Transported from Quemado

"Transported from Quemado" ~ Huiricuta, Mexico (c) 2011 Skip Hunt

It was going different this particular time. I was more sick in the stomach and the pain lasted nearly two hours.

Near the peace sign I've been building out of stone since 2009, about 30 meters away is another primitive design of a five-pointed star that is much older and of unknown origin. It too is in stone and was really bothering and irritating me for some unknown reason. Perhaps because it looked like a pentagram? Or perhaps the peyote sickness was just warping my imagination.

I had been somewhat ill off and on for the previous three weeks or so and just asked Mescalito to heal me during this ceremonial session. Perhaps this healing is why I was feeling extra sick this time. There's a good reason why the indigenous call this plant "medicine". Sometimes healing hurts a bit I've found.

Another very strange effect this time was very intense yawning. That simply does not happen with this plant, at least for me it hasn't in the last 17 years I've imbibed it. Something was definitely different this time.

Just before this intense yawning started, the five-pointed stone star was bothering me so much and because my stomach had pain as if I were digesting broken glass, I forcefully kicked away the stones on two of the star's points. This didn't help at all and only increased my pain.

I looked up toward the sun boiling above and began to feel over-whelmed and dizzy.

There is a mesquite tree nearby so I smoothed away the dirt underneath the tree and brushed away most of the thorns and cactus spines so that I could lay down for awhile.

As I looked up through the thorny mesquite branches toward the blue sky and the sacred Huichole mountain called Quemado in the distance, I yawned hard one more time and then drifted away.

The next thing I knew was that I was no longer in my own body. Nor, was I in the desert in Mexico. All I could make out is that it was night and I was somewhere in Europe, possibly London. I had small, wire-frame glasses and whispy light brown hair. My body was taller and thinner than my own and my face was thinner and slightly gaunt. I was about the same age but maybe a little younger and I was either stumbling or trying to get away from something or someone. There was a large group yelling toward me and I was yelling back toward one particular woman. I can't remember what the words were but I was confused and sweating.

As I scrambled on the slick cobblestone, I stumbled a few times and then... just like that, I fell and was back in my own body again laying underneath the mesquite tree in the Huiricuta desert looking up through the thorny branches and leaves toward the sacred Quemado.

It felt like it lasted maybe a couple hours, but I looked at my watch and only ten minutes had passed.

All of my sickness was gone. And, I no longer felt the illness I'd had for the last three weeks. I felt perfectly healthy and so full of light energy.

I smiled as I lay there looking toward Quemado and realized in exactly one week I'd likely be home in Austin, Texas and it would be my birthday. I smiled again while I concentrated intently on the present feeling and experience to send ahead toward my future self in a week to remember the complete feeling as a birthday present.

When I got up out of the dirt and brushed away the dust and ants that were crawling on me, I felt compelled to go back to that five-pointed star and carefully put back the stones I'd kicked away.

Skip Hunt
Austin, Texas