💋How to Make Love to a Tree ... on Acid

Warning! This post contains:

• Beastie Boys lyrics, cited academically

• one (1) acid tab, split three ways per picnic bylaws

• arboreal romance (consensual)

• a flying squirrel impression, 6,950 feet above sea level, and

• unexplained sap (locations classified)

Reader discretion is advised. So is industrial-grade soap.

Shasta. It’s a river, a language, a tribe. It’s a place that adventurers and travelers who have seen it all call home.

Shhhastaaaa. I like to say it. The last time the active volcano said anything explosive was in 1786, but the people of Mount Shasta blew up when Nestlé tried to move in and tap her headwaters for bottled water. They ran ‘em out of town and kept their water pure.

Shasta is a way of life.

Not that the people are opposed to honest industry. They’re home to Shasta, the 125-year-old value-priced soft drink. And just like the people, their brand is unique, with offerings like Grapefruit Zazz, Tiki Orange Mango, Bubble Gum, and Candy Cane Cola. Their pop is still popular today and best enjoyed while listening to ’80s New Wave synth-pop.

Any Ministry fans? Al Jourgensen wrote Shasta’s jingle.

If you’re still not convinced of Shasta’s superlative soda, just ask The Beastie Boys. They’ll tell you.

“I’m the master blaster,
drinking up the Shasta,
my voice sounds sweet
cause it hastaaaaa.”

Taking it back to 1992, that’s “Professor Booty” from the album Check Your Head.

So what’s the point of all the trivia? Where do we go now? Or, a more interesting question:

Where did we come from?

Mount Shasta is the place where I entered the motherfucking universe. I was born 3,600 feet above sea level on the flanks of a volcano.

I don’t remember anything from my childhood in northern California, but our family photo album was vivid enough. One of my favorite faded old photographs is of my family wearing bathing suits in the snow. At higher elevations, blizzards at night, then 70 degree weather the next day was not uncommon.

There aren’t any snowmen on Mt. Shasta, but you’ll find a few snowdudes. Olaf has a summer home on the South side.

Surely this magical mountain had an effect on my love for nature and for getting lost … on purpose. At 41 years old, I’m still climbing trees. I remember wearing dress shoes and a cummerbund, but that didn’t stop me. If I see a tree with some nice knobs and thick branches, it’s on.

You might see me if I let you. You might hear an owl and say to yourself, “I thought owls sleep during the day?” Then you’ll look up and be like, “What the fuck dude? Everyone’s waiting. Aren’t you the best man?” All this is perfectly normal in my world. And my hoot is dead on.

When I was a kid, my friend Jake taught me how to use my hands to “whistle like the Indians,” but I perfected the technique. Basically you cup your hands together and blow straight down into a little hole you make between your thumbs. To get the owl’s purring sound just right, you exhale and gargle simultaneously. Fluctuating the pitch is just like playing a trombone. Just slide a few fingers up and down to get the right sound. That’s it! That’s how I roll.

I do a lotta stuff in trees, which brings us to the title of the story. It’s not a metaphor.

This is an account of how to make love to a tree, properly, 6,950 ft above sea level. Most trees won’t turn you down, so it’s a much easier way to join the Mile High Club.

Before my big adventure, my last glimpse of Shasta was from my cradle. Twenty years later, I decided to go on a pilgrimage to my place of origin. I planned the trip with my faerie friend, Meaghan Owens. She was a fellow songwriter and adventurer who I was secretly in love with. Everyone who meets Meaghan falls in love, so it’s not a big secret.

Anyways, back in Nashville, I told Meaghan that I was planning to move to California in a few months to start a music publishing company. She was like, “Oh that’s cool. I’ll be in Mt. Shasta around then.”

Me: “No way. That’s where I was born!”
Meaghan: “Really?
Me: “Yeah, I’ll be in Oakland for a bit, but I was planning to make my way up to Shasta at some point.”
Meaghan: “You should come visit!”

Meaghan was going to Shasta to visit Lucy, the mother of her late friend Sequoya. Lucy’s son Shannon lived in San Francisco. I hadn’t met him before, but Meaghan said we’d be best friends. Since my sister Willow lived in Oakland, I decided to fly out and see them both. After a quick visit with Willow, Shannon and I took off in his beater car and headed north.

My friend Sharon also lived nearby, but she can be a little flaky, so I gave her barely enough time to pack, but not enough time to think about the consequences of a big decision. It worked, so Shannon (dude) and Sharon (dudette) joined forces and we took off.

According to Oatmeal Muncher University, Shasta is Earth’s root chakra, “the access point to ‘All That Is,’ a place where you are bathed in knowingness and nurtured by the realization and frequency of oneness.”

All that sounds a little too woo-woo for me, but “Wah-hoooo!” We were on a road trip!

One flat tire and a lotta laughs later, we arrived. It must have been around midnight, but Meaghan was there to welcome us as soon as we stepped out of the car.

I remember seeing every star in the sky. The Milky Way was so vivid that it looked like a cirrus cloud stretching from one horizon to the other. As I gave Meaghan a big bear hug, lifting her up off my mountain, a shooting star streaked across the sky over her shoulder. The girl was an omen magnet.

The next day, we all headed up to Bunny Flat, 6,950 feet up the south side of the mountain. As soon as we hit the trail head, we all went silent. Everything was covered in snow, glittering in sunbeams shining through evergreens. One ray of light illuminated a little old man, bald with fluffy white sideburns. He had a burlap bag in one hand and was sprinkling seeds with the other. Two white butterflies fluttered around him.

“Did someone spike my oatmeal?” I wondered. “Is this happening?” Then he looked me in the eyes and said, “Would you like to help?”

I couldn’t even process all the data streaming in, but I knew the right answer was “YES!”

All my existential dilemmas vanished. Spreading beauty across the earth is exactly what I wanted to do with my life. We lost track of time sprinkling wildflower seeds, wandering through the woods until we had essentially become the butterfly effect and our hunger pangs had long given up trying to remind us of lunch.

At last we group-hugged with the old man and took off to search for the perfect place in the snow to spread our picnic blanket. The faded family photograph that had captured my childish curiosity was no longer a dream.

It was at this point that Sharon decided to announce, “Oh, by the way, my boyfriend goes to these, like, mind-expansion conferences in Switzerland, so he knows some of the scientists who attend. It’s probably not going to work out between us because he’s, like, this weird idiot savant. It’s a tough decision though, because he always has good shit. […] One Smiley Face for you. Who wants the posh monkey? We can split the Jesus Lizard down the middle if you want.”

For the next six hours, words and laughter became one and the same.

We feasted on purple scones with blackberry jam and cream. We had crispy cheese ’n onion hogbake, trifles, candied chestnuts, rhubarb pie with apple snow. Of course we washed it down with Shasta’s own Summer Strawberry Fizz. I might have made up the apple snow bit, but my friends looked like woodland critters at the time, so let’s just say it was hard to distinguish between real and Redwall.

After we had our fill, Shannon and I took off on our own adventure, running as fast as we could up the steep slope. Next, I remember lying flat on my back on a fallen tree, trying and failing to catch my breath. Capturing ephemeral mist is much harder than it looks, so I decided to let it be, and gaze through the icy smoke, focusing intently on the neon green moss growing on the limbs above. As I moved my head out of a shadow into the sunlight, I closed my eyes, whereupon the entire forest remained clear and colorful, only imprinted under my eyelids. To this day, I can still see these impressions. Whenever I need clarity or wisdom, my dreams will take me back to the exact spot, to my Castanadian place of power.

When I opened my eyes, I spotted a clearing off to my right through the woods about 100 feet away. The expanse was uninhabited except for one lone evergreen tree in the middle. She was beautiful, but had a little imperfection: an offshoot limb growing sideways from her base. I didn’t mind. She was a tall, skinny young thing and I was gonna mount her. I mean, I was going to ask if I could climb into her limbs first.

I walked over and sat on the offshoot, which made for a nice bench – strong, yet flexible. As I bounced, I wasn’t sure if an idea was growing in my mind or if my mind was growing on the idea. In any case, we grew on each other until I jumped up off the branch and ran a bit further up the mountain. After a big exhale, my breath disappeared and I took off again, this time barreling down the slope. As I approached the tree, I crouched low and leaped onto the limb, springing off with all my might, then flying seven or eight feet through the air, and screaming from the shock of it all. Shannon had to help dig me out of the snow hole that I made from the impact.

I perfected my flying squirrel impression for what felt like half a day (in LSD time). In reality though, we were Greenwich mean minus eight, sooooo … give or take a few lunar seconds it was probably about … five minutes.

I was doing flips and twists and triple Salchows. It didn’t matter if I landed on my feet or my hands or my head. There was sooooo much snow to soften the blow.

Finally, when I was too tired to go on, I jumped into the evergreen and gave my new lady friend a big bear hug. She seemed to like that, so I disappeared into her branches as I whispered all the things that I wanted to do to her. I won’t say what she whispered back, but it was nasty.

A few moments later, Shannon saw me pop up out at the very top, 30 feet up. He immediately sprang to his feet and yelled for me to get down. I politely hollered, “No way!” It was a convincing argument, apparently, because he shook his head and sat back down. If I plummeted to death, at least he could say that he tried.

At that height I could see all the way down the mountain. Off to the North, neon balls of light kept streaking by. I thought I was hallucinating. Shannon told me later that they were just skiers in bright colored jackets.

I could see my breath engulfing the tiny cones at the top of my tree. Most evergreens have cones that hang down, but hers curved upward, a trait unique to Shasta’s California Fir. The baby cones at the top were so soft, like velvet to the touch.

We were swaying effortlessly. Next thing you know, I was rocking back and forth to the natural rhythm and sound of the wind. Before long we were careening three feet this way, five feet that way, then six, seven, eight feet in either direction.

Shannon yelled, “Darby, be careful!” but I was carefree, riding that tree like a composer orchestrating the earth as I hurled its weight in each direction. In that moment we became one – literally, one giant pendulum of a metronome, having the time of our lives.

I was 30 feet high, screaming like a banshee at my shadow, “Try and catch me now!” But she couldn’t keep up with our tempo.

“[sobbing] Oh my god! Full on double mountain across the sky! What does it mean?!” I sounded like Bear, the double rainbow dude from Yosemite.

I don’t know if the universe gave Bear an answer, but what I think the double rainbow means is that life is beautiful, and you have to be present or you might miss it.

“Booyakashaaaaa!!!”

It’s an Irish saying that means high glory and love to the very moment. I usually reserve the exclamation for winning game point in badminton, but I literally felt like the birdie floating to and fro, so it was totally called for.

I can imagine the skiers doing a double-take and skidding to a hockey stop to gawk. Obviously, some of it was performance on my part. There’s a certain thrill you get when you know people are watching and boy were there some bright flashing lights watching me get it on that day.

I remember the thick musky smell of her sap, the way it felt smeared all over my face. I didn’t wash her off for days. Or, wait … actually, it wouldn’t wash off. I tried, but it was too sticky for consumer-grade soap. It doesn’t matter. The consummation of love should be sticky.

The level of love we made that day has surely ruined me. “Oh my God,” I thought. “Please don’t end. Please …” But it was time. I made the choice, laid back and fell. I didn’t think about it, just instinctively knew that it was possible because my mind had previously stored crucial data, namely that my young California Fir’s green branches were supple enough to bend but not break. I don’t remember recalling this construct explicitly. The knowledge was simply encoded into my subconscious, as if the physics of the fall was part of me.

Each branch was a little longer than the branch above, so they all “caught” me before delivering me to the branch below until I rolled off the tree into a big pillow of snow. I laid there and stared in wonder, strangely craving a cigarette. I didn’t even smoke, but the urge seemed normal.

It was a dream. It happened. Shannon nearly shat his pants and told everyone when we got back. Then he told everyone again the next day – when I could finally distinguish words from sound effects. He’s probably still telling that story.