to such a point that by my second year in high school I had become more than peripherally aware of it. The movement, given the name The Beat Generation, was mainly centered in and around San Francisco's North Beach, Venice West in Los Angeles, and Greenwich Village in New York City. Two of the top movers, both of whom would become renowned poets in their own right, were Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso.

In the South Bay just around that same time, but mostly after graduation, and even though Ginsberg read "Howl" there, and although never reaching anywhere near the level as the other aforementioned Beat places --- and me not really knowing a whole lot about it in those days --- I started hanging out at the Iconoclast Coffee House just a few steps east up the hill from El Paseo and the Horseshoe Pier on Wall Street in Redondo Beach and/or the Insomniac, a European coffee house that opened November 28, 1958 on Pier Avenue just across the street from Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach hoping to be or at least think I was "cool" and possibly even absorb or learn some of the movement trends. Betty Jean at the Iconoclast was cool, but of the two places, the best part for me was taking home to my place an extraordinarily fabulously beautiful young redhead, an Insomniac regular, regularly. Or at least once in a while, or on occasion. Or maybe just once or twice, by the name of Jolene. Unfortunately Jolene, who was highly polyamorous, loved speed even more, and sadly dead from bennies before having even reached the end of the 1960s.

By the time I was out of the Army everything had changed. When I went in it was Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. When I got out only a few short years later it was the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, and Bob Dylan.

Well before that though, in a letter from Corso, then in New York to Ginsberg in San Francisco, dated August 23, 1956 (two months after I graduated from high school) and published sometime later in An Accidental Autobiography: The Selected Letters of Gregory Corso (2003), Corso tells Ginsberg in so many words that after leaving Harvard in June 1955 he met a girl-come-woman he called a beautiful female Shelley --- Shelley being Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of England's major Romantic poets (1792 - 1822). At the time of Corso's letter to Ginsberg he would have been around age 25. Corso writes:

"(She) dug me and gave me a place to live and has been with me up till a month ago when I decided that I wanted to go to California. She went back home and expects to join me soon. She sends me money and delightful letters and I love her very much. Was she, who taught me. She has fantastic memory, only nineteen, can recite and feel all of Shelley, yes all, Prometheus [Unbound], Alastor, [The] Revolt of Islam, and also fifty stanzas of Swinburne's The Triumph of Time --- but more! She is going to kill herself on her twentieth year. She planned her death two years ago. The year that I lived with her was all her ... she'd lock herself in a room and would walk up and down up and down ... spoke to no one but her Gregory ... weep, she'd weep and weep ... I can't really inform you about her, but I tell you she is the greatest person I've ever met, and if ever you meet her, I doubt if you'd disagree. Her name is Hope Savage."

Her name is Hope Savage! The following, regarding Hope Savage and yours truly, that is, me, as found on the Hope Savage link below, I write:

(On) a couple of occasions I had gone into the village some distance down and below the monastery with several of the monks. On one of those occasions a man in the village who had a rudimentary use of English had tried to tell me something I wasn't getting the full grasp of. He signed me to wait while he went to get something, returning with a well worn magazine, possibly German or Dutch, and pointed to pictures of the women in the advertisements. What he was trying to say, showing his hands with his fingers up and counting, that 10 to 15 --- what I determined to be months before --- a western woman had come to the village. When I asked what happened to her he pointed toward the mountains. At the time I didn't quite know what to make of it and for the most part quickly forgot it --- that is until that night sitting there and I began wondering if there wasn't an element of truth to it.

Some months after the above village incident found me first searching for then finding a certain man of Zen that lived well beyond the walls of the monastery, high in a remote section of the mountains. Part way into my return trip on that journey I took glance of what appeared to be of all things, a western woman along a stream some distance below the trail. When I called out to her she disappeared into the woods and totally gone by the time I reached the stream.

The next morning just as I was waking and trying to shake off the morning chill as well as get the kinks out after a night of sleeping on rocks and hard ground, I looked down toward the trail and saw the woman standing there looking at me. This time rather than disappearing she gestured for me to join her. She had made a small fire and was in the process of making hot tea, a truly welcome delight. She apologized for her behavior the day before saying she was so shocked to see anyone, especially so a person of Caucasian descent, she sort of lost it.

She said her name was Hope Savage, and after learning I was an American, told me that she was from South Carolina and had been travelling alone in Europe and Asia since she was 21, or as she put it, roughly five years or a little more. She also said she had stayed at a village for a few days months back many miles down the mountain trail but wasn't aware of any monastery. She had seen what looked like ruins of what may have been a monastery at one time but didn't seem habited from the distance she saw it. Wanting to stay away from any religious context or involvement she said she kept her distance. So too, she had not seen the Zen man, although she said she had been left stuff on occasion, but didn't know from who.

CAFE FRANKENSTEIN, LAGUNA BEACH

EUROPEAN COFFE HOUSE, CIRCA 1959

In high school, starting around the end of my sophomore into my junior year, up until but mostly after graduation, and not really knowing a whole lot about it, I became more and more attracted to the small pockets of the Beat Generation movement bleeding down from the national level that began to grow up around the South Bay. I started hanging out at the Iconoclast Coffee House just a few steps east up the hill from El Paseo and the Horseshoe Pier on Wall Street in Redondo Beach and/or the Insomniac on Pier Avenue just across the street from Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach hoping, like I've said in one of the paragraphs above, to be or at least think I was "cool" and possibly even absorb or learn some of the movement trends.

In high school at the time I was one of the few who gravitated toward the early stages of the Beat Movement, at least at the extent or level I did. After graduation it was a little different because the "movement," before it withered and died, or morphed into something unrecognizable, expanded on it's own in an underground sort of way taking in and absorbing it's own truly cool types. Once it mainstreamed the Beat Generation was done and it's true adherents scattered to the four winds.

One Saturday morning a couple of the extra curricular on-campus type science clubs got together and sponsored an all day field trlp to the Griffith Park Observatory, AKA the Los Angeles Planetarium, of which, having fond memories of as a young boy, I decided to attend.

Everybody either traveled in groups or in pairs and sat on the bus accordingly. Me, not being one of the science types I arrived alone and sat in a seat alone. Just before the bus pulled out one last student got on the bus, and with the only real open seat available being next to me, making himself comfortable, sat in it, with neither of us making eye contact or talking.

The year before I had semi-established myself with the science major types from a project me and my connected at the hip female artist companion and I made and submitted to the science fair. It was a good size black and white 3-D working model replica of Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory with all the whys and wherefores his experiments would or wouldn't work. The project, although built as a fluke, won awards clear up to almost going to state level, and brought accolades to the school, science department, teachers and students. Just as the bus was pulling out of the parking lot one of the science students, noticing I wasn't traveling with my artist friend, came up to my seat and clearly in jest asked where the Bride of Frankenstein was, meaning of course my female companion.

The Bride of Frankenstein comment must have jogged something in the guy next to me because after the bus started going and several minutes of silence out of nowhere he told me how much he liked my science project saying it broke all kinds of molds and such. From there he moved on to how much he, and thus then by inference me, liked Frankenstein movies, quickly expanding it to the Wolfman, Dracula, and the Mummy. Soon the conversation turned to all the drive-in horror movies we had seen. Spending the rest of the day together two things happened. One, without really knowing each other we made arrangements to see two of the movies in question together at our local drive in theater the following weekend, and two, some of the other students, when they had a chance pulled me aside and told me or asked me if I knew he was gay, albeit using much more derogatory euphemisms of the day.

We never really ran around together or saw each other socially, he having his own circle of friends and me, as sparse as they were, mine. As it was he was one year ahead of me in high school and started community college when I started my senior year, with him moving on to Cal State Long Beach. We continued with the horror and monster movies, meeting once a month or so, making big bags of butter and salted popcorn and taking our own drinks as we always had. One day he showed me a photograph he took in Laguna Beach of a coffee house called Cafe Frankenstein and insisted the two of us go there in that I hung out at the Iconoclast and Insomniac on a regular basis. So we did, going down to Cafe Frankenstein, although he wouldn't join going with me to either of the south bay coffee houses.

In regards to Cafe Frankenstein and Wikipedia's comments in several of their otherwise pretty good critiques on the Annette Funicello, Frankie Avalon series of beach movies such as Beach Blanket Bingo. Wiki editors are of the opinion that the after beach establishments the gang usually hung out in such as Big Daddy's club in Beach Party and Cappy's Place in Muscle Beach Party are a reference to Southern California beach coffeehouses in general and Cafe Frankenstein in particular. Beach coffeehouses in general perhaps, but the three beach coffeehouses I mention, the Iconoclast, Insomniac, and Cafe Frankenstein being like Big Daddy's or Cappy's Place with other than a very broad brush is questionable.

HOPE SAVAGE

CAFE FRANKENSTEIN

DOING TIME IN A ZEN MONASTERY

ALLEN GINSBERG: WICHITA VORTEX SUTRA

THE WANDERLING AND HIS HIGH SCHOOL CHUMS

A few years after graduating from high school I was headed south on Coast Highway in Laguna Beach when I went by Cafe Frankenstein. Not a regular, but having been there several times and knowing by name and vice versa several of the habitual denizens I turned around and went back. Soon several of us were talking old times and such when it came up that I was traveling alone because typically when I showed up, I was accompanied by a friend. I told them I had just been out cruisin' with no real intention of going by Cafe' Frankenstein let alone stopping. Some in the group's interest circulated more closely around my friend. Laguna Beach has always been a strong LGBTQ community and knowing my friend was gay and I was straight was he available, all stuff I told them they would have to determine on their own. As for me, since it was really the first time I showed up at the coffee house alone and joined in with a larger circle of people, they brought up a second thing, me. Most knew or knew of my Uncle who had been an artist within the larger artist community in Laguna Beach in the late 1940's after the WPA but before he returned to the Santa Fe and Taos area. So too, several knew I had crossed paths with a number of the Beat Movement folk including Allen Ginsburg, even having heard him read "HOWL." When I brought up the fact I had been study practicing under a man who had studied under a venerated Indian holy man known as a Maharshi, a man I call my Mentor, one of the men in the group jumped in saying he was a member of SAG (Screen Actors Guild) and he heard some Maharshi guy that had just arrived from Hawaii on a world tour was giving a series of lectures at the Masquers Club, a club located in Hollywood for actors, starting the next weekend and we should all go,

The next weekend came and much to my chagrin and total surprise several in the group actually put it together and pulled it off, meeting at a designated spot with all six or seven of us cramming into my immaculately restored 1940's wooden Ford station wagon after installing the very back third row seat then on to the Grand Prix restaurant in West Hollywood for brunch before heading over to the Masquers Club.

Mary Davis, the owner of the Grand Prix along with her then husband Bob Drake (divorced 1961), then on her own sans Drake, the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, and who I knew, after she found out what our gaggle of young-to-old, bearded and unbearded, long haired and short haired, gay and straight, people of color and under a rock pale-white incorrigibles were up to, comped all of our brunches and even joined us on our way out to the parking lot to see us on our merry way. Coming back after the lecture I talked everybody into stopping by the Insomniac on Pier Avenue or Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse across the street in Hermosa Beach or both. Everybody agreed and needless to say nobody got home until way late in the night of sometime the next day.

THE WANDERLING'S '41 FORD SUPER DELUXE WOOD STATION WAGON
(please click image)

Davis absolutely loved my restored 1940's wooden Ford station wagon from the first day she saw it. So much so she and I got into serious discussions about me fully restoring five of six of them to the same level as mine, paint them all in possibly mixed or matching color schemes with Portofino Inn logos prominently displayed on the front side doors, then use them as shuttles exclusively for guests between the Los Angeles International Airport and the Portofino Inn. When I was considering having a Chevy V-8 installed in the woody Davis was instrumental in lining up the person who I wanted to do the job, Max Balchowsky, a major West Coast/Southern California sports car enthusiast known for building the American big bore V-8 powered "Old Yeller" specials.

Mary Davis passed away on Monday, December 8, 2014 at age 86 from heart failure in her home in La Quinta, California after a years-long battle with dementia.

It has been said a picture is worth a thousand words. Below are three pictures which should, when added together equal 3000 words. Comprehensively co-joined together in a narrative while recalling backwards in time as to what I pictured in my mind when I came in contact with the Maharishi at the Masquers Club with my friends and our discussions on our way back and at the Insomniac afterwards, should pretty much sum up or shed some light on my first and lasting till this day impression of him.

------

MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI
THE BEATLES, THE MOB, ZEN, AND ME

Footnote [2]

--------------(please click)

"(The feather) was nearly as wide as the span of my hand and it's length was as long as I, a ten year old boy, was tall. Tied to the quill shaft, which was much, much bigger around than any piece of schoolroom chalk, was a small, double strand of leather string with ten colored beads attached, one for each of my years."

The Boy and the Giant Feather

The quote above as so cited, is from "The Boy and the Giant Feather." The quote below refers to the exact same specific feather discussed in "The Boy and the Giant Feather" the same one as given me by my uncle in the main text, and is found in the book FOSSIL LEGENDS OF THE FIRST AMERICANS, Adrienne Mayor (2005), Princeton University Press, Chapter 3: The Southwest: Fossil Fetishes and Monster Slayers, page 163:

"According to Pleistocene bird specialist Tommy Tyrberg, a Teratornis fossil preserved in a dry desert cave could have cartilage and feathers. 'Even a wing of Gymnogyps (californianus) amplus, the large Pleistocene subspecies of the California condor, could be described as having man-sized bones. Remains of this bird have been found in at least six New Mexico caves.' Several very well-preserved Teratornis merriami remains have also been discovered in Dry Cave, Eddy County, and other caves in southern New Mexico, and teratorn skeletons have turned up in southern California, Nevada, Oregon, and Florida. A Native American fossil story that circulated on the Internet in 2002 claimed that a black-and-white feather, nearly sixty inches long with a quill the diameter of a stick of blackboard chalk, was made into an amulet by an old shaman in southern New Mexico. Whether or not that story is true, a feather of that size could be plucked from the remains of a mummified teratorn in a dry cave."

THE BOY AND THE GIANT FEATHER

GIANT BIRDS: HOW BIG AND COULD THEY FLY?

Footnote [3]

"The curandero, using his thumb and index finger to form a circle and holding the opal positioned between the tips of both thumb and finger he thrust his bare hand toward the fire's orange almost golden flames. When he did a single extended flame-arm of it's own leaped from the fireplace toward him wrapping his wrist and hand in a grip of fire. Jumping back thrusting his arm lengthwise outward from his side and half-spinning in a circular fashion away from the fire he was able in that single move to gain freedom from the fire's grasp and extinguish the flame by cutting off it's source. However, in the process of thrusting his arm out combined with the circular turn he let loose of the gemstone flying across the ruins hitting me in the chest, dropping to the rock and stone covered dirt floor. When I began searching through the rubble for the gemstone I found it and the ring was whole again, the metallic portion of the ring that the gemstone set in fully returned."

When I showed up back from the room to the ruins, even though I had picked up the ring from jewel box and thought I had securely clutched it in my hand, I only had the gemstone when I returned. The curandero obtained the solid gold portion of the ring somehow from the fire and fireplace after the fact, the gold being apparently to dense to apport --- that is if we apply classical apportation to the events, and of which there is nothing that indicates any of it was apportation in the classical sense, at least in the both of our cases. I think we are dealing with two different things here. If you remember, I described the curandero closer to being three-dimensionally shadow-like than solid, as if a body of fog in structure and color, where I was more superimposed over the other me. It seems the curandero was a case of de-materialization and re-materialization, meaning the ring, once slipped into his possession, dematerializing along with himself. Then for some reason not clear to me, to regain the ring in whole he had to gather back or reinstitued the dematerialized vaporous or gaseous ring.

VAPORIZED TO SOLID: METEOR CRATER METALLIC SPHEROIDS
-----------------------------(please click image)

The above graphic is a scientific example of a similar phenomenon that happens in nature. When the meteor that created the Meteor Crater in Arizona entered the earth's atmosphere it was traveling at such a high rate of speed that it became super heated. When it slammed into the earth's surface huge portions of the iron nickle bolide vaporized into a gaseous state. Descending toward the ground the once metal now gas cooled, condensing and accumulating into small metal particles or droplets now given the name metallic spheroids. The number of spheroids from the meteorite's nickel iron vapor that have been found, and the large size of the surface area they rained down on, it has been calculated that thousands of tons are still present in the scatter field surrounding the crater.

Another example, on a much grander scale, can be found in relation to the end results of the 110 mile in diameter Chicxulub impact some 65 million years ago, the Chicxulub Impact Crater pretty much given full credit for the ultimate demise of the dinosaurs and attendant creatures.

The Albion Island quarry in northern Belize has the best exposure of the "ejecta blanket" from the Chicxulub blast. Overlying the Cretaceous dolostone is an orange-colored layer of fine material that contains rounded carbonate particles called spherules. The spherules when cut show evidence of being formed by accretion very much like hailstones. It has been hypothesized that they formed in the atmosphere from the condensation of carbonate rocks vaporized by the impact. Above the spherule bed is a thick layer of jumbled rocks of all sizes in a fine matrix. This unsorted material is called diamictite. The diamictite contains large boulders, as well as numerous cobbles. Many of the rocks are polished, faceted, and striated and closely resemble rocks with similar features that can be found in the glacial tills of western New York state. Except they are found in tropical Belize! Instead of being transported by moving glacial ice, this diamictite material was pushed outward by the blast of the impact.

For further explanation on the apportation side please read the following from the source so cited:

The person implementing the apportation can transfer the environment surrounding himself into his new location and an equal volume of the environment in his new location to occupy the space now voided in his former location and visa versa, thus preventing the implosion of departure or the sudden rush of wind at his arrival. It also allows the apportation of certain aspects of the environment between environments. This works only on the apportation of air or even water or loose soil or sand, but cannot work on solid rock or other material equal to or more dense and contiguous than the body. Anything not meeting that criteria or that could not normally be held, moved or carried would not be apportationable.

A conjectural manifestation arises as well in the determination of a hand held physical item being retrieved through the prospects of Astral Projection/Travel and one obtained within the existing context of the conventional plane. Both items could possibly be similar in physical charateristics and attributes, so either would not necessarily negate the possibility of the actual source nor prove which environment, one way or the other, it was originally obtained. Such a scenario can be compromised however, if a specific or known object or item is shown to be missing from its place of origin and proven to have been in the possession of a given individual through apportation.

APPORTATION

ANALOGIES IN TIME AND PLACE

Footnote [4]

WORLD WAR II ESM/1 EMERGENCY SIGNALING MIRROR

It should be noted, when it comes to the ESM/1 Emergency Signaling Mirror, because of it's measurements (5 1/8 inches X 4.0 inches), it did not fit comfortably into the Carlisle first aid pouch as so pictured above. So said, typically when I carried the mirror with me on my belt along with the canteens etc., I used what is known as, at least in Army or military nomenclature, a belt pouch with the designation MX-842/GT Signal Corps Maintenance Kit as shown below:

Footnote [5]

Ethnohistorical records state that the Mexica, i.e.,Aztecs, and other Nahua groups left Aztlan, their island home in the middle of a lake, in the year "One Flint" or. 1069 AD or 1168 AD (cf. Tira de la Peregrinacion Mexica 1944: pi. 1; Tezozdmoc 1992: 14; Codice Boturini 1952: Plates 7-8).(see)

A 2004 translation of the Anales de Tlatelolco gives the only date known related to the exit from Aztlan; day-sign "4 Cuauhtli" (Four Eagle) of the year "1 Tecpatl" (Knife) or 1064 - 1065, correlated to January 4, 1065.

Footnote [6]

AZTEC CALENDAR SUN STONE
CALENDARIO AZTCA O PIEDRA DEL SOL
THE VERY SAME ONE AS SEEN AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE

(please click image)

Footnote [7]

Footnote [8]

When my uncle was overseeing me we used to go down to the giant Palley's Surplus Store off Alameda Street and Vernon in Los Angeles, often with my brothers going along. For us the place was like Disneyland, sometimes we would spend the whole day there because the place had everything --- big things like half tracks and bomber machinegun turrets to little things like GI issued lensatic compasses and packets of fluorescent green sea dye markers. My brothers and I, in what was one of the few things we did together, were always cooking up some kind of an excuse go there with me always returning with a ton of World War II army surplus stuff --- canteens, pistol belts, parkas, infantry backpacks, army M43 folding shovels, ESM/1 Emergency Signaling Mirrors, and two of my very favorites, an Army Signal Corps J-38 Handkey, one in its own little case, the other with a leg-band, both for sending Morse code.

When my dad and stepmother went to South America for a couple of years and our de facto family broke up, with my uncle going back to Santa Fe and my younger brother and I going to the foster couple, most of my army gear being lost in the shuffle --- and going to Palley's, for the couple, at least as far as me and my little brother was concerned, was out of the picture. It was because of my army gear getting lost in the shuffle that prior to running away to find my stepmother I had to wait, or wanted to wait, for the Sergeant Preston camp outfit.

-----

SERGEANT PRESTON PROSPECTOR'S CAMP OUTFIT WITH COOK STOVE AND TENT
(please click tent image)

Before living with the couple, while traveling with my uncle in the desert southwest, I Invariably I wore, carried, or had close by a two-canteen G.I. belt along with a couple of "Carlisle" first aid pouches in of which was full of all kinds of stuff. Stainless steel pocket knife with a fold-out fork and spoon. Compass. Signaling mirror. Waterproof matches. Left unsaid elsewhere was the fact that one of the canteens had a standard G.I. issue fold out handle cup that fit snugly on the bottom of the canteen with both fitting into the canvas carrying case. The other canteen had what the Army called a canteen stove that fit the same way as the cup and case. Always in one of the pouches as well, was one of my most prized possessions, a pocket-sized sun dial watch-like thing, as shown below, called a Little Orphan Annie Miracle Compass Sun-Watch, a one-time radio-premium offer given me by the grandfather of the girl who used to babysit me when I was even a littler kid.

-----

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE MIRACLE COMPASS SUN-WATCH

-----

(please click image)

<

By the time the summers in the High Sierras came about I no longer had or carried with me the Little Orphan Annie Miracle Compass Sun-Watch, but instead, carried an item of similar use, but overall not as good, called a Frank Buck Explorer's Sun Watch Compass, without ever really knowing what happened to the Orphan Annie one. I remember the Frank Buck one specifically because I used it the morning of the Venus sighting. Notice at the bottom of the advertisement, below right, there is a mail in form that says orders must be postmarked by September 1, 1948. That ad first appeared in the No. 83 issue of Captain Marvel in April 1948, and very few if any comic books before then. The dates indicating I most likely would not have had the Sun Watch by the summer of 1948, but 1949 most likely and 1950 for sure.

FRANK BUCK EXPLORER'S SUN WATCH

With my family broken up, my uncle returning to Santa Fe and my younger brother and I being placed with the foster couple, like I've said, most of my army gear was lost in the shuffle --- and going to Palley's for the couple, who saw no relevance or redeeming value to it, was out of the question. It was because of my army gear getting lost that prior to running away to find my stepmother I had to wait, or wanted to wait, for the Sergeant Preston camp outfit. Among the stuff that was lost or misplaced was the Frank Buck sun watch, of which I had only a short time. However, thanks to comic books I was soon able to come across a fairly good, if not too shabby, replacement item. Just about the time everything went missing and I was settling in with the couple, lo and behold, comic books started advertising what was called a TelZall Sun Watch as shown below. It had a secret little ball point pen and the Morse code stamped into the metal back which also served as a signaling mirror. As an aside, for those who may be so interested, I am almost certain the dial face and compass used by the TelZall watch was the exact same glow-in-the-dark dial face and compass as used by the Orphan Annie sun watch.

----

----

Footnote [9]

Under the auspices of the Obeahman that I eventually apprenticed under I observed and participated in any number of events that do not fit experiences typically found or allowed to transpire on the conventional plane --- including one that to have been accomplished, which it was, would have required nothing less than the warping of time

At this point I am not willing nor comfortable discussing or revealing to a large general audience the Obeah related warpage of time episode that befell others through my auspices in that it involves people I know who to this day are not aware of the circumstances. In the overall scheme of things, even though the event transpired many years ago, it is best they still remain in the dark about it. The finest episode on the warping of time I have at my fingertips --- with a near full explanation of same that I am willing to share --- can be found by going to the following links, especially so the first one:

THE SPIRITUAL ELDER AND THE SANTA FE CHIEF

TIME TRAVEL: MEETING YOURSELF

WARPING OF SPACETIME

Footnote [10]

MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES:

What I call Mitigating Circumstances, as presented below from The Last American Darshan, was a lengthy blackout period experienced by me shortly after my return from India. That blackout period pretty much wiped clean all traces of my memory over a period of several years at one of the most crucial times of my life --- taken together, most definitely, a wide ranging series of almost unsurmountable Mara induced impediments. To wit:

Upon my return from India, with my mother dead, my two brothers dispersed across the country living with separate families and my father long gone, my grandmother, before the chance arose for me to be placed into a foster home, took me. I was with her but a few months when we went to see her only remaining child, a daughter, my mother's younger sister. Her husband, unrelated to any of the events surrounding the death of my mother or the falling apart of my side of the family, had swirled, somewhat quickly, into a relentless state of deep depression. My grandmother went to lend support to her daughter, taking me with her. One day, after going shopping all day long in town with my grandmother and her daughter and her two children, we returned and pulled up in front of the garage. I got out of the car and opened the two side-by-side wooden garage doors. There right in front of me on the floor of the garage only a few feet away in the glare of the headlights, in a slowly expanding pool of blood, was what was left of the husband of my mother's sister. The whole back of his head blown out from the blast of a double barrel shotgun he stuck in his mouth. His body laying there apparently falling off a still upright straight-back wooden chair with his once onetime skull full of brain now empty. Gone were all the synapses and neurons and everything that went with them, turned now into nothing but bloody silver-gray yellowish meat splattered all over the upper reaches of the nearby open-studded walls and exposed rafters.

There I was, a little kid barely even closing down on six or seven years of age, not long returned from India, without a mother, having missed both her final days and her funeral as well, standing with my mouth open, staring down on what only minutes before was someone else dear to me, not just gone, but excruciatingly gone. My aunt, stunned into disbelief at what she saw, with the car still in gear and engine running let her foot slip from the clutch as she apparently tried to step out of the car and run toward her husband. The vehicle lurched forward in one huge leap, crashing into the swung open garage door knocking it and me down and rendering me unconscious. It took months and months and reasons unknown before I suddenly came out of a nearly amnesia-like walking coma --- and even then, not fully so until years later. Everything that I knew and should have remembered about my mother's sickness, India, the time leading up to that moment in the garage, and being with my grandmother, either evaporated or was deeply covered over. Days, weeks, months, all gone. In closing that gap I remembered only up to one side, a side well before my mother ever got sick. A happy loving childhood with a mother and father and playing with my brothers and kids in the neighborhood. A house full of toys and my older brother learning to ride a bicycle. Then suddenly out of nowhere finding myself months later on the other side, getting out of a car clutching a tiny suitcase with nothing but a handful of crummy belongings and sack full of dirty underwear and not knowing how I got there. Standing on the sidewalk not much more than a simple beleaguered young boy with no mother and a father long gone, being taken by a stranger to live with a couple that owned a flower shop, a couple I was sure I had never seen or heard of in my life --- followed by a period of time which encompassed the failure of me to stay with the flower shop people for very long before running away --- on more than one occasion --- and because of same, ending up with living with my grandmother and uncle, with everything else in-between those two moments of my short childhood gone. See:

MARA THE TEMPTER

THE LAST AMERICAN DARSHAN

FIFIE MALOUF: ENTREPRENEUR, SOCIALITE, MADAME

Footnote [11]

THE BOY AND HIS FIRST TIME CAPSULE

When I was at the debris field it was years before any of the handheld electronic gizzmos we have today, so to entertain myself I carried a toy red-and-black plastic-bakelite film strip viewer, along with a few extra filmstrips, with me. My uncle told me one time if the Earth ever blew-up and formed an asteroid belt around the sun like the one between Mars and Jupiter some far-in-the-future space explorer would still be able to find pieces of plastic imbeded in the rock-chunks --- because plastic junk lasts forever. Well, I didn't want to part with my pocketknife, compass or matches, so for my time capsule I buried the plastic film viewer. With that I took a gas station paper towel I had in my back pocket and using my most favored gift from my Stepmother, a Reynolds Rocket ballpoint pen that could write underwater or out in space --- which I wish I still had --- and made a treasure map.

LATE 1940s ACME CINE VUE FILM VIEWER

Years passed and I forgot all about it. One day I was moving stuff and ran across my pebble grained faux-leather high school graduation certificate holder. Inside was my diploma along with an official looking "deed" for one whole square inch of land in Canada's Yukon Territory from the Klondike Big Inch Land Company dated January 4, 1955, a really good copy of Uncle Scrooge, Issue #14, June 1956, with a story about Scrooge, his deed and dealings with one inch of land called Faulty Fortune, AND the treasure map I drew for my time capsule.

UNCLE SCROOGE: FAULTY FORTUNE

The next time I saw my uncle in Santa Fe I took the map along. When I showed it to him and expressed the possibility of the two of us going to look for my time capsule he put his hand out in an open-palm "halt" fashion and told me to wait. A few minutes later he was opening a cardboard box he had pulled from the attic and started rummaging around in it. He pulled out a bag and dumped the contents on the table. There in front of me was what was left of a broken to pieces red-and-black plastic film strip viewer. My uncle told me right after meeting with UFO advocate and radio commentator Frank Edwards, about ten years or so after we had been to the debris field, he went back. He walked the old debris field as well as the hill we had observed from. He also tried to find the hay shelter and water trough, but to no avail. Walking the area where he thought it should be he spotted pieces of red plastic in the dirt. Looking more carefully he was eventually able to find most of the viewer, including parts of the film strip. Although highly faded where it had been exposed to the sun and weather, it still had enough of the film left curled together and untouched that I was able, after carefully unrolling it, to identify it as being Don Winslow of the Navy, the same film strip I had left in the viewer when I buried the capsule. Apparently what happened, and it was just speculation on my uncle's part for the lack or any other explanation, it looked like a disc harrow may have been pulled through the area and one of the discs must have ran right over where I had buried the viewer, scattering it into pieces along a straight line over several feet. As for what my uncle may have found, buried, or retrieved please click the following image:

(please click image)

--------------------(please click image)

When I was around ten years old I used to have a paperback book I carried around with all the time called the "Daisy Handbook No. 2" published by the Daisy Manufacturing Company, the same makers of the famous cowboy style Red Ryder 1000 shot lever action carbine and the Buck Rogers U-235 Atomic Pistol. The handbook was printed in a booklet format of 128 pages plus an eight page catalog in the center with the covers measuring 5.25" x 4.5". The handbook, except for the smaller size, was similar to a comic book as to content except in black and white instead of color and the page format, rather than having the typical comic book height higher than the width rectangle shape, was for the most part, nearly square.

The contents of the handbook had a number of sections on famous people as well as a number of comic book characters. The book played an important role in my life because one of the stories circulated around Leonardo Da Vinci and his flying machine titled "500 Year's Too Soon" of which was a major influence on me building my own flying machine. Another story in the handbook was about a comic book character called Robotman appearing in a story titled "The Robotman Detector." The detector in the story was a World War II surplus mine detector and how it was used by a number of nefarious characters to try and located lost buried treasure, in this case, stolen loot. When I read the Robotman story and my dad showed up with a surplus mine detector, I put two and two together and off my brothers and I went to find stolen stagecoach gold said to be buried in or around a place called the Garcia Adobe which was located not far from our ranch.

"There is a local oral tradition among Little Rock residents about a highwayman named 'Llargo' [Largo?] who is said to have held up a stagecoach gold shipment to San Francisco in the vicinity of the Little Rock cienaga. He is also said to have taken up residence in the adobe structure at the cienaga. Whatever the truth may have been about this, the legend was motive enough for treasure hunters to tear up the remains of the Garcia adobe in the 1950s looking for loot. The structure is shown still standing in map surveys dating from the early 1930s."

Mining and Ranching in Soledad Canyon and Antelope Valley

THE ROBOTMAN DETECTOR

Description

Gemstone: Fire Opal - 5.01 Cts.
Queretaro, Mexico

Fire Opals make one of the most visually impactful gemstones that light up with an intense fiery red-orange hue, hence the name. This slightly more than 5 carat Fire Opal displays the quintessential "fire" hue so coveted by collectors. The stone has been expertly cut into an emerald shape, and the elongated step facets help to emphasize the well-balanced and saturated color, as well as create a breathtaking scintillation.

Measurements: 13.00 x 10.03 x 7.32 mm, 5.01 cts.

Estimate: $5,000 - $7,000.

The following quote so cited, has been a footnote on my Adam Osborne page as long as I can remember. One day when looking for something on the same Osborne page I ran across the footnote after having not seen it for a very long time. Reading the contents I practically fell over because when it was written and put online, this page, the one you are reading now and/or it's contents, had not even really been formulated of as such to be put into a textual online format:

"When I went to see him as a adult I took the same Code-O-Graph along with me to show him and in doing so he welled up in tears. It was when I returned home the odd experience happened. I had put the decoder in my shoulder bag because I didn't want it away from my person while traveling. For whatever reason, when I got back, instead of putting the decoder in it's glass-door display case with the other decoders I took it out of my shoulder bag and put it in a small metal box-like container from my old college days that I had been using to put small valuables, a jewelry box as it were, for tie tacs, cuff links and other stuff I never used. I put the Code-O-Graph in the box, closed the lid and put the box back on the shelf in the closet shutting the door. Just as I was doing so I was startled bigtime by a super strong feeling of what I thought was someone in the room with me. There wasn't, not that I could see anyway. If you have ever read THE MEETING: An Untold Story of Sri Ramana it mentions several translocation or bilocation experiences involving the Maharshi and others, but he always showed himself and he was alive at the time. At first I thought because of the intensity of Osborne and I meeting up after all those years Ramana was joining, except by this time Ramana had long since left his earthly paradise. A short time later when I saw Adam again I asked if he experienced anything similar recently and he just shook his head no, moving on to the next subject."

AS FOR THE SECRET COMPARTMENT, YOU CAN SEE, IT WASN'T THE SOLID METAL
PART OF THE RING ITSELF THAT WAS HOLLOWED OUT, BUT THE FAUX GEMSTONE

Instructions For Using The Canteen Cup Stove

The full nomenclature was Stand, Heating, Cup, Canteen (or Stand, Canteen Cup) with NSN 8465-01-250-3632 and specification MIL-S-44221 (or MIL-S-44221A dated 03 March 1989). Revision A of the specification describes two versions of the stand, one with an open bottom and one with a solid bottom. Production of the stand continued into the 1990s based on contracts awarded in 1989.

Each canteen cup stove was packaged with an instruction sheet, containing a drawing of the stand as it was intended to be used (above) and the following text:

• USE STAND WHEN HEATING WATER AND MEAL, READY TO EAT POUCHES IN CANTEEN CUP. PUT WATER AND POUCH IN CUP.

• PLACE STAND ON GROUND WITH SIDE OPENING AT BOTTOM AND PUT FILLED CUP ON TOP.

• INSERT FUEL, COMPRESSED, TRIOXANE THROUGH SIDE OPENING, FOLLOW DIRECTIONS ON FUEL TABLET PACKAGE.

• ALLOW STAND AND CUP TO COOL BEFORE TOUCHING.

• INVERT STAND AFTER USE, SLIP CUP INSIDE STAND AND CANTEEN INSIDE CUP, INVERT INTO CANTEEN COVER.

• WARNING:

  DO NOT TOUCH STAND OR CUP IMMEDIATELY AFTER HEATING.

  DO NOT PLACE STAND IN A DIRECT FLAME.

  USE FUEL TABLET IN ACCORDANCE WITH PACKAGE DIRECTIONS.

Above material adapted by OLIVE-DRAB from "Survey of U.S. Army Uniforms, Weapons and Accoutrements," by David Cole (November 2007 and updates), a classroom reference for the Army Museum System's Basic Curatorial Methods Training Courses, as well as other published sources. Thanks to Thomas Chial for making his extensive research available.

WITH A SPECIAL THANKS TO:

OLIVE DRAB

-----

The graphic above left is a view looking northeast from the top of 5,643 foot elevation Spirit Mountain, Nevada toward present day Lake Mohave, having been created by the waters of the Colorado River after the construction of Davis Dam. The full length of the left shore of the lake is the state of Nevada while the full length of the right shore is Arizona. Cottonwood Island has long been submerged by the lake waters. Clicking the graphic will take you to a larger than full screen view.

The graphic on the right is a view from the top of the same mountain that by simply taking a few steps and turning toward the south east clearly shows the present day gambling casino resort town of Laughlin, Nevada located just south of Davis Dam. As with the above, clicking the graphic will take you to a larger than full screen view.

The far right map below shows the present layout and locations of Laughlin's casinos. The photo on the below left shows a good number of those casinos looking southbound along the Colorado River. The state of Nevada is on the right side of the river (west) with Bullhead City on the left (east). Gambling is legal in Nevada, but not so in Arizona, hence all the casinos on the Nevada side. Prostitution is legal in a number of places in Nevada as well, just not in Clark County in of which both Laughlin and Las Vegas reside. The first casino at the top of the map is the Riverside. In the adjacent photo the Riverside is the first Casino complex to show up just past the bridge, then as they are named, so on down the line. The highway marked "163" Bullhead Parkway leading off toward the left or northwest corner, leads right to the major access to Spirit Mountain, pictured below in all of it's sunset glow.

-----

MOUNTAINS OF NEVADA: SPIRIT MOUNTAIN

.

THE AZTEC CALENDAR