Ep30 In The Shadow Of The Mountain C.L.Knox stories

The speaker reflects on their experiences as a young teenager, specifically focusing on a trip they took with a group of friends to California. They mention the dissolution of a commune and the involvement of various individuals, including Morgan and Pat, who had an affair with a young girl named Amy. The group travels together in a caravan, reconnecting with old friends and meeting new people along the way. They recall a memorable LSD party where their six-year-old sister accidentally consumed the drug, causing them to feel afraid and protective. They also discuss their own personal growth and struggles with compassion and empathy. The trip ends with the speaker deciding to stay in California with a friend named Woody for a period of time before eventually returning to Canada. The speaker reflects on the impact of their experiences and their desires to embody compassion and passion in their life. Episode 30. I'm going to go back in the story line to when I was 12 again. A lot of stuff happened in my life when I was 11 and 12 years old. Those things influenced me greatly, who I am and the way I think. This particular story, it takes place over a few weeks. It's not a long period of time. After the commune was established and the commune house in town had pretty much disintegrated, Hoagie had left for Columbia to do his marijuana honey thing. I think the rest of the people that were there at that house had sort of dispersed. Morgan and Pat and Amy, who I mentioned before, they went back to Berkeley. So it was Pat and Morgan were a husband and wife with two kids and then Amy was like their babysitter that Morgan ended up having an affair with. He basically had two wives. She was only like 16, 17, 18 years. She was young and I think he took advantage of that personally. Well, I know he did. Talking to her years later, she said that he used her. She had some money in her life. Her grandfather was the founder or great-grandfather was the founder of the big, huge moving company in the States. She had a trust that was, I think it became hers when she turned 21. Morgan ended up using that up. He built a recording studio and he did a lot of stuff. He basically abused her. They had one or two kids. They had two kids, I think, him and Amy. I think Pat finally had enough of Morgan and got rid of him too. So Morgan was a character. They're all characters. We're all characters from that time. Anyway, so the commune people, one of our friends in Qualicum, I may have mentioned him before or not, his name is Dennis. He had a sister in the States and he had a, I can't remember the reason, but he had a reason or a need to go and see her in California. He was going to drive down his, I don't know what it was, a 56 Chevy pickup or 55. It was an old pickup that was in really good shape. Mind you, in 1970, it wasn't as old as it would be now. So he had a camper home, a camper thing, canopy thing built on the back and he was going to go down, drive down and see his sister and it sort of morphed into, well, we're all, we're going to go, a whole bunch of us are going to go. So we went as a caravan. My memory is it was the last trip that we used the bus for, but I also have a memory of us driving a car. So we may have taken a car and the bus. I can't remember specifics. It's like some of the stories get blended together. So I can't distinguish which was what, but this particular trip, the caravan we called it, there was at least five vehicles, maybe six vehicles. And we went down as a group and everybody had their own people they wanted to see, like Peter was from San Diego. I don't know if we went as far as San Diego. Tui was from, he had friends down there. We ended up reconnecting with Morgan and Pat, Morgan and Amy and their families. And we met some new people down there too. So my memory again is that this happened in the late fall, early winter time. It was, the weather was changing. It was nice to get away from here and get into California. We never went south of San Francisco, Berkeley area. So, I mean, it was winter there too, but it was nicer than here. Anyway, when we got on this trip, it was, it's like, it was, the whole thing was just an amazing, positive experience. I don't recall a lot of negative stuff happening. And I can remember riding with different people. Like sometimes I would be riding in Tui's truckers or sometimes with Dennis or, you know, I don't remember what all the vehicles were, but it was fun. It was a good time. And we ended up in Berkeley at one point with Morgan and Pat, Pat and Morgan and Amy. And they had a big house, two-story house. My memory is it was in Berkeley. It may have been in San Francisco. It was, in my memory again, it was like a San Francisco old turn of the century kind of house. And we ended up having an LSD party there. Now, one or two people did not take it. You know, it seemed like we always had one or two people that stayed straight just to sort of corral everybody and sort of keep things moving in the right direction. But at this particular party, somebody gave my sister, Vicki, some LSD. She was six years old. Now, this was her first experience with LSD. I think this came after we had done mescaline as a family. So, she had experienced some psychedelics before, but she was pretty young, six years old. Twelve years old is pretty young. So, it wasn't done with the understanding or the knowledge of my mom and Bryce. And we found out, I don't remember ever knowing who gave it to her, but we found out that she was stoned. And then one of the people, which I believe it was Amy, in my memory again, it was Amy, took care of her and helped her to navigate the whole experience. Don't know how much she took. Don't know. All we know is that she was experiencing a psychedelic trip. So, I believe that probably had some psychological impact in her life. How could it not? It did in mine. That trip, I remember, because I was stoned and I remember being afraid for her, fearful, angry. I had always been somewhat of a protector of her since she was born. I don't know what motivated that. My character was such that I tended to be very compassionate and empathetic. I had a capacity for empathy and compassion. Later in my life, that was kind of beaten out of me and I've been struggling hard to regain that. I still have it. It's not like it's gone. It was part of my character. But it became more and more difficult to live compassionately. Because life burns you, right? You get burnt in life. I'll leave that for now. I can remember walking the streets of Berkeley and meeting people and it seems like we met one or two people down there that came back with us. There was this fellow that we called Banana Bread Bill. I think this was when we met him and he came back to Canada. I stay with us. I actually ended up staying down there with Woody. So, Woody hadn't been to Canada, but we connected with her. She was from Birmingham and we connected with her in San Francisco. She was friends with Tom and Claude or Claude, we called him. So, we connected with her. She was living basically in a tent in Mendocino County. And when the trip, when the caravan was over and going to make its way back, it had been such an enjoyable time, I didn't want to come back. So, I presented to my folks that I stay down there and Woody was cool with taking responsibility for me as an adult. And so, I stayed with Woody and we stayed in Mendocino County. We went between Mendocino and we stayed often at Claude's place. He had a place in my memory that was right on the water in the San Francisco area. I don't know Claude's story where he got his money from. That whole group, Woody, Hoagy, Tom, Claude, they all seemed to come from money, higher income, like upper middle class families. I know that Hoagy's dad was a judge. I don't remember. I think that possibly Woody's dad was a judge or her grandfather or something. I have some memory of they were the same sort of sociological community or social community as Hoagy's family. They all went to school together, high school, and that's how they knew each other. Claude didn't seem to have to work. I think he had a trust or something. He always had nice things and he lived well and didn't seem to have to work. I can remember at that time he had become a dead head too. He was teaching himself guitar and he was just totally infatuated with Jerry Garcia. Spending time at his place as he was learning guitar, and I hadn't really started to play guitar yet, but watching him diligently try to replicate Jerry Garcia lead lines, that's never been my method. I've been more interested in finding my own style. It's there, sort of bringing it to the surface and letting it do its thing as opposed to copying somebody else. Even when I play cover songs, I tend to make them my own. If you want to make a living that way, if you hit it right, you can do it. I've seen Bare Naked Ladies, the Bruce Coburn song, and it just exploded. Which song was it? Wonder Where the Lions Are? I can't remember what it was, but they exploded. That's a Canadian band, so for you people not in Canada, you have to look it up. Google it. Bare Naked Ladies and Bruce Coburn's song. Anyway, those things that imprint you in your life. I talked about taking two LSD trips, one right after the other on the beach in Mendocino County. This happened after the caravan. Everybody left. I stayed with Woody, and we spent time, like I said, between San Francisco. Tom lived in San Francisco. Claude lived in San Francisco. I don't recall going over to Berkeley again, but Mendocino County was sort of more where we hung out and just lived in the sun and the waves of Mendocino County. When I did end up coming back to Canada, it was after that trip. Woody and I hitchhiked back up to Canada. That's how Woody got to Canada. She hadn't been there before. Once she got here, she became pretty good friends with Paula, Bryce's sister Paula. In my memory, I'd have to confirm that with Paula, but they seemed to strike up a good relationship. I think I had a crush on her. I did. I don't even know what that was about, but for some reason, I really liked her. Quite a bit older than me, probably 10 years older than me, but that was that part of my life. I examine the whole thing, the thing with Vicki, the thing with me staying and freaking out that whole period of time, people that I got to know and I thought I knew well and I don't know that I do or did, and the breakdown of the ability to live compassionately. I can remember as I was parenting, wanting to show compassion to other people as an example for my kids and giving time, volunteering, doing things, coaching, whatever it was, and also having passion. Compassion and passion, those two things, wanting them to be part of my character and who my kids saw me to be. Those desires came from that trip, among other things, wanting to be able to make a difference in the world and also believing that I could make a difference in the world. Ultimately, that difference for me was having kids. I wanted to be a dad more than just about anything, which meant I wanted to be a husband. I've mentioned that as well, the ability to fail. Just put it that way, at things that you really want to accomplish. To not do them as well as you want or hoped or even think you were doing. Misunderstanding, people misunderstand you. We all view people from our worldview. We see them how we see them and we perceive them through our own clouded or shaded or lens of reality, worldview. We never really know how people view us either. We never really fully understand how people view us. Right now, I'm reading in Hebrews. It seems like every two weeks, I'm talking about somewhere else I'm reading in the Bible. I'm still reading Revelation. I've sort of taken a break from it. I finished the book of Daniel and I started the book of Ezekiel. Those are two really difficult books. Ezekiel, I find really difficult to read. Not as hard as Jeremiah, but pretty difficult. Like I already mentioned, I'll probably, for a while now, I'll be reading Revelation and then taking a week or two off and then starting it again. It just seems so relevant for today. But in Hebrews, it's a letter written to the Hebrews who, I mean, Jesus was a Hebrew. The 12 disciples, the 12 apostles were Hebrews. They were Jewish. They have Jewish understanding about things. The writer is constantly bringing them back to their roots, their Hebrew roots, but also saying, don't be bound by those roots. You have to recognize that Jesus coming was a fulfillment of a promise that God made, that this is the new covenant. This is the promise. So right in the middle, I'm reading, I don't know, three, four, five, six Hebrews. It talks about how some of the believers became believers and embraced the life of a believer in Christ and the newness of the covenant, the promise, Jesus as the Son of God, the Savior, and our adoption into the family of God, even them. I mean, they were the family of God, but an adoption into the true family of God, being sons of God, and to leave that. So people at that time, Jewish people, were leaving their faith in Christ and re-embracing the Jewish sacraments, the circumcision, the legal stuff. Now that stuff, as you read the Old Testament and the New Testament, that stuff is really important. It's not that it's not important, but it became kind of irrelevant after Christ. It became irrelevant. There is no more need for sacrifice. The sacrifice has been done. So when the Jewish people cast aside their belief in Christ, they believed in him, and then they cast it aside, and then they re-embraced their old ways. They set themselves up for alienation from God, and at one point, it's pretty strong language. It says, once having tasted the glory, the magnificence, the wonder of the Holy Spirit through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, how can you after that go back to the law of circumcision, feasts and festivals and sacrifice of animals, and then expect that you can be re-admitted into this new salvation? It's like knowing what you know, you give it up and go back to what you knew before, and you know it's not right. Then there's this struggle. It means, like he says, you're putting Christ, how can you put Christ back on the cross again? It's like re-crucifying Christ. So as a Gentile reading that, I remember applying it to my life and thinking there's no hope for me, that there's no hope, because I constantly, like a dog going back to its vomit, I constantly go back to things of the flesh. I regularly go back to those things, but that's a different thing. It's not talking about the flesh. It's about going back to what you knew was wrong spiritually and embracing that again and denying Christ. You have to read everything in context, and you have to, I guess you have to have some knowledge of the Old Testament, and you do really, to get the bigger, deeper, broader understanding of it. Anyway, I come away after reading that with actually with hope that God can work in me a great work to re-establish me in compassion, and passionately so. It's happening. I'm not going to go back into some of the personal things in my life that are very, very sad, and very restrictive, that cause a lot of bondage if you allow them to. Just relationship stuff, like relationships with other people, mostly family, whether it's kids, wife, siblings, whatever it is, those family issues, they cut deeper than most. But also experiencing them gives new, fresh view on compassion, empathy, and can spark a passionate drive to be compassionate. So much puberty. I don't know if people understand. I don't know how many people are actually following this process anymore. The last podcast didn't have a huge reception from the analytics I get, which are very limited. So I don't know, but like I said, I'm kind of committed to doing this until the end of June. So a couple more months, and hopefully I can keep drawing out stuff that's interesting enough to listen, and then get to the navel gaze, and probably play something that was recorded before. Okay. Thanks a lot. See you later. So most of the original songs I've been doing on this podcast are songs I haven't performed in public, or I haven't played in a long time. Anyway, they're not songs I've been overly comfortable with, and they seem a little chunky to me. So the song I'm working on right now, not quite ready for public. So I'm going to do this Dylan song. Little side note, this tar strap here was from the commune days. So I've had that since 72, I guess. Made by the, I'm not using names, am I? Okay. The guy that, the leather craftsman from the commune. The island, there ain't no man for the island. The strongest wall will crumble and fall to the mighty God. All those who have eyes and all those who have ears, it's only he can reduce me to tears. Don't you cry, don't you die, and don't you burn. Like a thief in the night, there's a place wrong with right when he returns. And truth is an arrow and the gate is narrow that it passes through. He unleashed his power, no, no power that no one knew. How long can you listen to the lies and prejudice? How long can I stay drunk on fear? Out in the wilderness? Can I cast it aside? All this loyalty and this pride, will I ever learn? That there'll be no peace and that the world won't cease until he returns. Surrender your crown, all that's left stays around. Take off your mask, for he sees your deeds and he knows your needs even before you ask. How long can you porcupine and deny what is real? How long can you hate yourself for the weakness you conceal? A very earthly plan that be known to man, he is unconcerned. He's got plans of his own to set up his throne when he returns. Yes, when he returns. Yes, when he returns. Yes, when he returns.