Kundalini and the Art of Being ... 1I spent four days out in the desert, going once into town for water.
In four long days I didn’t do much of anything, really. I slept, ate,
wrote in my journal, meditated, and listened to music on my walk-
man. I had some marijuana with me (which I still smoked very oc-
casionally, generally in natural settings—the desert was perfect), and
got high a few times; then I hiked around the desert in the warm,
but not overbearing sunshine. This experience, of getting high in the
open expanse of the desert, reminded me of a solo road trip I’d taken
the summer before, just prior to moving into the Pearl Hill House...
It was mid-August, a few days after my second car had been re-
turned after being stolen in Portland, and I needed some time away
from the city to relax and clear my mind. I’d left Eugene after dark,
heading east on Highway 12. I spent that night in the back of my
station wagon at Hippie Hollow, the free campground near Cougar
hot springs. I woke up the next morning to frost on the windows
and the sun rising into a clear sky. I started up the car, turned on the
heater, ate a bowl of granola in the front seat, and soon was headed
down the road. It didn’t take long to leave behind the lush forests of
western Oregon.
At Bend, two hours east of Eugene and at the edge of the Oregon
desert, I turned south for an hour and then east once again, down a
lonely, dusty road that, according to my map, went right by a large
lake in the middle of the desert. I thought that it would make a nice
place to camp for the night. I never found the lake, though—it must
have been a seasonal lake, and a shallow one at that—and I ended up
driving most of the day through the seemingly endless desert. Finally,
tired of driving, I pulled over at a wide turn-out along the dirt road,
and turned off the car.
The immediate silence made me a little self-conscious, as I sat
there in the car waiting for the dust to settle. Months in the city had
filled my mind with clutter. Now it was all being magnified. Instead
of the comforting drone of distraction that the city offers, it was just
me and the desert, face to face. And the desert has an uncanny ability