Continuing my story about a psychedelic journey in 2013 that caught me by surprise and left me with many valuable insights into life, the universe and my own mind.
Read Part 1 here
A storm coming
As I walked away from the mainfloor I felt a little better being out of the sound pressure of conjuring up these odd insect creepy-crawly images in the mind. I lovingly slapped myself for not even looking at the mainfloor timetable before going on the trip - "I ought to know much better", I thought.
And though I felt a little more solid walking back to the camp, I still didn't feel at ease.
I walked up to the water faucet on the camping ground to refill my bottle and I felt... shy. The odd thing was, everybody else at this faucet seemed to have a similar experience, not really being able to connect with me though I strongly felt they wanted to connect with me just as much as I wanted to connect with them. We just couldn't manage. All I could muster was: "Tough day for me, sorry", and two of them nodded while refilling their water bottle and walking off without even looking at me.
It was tough! Heartwrenching even. Like some invisible... force preventing us from being able to build the bridge to one another despite our need for sharing our pain with others around us.
I wasn't sure whether my own field was so messed up that I shook these people off balance, or whether I was merely one of the people on this day going through a tough time on a trip like mostly everybody else I seemed to meet. I opted for the latter as I walked back to my camp because I saw a few faces who seemed anything but happy. It almost felt like pressure and despair hanging in the air over the festival, which I didn't think was possible here.
"Wow I guess I chose the wrong day for the trip. Wait no, I chose a tough learning experience, that's right!" I felt a little better in looking at the situation that way. There was no way to discern what it all meant so might as well go with what is useful for now ;)
On my way back to our camp a raindrop hit my nose. "Rain? Here?" I looked up, and the sky in the distance looked almost threatening but oddly beautiful. Like a wasp's nest ;) I had been so occupied with my situation and the sensory input of sheer randomness that I had completely neglected to take note of the dark brew that was forming up there in the sky. "Well, that could be another reason, see?" I thought to myself and a part in me agreed.
Well, the trip is far from over, might as well make the best of it.
I arrived back in my camp and of course nobody was there - as is the usual when I really need a friend to give me a hug. OH WELL ;)
I opted to climb into my hammock and see whether this was gonna be a full fledged rain attack or just a little warning drip and nature decided to leave it at a few drops, for now. However the wind was picking up strongly, so much so that my hammock started to swing wildly.
It was kind of fun actually, and a welcome distraction from the negative headspace I had been wading through for the last hours trying to keep my mind calm and to not latch on to anything.
My hammock was hung between two trees on a hill and the full force of the wind was beginning to shake the trees like crazy. For a moment I thought the weather might shake me out of my hammock and the level of wind seemed to increase ever more until I actually started to laugh at its degree of intensity (and absurdity).
I didn't think trees could shake that much without breaking but nature took it well beyond that...
I saw a lot of commotion going on on the camping grounds. Other people came running from the mainfloor path to secure their tents and cars, to put their shoes inside the tents and stop anything from being blown away by the wind. The (human) swarm had noticed the weather and the whole set of priorities on the festival changed within an hour or so. It was a marvellous sight actually, I just seemed to be early in my retreat and suddenly saw that everything was perfect and that nothing needed to be changed. Just allowed.
"Wow it definitely is a special situation today here" I thought. Temperatures were still really nice but the wind was almost unimaginable in intensity. But of course, I was on a trip so that is hard to gauge objectively, especially if you focus on it.
As if to answer my inner thought process the wind picked up even more, wildly shaking the trees and my hammock to a level that made me forget I was on land. For a moment I closed my eyes and saw myself holding onto the mast of a pirate ship in the middle of a storm on the open sea. It was that intense. And now rain started to become more prevalent too, and I laughed. The trees were shaking so strongly it seemed utterly absurd ahahaha. And the keen sense of another gush of wind coming the moment I thought "this must be the maximum".
It was a real intertwined experience that suddenly seemed very important to me. Never before had nature mirrored my inner world so strongly, or was it the other way around and my inner space mirrored and foreshadowed nature's flip in weather?
For a moment I considered walking back to the mainfloor just to see how the vibe was but so many people were coming back to the camping grounds now that I forfeited the idea. "Everybody getting ready for nature's response to the tough sound" I thought. And I giggled.
Moments later a friend of mine came back to our camp as well and she was really happy to see me. She hadn't gone on the journey with us, so I asked her: "Hey hun, can you give me a hug please? I could really use one about now."
And she hugged me, wow did that feel good. I relaxed further. Guess coming back to the camp WAS a good idea, maybe only a bit premature as compared to the other people on the festival who all seemed to come back in a hurry now.
I no longer felt like I was the only one having a tough time, and I relaxed even further.
As a few more of our camp came back to secure our stuff before being blown away we sat together in one of our tents with some candles. Someone made tea and it actually became very cozy. How nice I thought, this feels right! We laughed at the continued gushes of wind tearing on the tent, but the weather eventually died down after a while - all we got was that scary fist-shake of nature in the form of heavy wind and a few moments of rain, but nothing half as bad as everyone seemed to have suspected.
Still, the rest of my lsd crew was nowhere to be seen, maybe they found some other place to take shelter for the moment? But they had Ryan with them, and I thought they would probably be alright.