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No doubt about it, looking around at the farm, at the people, at everything. It had really finally gone somewhere.

Kathy and Simon and I were crying and laughing for joy. It had really happened. Everything confirmed it. We were dumbfounded with joy. Jack was holding back some. I felt sorry for him, but he’d catch on.

“Did you ever think it would ever really happen?”

“I damn near chucked it many times.”

“Did you ever really doubt that it had to happen sooner or later?”

“What I wonder is why it took so long. Why now? What was stopping us before?”

“You know there’s no going back now.”

“About time. Life finally makes some sense.”

“What a long, strange trip it’s been.” “Thank God we didn’t give up.” “Thank God we persevered.” Everything that had happened before was like some bad dream, something that we could finally look at clearly now that we were out of it. “How the hell did we put up with it as long and as well as we did?”

It was truly a magic day and a magic trip, but the next day brought cooler air, with the usual total overcast and sprinkles of rain. The next day it snowed. Simon, Jack, and Kathy had come down some, but I was still a touch or so higher than I had been before the mescaline. I didn’t see what was to be gained by going back to my pre-Eden days. I was having a swell time and feeling a little sorry for the others, having their Eden depend on some silly pill.

If only Virginia could be here now, so I could share this incredible sense of well-being and saying by-by to all the shit in my life.

I had somehow conquered the evil little troll inside me that had given me so much shit and kept me from happiness. I had finally beat all the little shithead fears about myself. Fear that I was very different from everyone else. Fear that deep down inside I was a shallow fraud, that after the revolution or after Jesus came down to straighten everything out, everyone from hippies to hard-hats would unfold and blossom into the beautiful people they were while I would remain a gnarled little wart in the corner, oozing bile and giving off putrid smells.

Everything that had ever happened to me made perfect sense. I was sore at absolutely no one and nothing. Everything that had happened had happened just right. But where to go from here? As much as it was better to travel hopefully than to arrive, as much as I believed that and had lived by it, once you’ve arrived, you’ve arrived, and there’s not much to be done about it.

I had thought about becoming a minister because there would be no way my job would ever be finished. As long as there was one unkind thought in my congregation, one unjust deed in my community, one unhappy person, the Indelibly Reverend Vonnegut would have his hands full. I loved Virginia because there was clearly so much wrong with our relationship, so much to improve that the prospect of arrival was an incredibly long shot.

Instead of learning, I was looking for enlightenment. Instead of security, I was after infinite inner peace. Instead of a job, I was out to save the world, I thought I had taken adequate precautions against the prospect of arrival but something had gone terribly awry. I had arrived.

Things were still unbearably beautiful. I got this giddiness in my stomach and walked around completely overwhelmed by the incredible loveliness of the trees and the sky and the moss, infinitely delicate worlds within worlds, and people’s faces and the way they moved and my own body and what a perfect machine it was and the stove and the floors and our funky house. And everything fit together so perfectly. It wasn’t just in the way things looked. It was in the sounds of the wind and the stream and the way things felt, the ground gushing ever so slightly under my feet, the way everything smelled. It’s everywhere, it’s everywhere. And it keeps getting better and better. And I think to myself, Look Ma, no drugs.

People are all charming and silly. The idea of purpose cracks me up. The only thing that puzzles me is why it took me so long to catch on. How did I manage to