Psilocybin Santa (Part 3)

Santa sat in front of a crackling fire, sipping a single malt, and tapped out an email to Heat Miser on his tablet. The subject line read: More Mushrooms Stat!

The email read:

Heat:

I get it. I was chopping wood and got it. I’m climbing the ladder out of the hole!

Santa

Heat Miser replied in seconds:

You can have you all you want but you have to come to Oregon get them. Get in the sleigh and spend Christmas with us.

An hour later, the reindeer were flying Santa and a sleigh to Yaquina Bay. Before he departed, he told the elves to make as many yo yos and pogo sticks as their tiny hearts desired. He unlocked the liquor cabinet and said have at it. He’d return….when he returned.

The next morning he landed in a green pasture on the Misers’ farm. Heat and Snow were waiting and flagged him in safely.

An hour later the brothers were touring him around a massive fungi production facility called Mother Nature Mycology. The facility produced one product—psilocybin mushrooms that were shipped out to confectioners across the region to transform into delicious and mind-expanding treats and sold under the table at hippie craft fairs, music festivals, mushroom events and via a tight-lipped internet network.

Santa was awestruck by the operation but remarked that it was totally illegal.

“It won’t be in a few years,” said Snow Miser. “There is a movement afoot and its got deep pockets. We’re stocking up, and when it becomes legal, we’ll be ready to dominate the West Coast market.”

In the afternoon, Santa made his way across the pastures and down to the bay. It was low tide and he followed a trail along the shore that passed hundreds of rotting pilings listing in the mud flats. Before leaving, he’d eaten half a psilocybin cupcake (stuffed with lemon pudding!) and waited for its clarifying elixir to kick in. Heat Miser had recommended a small dose two or three times a week to invigorate Santa’s mental health. After a month or so, they’d reevaluate his dosage, depending on his state of mind.

The sky was gray, the water on the bay slate, and the trees on the hills black. Rain threatened and Santa wore his trusty pea coat.

An hour into his hike, he felt a lightening well up inside him. He picked up his pace. He breathed in the heavy scent of salt. He drank it like drinking a milkshake without a straw. He heard the ocean rumbling in haiku somewhere in the distance. It was happening again…everything around me is luminous, scintillating, coruscating. Jesus, even my vocabulary is improving!

Santa heard movement. He looked down into a slough and saw an otter gliding through the water on its back. The otter threw up a peace sign to Santa and disappeared.

He heard more moment. He’d spooked a blue heron plucking frogs from the mud. It lifted off and Santa watched its weird, undulating, prehistoric fight with incredible focus. He imagined the sleigh flying like a blue heron, loaded not with toys for the good little boys and girls but with something useful for depressed adults, something revolutionary to lead a revolt against the crisis of Western culture and its soulless, destructive consumerism. What might that load be?

He heard a tree fall in the forest. He laughed and answered the famous koan aloud, which of course is unanswerable.

And then a powerful idea struck Santa like a giant gong vibrating in a temple of a majestic palace. Santa had smashed the gong with his imagination and it had rung with a resounding noise that announced something important was coming soon.

I’m going to dose the world with magic mushrooms on Christmas Eve!