Chapter 22: ‘Cos the Man Is Wise

I kept thinking about mushrooms for the next couple of days, and did a little research on the net. When I had done psychedelics nearly fifty years previously there wasn’t any internet. Now, a search for ‘psychedelic mushrooms NZ’ yielded 3.8 million hits. It was like trying to drink from a fire hose, so I got on with picking some possible days for boating. The following Tuesday looked best, and Ryan and Pauline were starters.

Sarah rang inviting me chez Vaughan for dinner on Saturday. She checked whether I had enjoyed the rabbit, and when I asked what wine I could bring, she suggested shiraz. I guessed we would be eating rabbit. We were, and it was delicious.

The Vaughans seemed to be in pretty good condition, and we did lots of laughing and joking. Stan quizzed me some more about my history as a therapist, and Sarah became more than simply a casual listener when I mentioned that I had first become interested in therapy and counselling during my time at the Kea Community, fifty years ago. She asked directly about communal drug taking, and persisted when I brushed her off with the comment that almost all the communes in the seventies used lots of drugs

In the early 1970s, the NZ Government encouraged ‘hippie dropouts’ to form communities with very cheap leases of isolated pieces of public land, where they could live ‘close to nature’. The average ‘hippy’ knew little about survival gardening, building, or small scale animal husbandry, so most of these communal efforts quickly foundered on interpersonal squabbles, practical difficulties, ideological disputes, or rampant drug use. Kea was one of the few long lived ones, surviving in a remote part of Northern NZ for more than forty years.

Sarah was clearly very interested in something in relation to Kea, but I couldn’t work out whether it was the therapy, the Kea hippies drug use, or both, so I asked her.

“You seem very interested in what we got into at Kea.” Sarah shrugged, and Stan looked slightly uncomfortable. “In the seventies we all believed we had invented sex and drugs and rock n roll, and the Human Potential Movement had arrived from the US and was overturning conventional counselling and therapy. We had members from a variety of backgrounds, and between us we had tried most things. What do you want to know?”

“Did you do mushrooms?” Sarah ignored Stan’s evident discomfort, and he relaxed a little when he saw that I was neither shocked nor offended.

“Almost certainly. When I was at Kea, one of the other members was a nice middle class Jewish girl who would go off into the bush to get ingredients for a “special tea” that gave us a trip that lasted quite a few hours. We called it ‘Carrot Juice’. It tasted terrible!”

“How did that relate to counselling and therapy?”

“It certainly made some of us aware that there was more than one way of viewing the world. In that sense it freed us up to look for other ways of dealing with our feelings and the internal stories that we had grown up with about the world and how to live in it.”

“What was in the ‘Carrot Juice?”

“Almost certainly mushrooms. Dunno which ones. Fran wouldn’t say. She claimed it was ancient sacred knowledge from kabbalistic writings. At first she only offered the tea to her closest friends and lovers, but after other people complained of being excluded, we used to have a ‘tea ceremony’ to bring us together when there was conflict or division in the community.”

“Did it work?”

“Seemed to.”

“You were brave to take something with unknown ingredients. Easy to get something toxic.” Sarah clearly knew something about the dangers involved in gathering hallucinogens. Stan began to look very uncomfortable again.

“I didn’t take any tea until quite late in the piece. I watched various other people take a few trips over a few weeks before I tried it.”

“Sensible.” Sarah was silent for a moment or two, and Stan made an attempt to turn the conversation towards rabbit hunting, but she wanted to know more. “Did you all have sex when you were tripping?”

“Not everyone, and not all the time – but the trip the tea produced was very sensually focussed and could be quite erotic. A ‘Tea Ceremony’ was a turn on for most people and there was usually a fair bit of activity when we were tripping.”

“And nothing since?”

“Some fairly trippy dope, but no proper hallucinogens for many many years.”

I barely knew these people and I had already shared quite a lot more than I usually did, so I was relieved when Stan made a third attempt to turn the conversation to rabbit hunting, with an invitation to come with him and Butch to hunt on Charlie’s place the following morning. He said he had a second .22, and that he was willing to supervise me to hunt on his Firearms License. I told him that I would be happy to tag along, but didn’t want to take two rifles.

We finished the wine and I thanked them and departed. Sarah seemed thoughtful and Stan slightly relieved.

I set an alarm and by the time it was light enough to shoot, Stan, Butch and I were moving slowly upwind along the edge of Charlie’s pine plantation. The Watts family had farmed the hills behind the bay for nearly a hundred and fifty years, and as sheep became less profitable, the latest incumbent’s father had put a couple of the steeper and less productive blocks into forestry. The pines were now mature and had developed a dense understory of young natives separated from good pasture only by a five wire fence. The local rabbits were suitably appreciative.

Butch was no use as a hunting dog, but no trouble either. He stayed quiet and close at heel. A few minutes from the SUV, we spotted a ‘sitter’ about 25m in front and looking away. Stan is a good shot, and hit it in the head. A quick clean kill. He opened the breech and handed me his ancient Remington, stooping to pick up the ejected brass.

“Keep going. I’ll clean this one. This shoots where it looks. There’s four more in the mag.”

I put a round in the chamber, applied the safety, and walked another couple of hundred metres before spotting another rabbit just before it spotted me. Before I could line it up, it hopped into the cover of the young native bush that had germinated under the mature pines. I thought it might stop there, at least for a few seconds, and I tried to follow its progress through the scope. Sure enough, the rabbit sat with its ears up just a metre into the plantation. Stan’s rifle was practically an antique, but his scope was a newish one and it had enough light gathering power to let me draw a bead even though the rabbit was now invisible to my naked eye.

I’m not a very good shot, so I aimed for the chest, and the rabbit went down and was dead before I got to it. Stan and Butch arrived before I had finished skinning and gutting it, and Butch proved partial to heart, liver, and kidneys. Two was enough, so we quit for the day.

As we walked back to Stan’s SUV, I noticed that he was paying a lot of attention to the ground along the edge of the plantation, and I suddenly knew what his discomfort during our dinner had been about. In fifty odd years as a therapist, I learned to trust the occasional flashes of intuition that my unconscious provided by connecting various apparently unrelated observations. Stan and Sarah were evidently into mushrooms, and Stan was keeping an eye out for some mushies! I pushed.

“No mushrooms this morning?” His reaction told me I had guessed right, even before he replied. He stiffened, slowed, and half turned towards me. Butch picked up his distress and whined.

“Shit! – You knew?”

“Not until just now. I was dimly aware that you were uncomfortable with the trend of the conversation last night, and when I met you and Sarah on the beach she looked as though she was well fucked and tripping.” Stan relaxed a bit.

“Letting out some of her stuff over Russel really changed something for her - for us really. She’s horny all the time, and always up for a trip. She’s keen to find out more about drugs and therapy.” I wanted to think about the situation before I was willing to share any more information, so I just ‘Hmmed’.