Encounters with Power: Adventures and Misadventures on the Shamanic Path of Healing - José Luis Stevens 2017

Lost in Mexico
Expression—Storyteller-Artist

Seven years after our Huichol teacher, Guadalupe, died, I was once again traveling to Wirikuta, the sacred peyote fields in central Mexico, on our annual pilgrimage. This time I was traveling with Lena; my daughter, Anna; and Anna's relatively new boyfriend, Aaron (who is now her husband). We were crammed into Anna’s Subaru Forester for the thirteen-hundred-mile journey from New Mexico.

We left Santa Fe early in the morning and stopped at the aduana, the place about fifty kilometers past the border where travelers register their cars and get permits. Lena discovered that she had brought her recently expired passport instead of her new one and would not be able to continue. Shocked, we all had to instantly reorganize — this complication didn’t change the fact that we still needed to join with our group to the south as planned to conduct the ceremony. We drove Lena back to the edge of Juarez, where she grabbed a taxi for the border to explore her options for meeting up with us again. Meanwhile, Anna, Aaron, and I headed down to Mexico. Knowing how resourceful Lena is, I was not worried about her.

Two days later we were in Wadley, a tiny pueblo deep in Mexico, waiting to meet our group. Suddenly they arrived in two cars and, of course, Lena was with them. She had experienced many adventures, including a taxi that broke down and another taxi that ran out of gas, but she had gone to El Paso, gotten our assistant to overnight-mail the passport, headed back to Juarez, and caught a flight to Monterrey just in time to be picked up by members of our group.

We had a fabulous pilgrimage with an overnight ceremony in the desert, Aaron’s first outside the Native American Church he had grown up in. The ceremony was an adjustment for him after his experience with Arapaho-style ceremonies, which were always very formal and followed a strict protocol. Huichol ceremonies are by contrast loosely conducted, with time allowed for singing, storytelling, and socializing. Interestingly, some traditional lore has it that the North American indigenous nations were taught by the Huichol centuries ago but that their ceremonies became formalized and rule-oriented because of their masculine orientation. The Huichol are more feminine in orientation.

In the morning we made our climb up Cerro Quemado, the sacred mountain, and then, as always, we retraced our thirteen hundred miles back to Santa Fe. On the second day of driving, Aaron was at the wheel and I was dozing on and off in the backseat, deep into my book, when the car sputtered a few times and we came to a standstill by the side of the highway in the Sonoran Desert, sand dunes in the distance. We had run out of gas. Aaron had been enjoying the scenery so much that he had not noticed when the reserve light came on. Since I spoke some Spanish it was determined I should go get the gas — and quickly. Within five minutes I was standing on the other side of the highway hitchhiking back to the last town, maybe twenty miles back. Being in a pilgrimage frame of mind, I asked for help from Spirit and contemplated that I was about to enter a mysterious journey with unknown consequences.

Within minutes a Mexican salesman stopped and picked me up. Evidently very successful, he was driving a late-model car and speeding up to a hundred miles per hour. After a pleasant conversation, he dropped me off at the gas station unexpectedly quickly, where I met a nice woman attendant who got some Clorox bottles and filled them up with gas. She asked a waiting truck driver if he would give me a lift, and within minutes I was headed back up the highway in a truck loaded with Volvo parts. I thought, They’ll be surprised at how quickly I got the gas and came back. I was feeling good. Everything was going like clockwork until we arrived at the exact spot and kilometer mark sign where I had left the car. Lo and behold, the car had vanished along with all my family.

I had to think rapidly about what to do with this turn of events. The truck driver did not want to leave me stranded in the middle of the desert with the gas, and he suggested that a car must have stopped and given them gas and that they had probably gone on to the next gas station, where he could take me to meet them. He said that standing by the side of the road alone in the desert to wait for them was quite unsafe; having few good other choices, I reluctantly agreed.

We drove many miles and eventually arrived at the next gas station — which, as it happened, was boarded up and out of business. With a sinking feeling I realized I was now on a major unplanned adventure and I had a choice: to freak out or stay calm and enjoy the ride. I caught myself starting to feel sorry for myself but remembered Guadalupe’s admonition to me years before at a campfire in Wirikuta. No, I could not afford that indulgence. I was on a major initiation here, a test of my abilities to manage this situation. I had to man up and meet the challenge with humor and initiative.

The truck drove on northward toward the border, and eventually the road forked into a toll road and a free road. The truck took the free route, so now I knew there was even less possibility of meeting up with my crew, considering that none of our cell phones worked in Mexico. Eventually we got to the original aduana where Lena had been forced to turn back, and I chuckled grimly about how this adventure was like bookends: first Lena and now me with a sudden change of plans. Somehow we could not manage to keep four people in the car at once during this trip. I thanked the truck driver, gave him the gas, and got out to wait for the others, hoping they would come this way and hoping I was ahead of them. It was time to call in my allies, which I did big time.

The sun was going down, the wind had started to blow, and I was wearing nothing but a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals. I had no food, water, or anything but my wallet and, thank God, my passport. I checked my wallet and found a twenty-dollar bill inside. Better twenty than nothing. Still, things looked grim — I would have to become very creative. I waited for about an hour and a half before deciding I had better try to get home on my own. It was now dark. I walked to a gas station and bought some water and happened to look in a mirror. I hadn’t shaved in four or five days, my eyes were bloodshot, my hair was windblown and wild, and my scant clothes were dirty. I had that disheveled look that people get after an all-night peyote ceremony. In appearance I was now becoming persona non grata. It is amazing how fast we slip down the social scale when unforeseen events occur.

I asked some locals if there were any buses or taxis into Juarez and was told there were none. I would have to hitch a ride. There were long lines of cars returning their car permits, so I walked up and down making inquiries and receiving nothing but rejection: people rolled up their windows when they saw me coming. Even the Mexicans didn’t like the way I looked, a guy in shorts with no luggage and a wild look approaching them at night.

Finally, as I was about to despair, a Mexican couple with an infant offered me a ride and I was on the road again. Perhaps they were angels or my helping spirits taking form and helping me out. I don’t know. More conventionally, I figured we had some agreement or they were creating some nice positive karma with me, and I was most grateful. Just into Juarez they turned off the road, so I thanked them and got out into the dangerous, sketchy Juarez night, a place known as the death capital of Mexico, one of the most treacherous cities in the world.

Fortunately, there was a run-down taxi nearby that I hailed and asked to take me to the border. The driver said okay but after two blocks the car broke down and I had to get out. I hailed another wreck of a taxi and, sputtering and crabbing down the road, we got to the border. I walked into El Paso using my passport and bought a nylon ghetto jacket for ten bucks and a bus ticket to Santa Fe on Americanos, the laborers’ express. I found an ancient pay phone and called the only number I knew by heart — home. I left a message: “In El Paso . . . headed home . . . will take bus . . . arrive 1 a.m. at Giant gas station . . . hope you are all okay . . . I am fine.”

I thought maybe Lena and crew would have contacted Sarah, our assistant, at her home. Sarah could retrieve messages off our home phone and relay my message to them. It seemed like a long shot, but what else could I do? I had just enough money left to buy a snack and, for a dollar, a terrible pillow filled with crunchy foam squares for the ride home.

The battered Americanos bus finally arrived and, pulling out my ticket, a thin slip of paper, I waited in line to get on. Next thing I knew, the wind was gusting and blowing up a lot of dust and suddenly my slip of paper tore from my fingers and blew under the bus. I ran to retrieve it but could not find it in the dark. I ran around to the other side of the bus, but the ticket was gone. I did not have enough money for another ticket, and I was horrified at my predicament. By the time I got back around to the door of the bus, everyone had loaded in and it was ready to go. I went up the steps and told the bus driver in my best Spanish what had happened, that I had bought a legitimate ticket but that it had blown away and become lost. He looked at me like I was a complete con artist. Desperate and thinking fast, I told him that the woman at the window selling tickets could vouch for me and I asked him if he would just be willing to ask her if I had bought a ticket for Santa Fe from her. I was in luck because Mexicans are used to these kinds of unlikely predicaments. He went with me to the window and indeed the woman there told him I had bought a ticket for Santa Fe a couple of hours earlier. I was in business again. He let me on the bus, the only American on board.

All the other passengers were Mexican laborers headed for points north. They all looked at me with pity: poor American guy down on his luck. I fell sound asleep on my wonderful, terrible, crunchy pillow, and when I awoke I looked out the window to see snow blowing in the glow of the headlights. A few hours later I was in Santa Fe with the snow still falling.

I was wondering what I would do if my family was not there to pick me up. I would have to walk home in the snow — a distance of about ten miles — in my shorts and sandals. Maybe I could find a taxi. I got off the bus and — guess what? There was my family waiting for me, with many apologies and much relief. I told them no apologies were needed, that I’d had quite the unexpected adventure but was fine. Yes, they had gotten my message. Yes, they had gotten gas from a passing stranger five minutes after I left. They thought they could catch me, but the salesman drove so fast that they never could. They spent hours in the desert driving back and forth trying to find me, finally giving up and figuring I was on my own and would make it back. When they got to the border and received the message that I was arriving by bus at 1 A.M., they drove a hundred miles an hour to get there on time. Lena — being movement-centered and liking to speed — drove that portion.

Aaron, not surprisingly, was terrified. He figured he had just singlehandedly lost his future father-in-law in Mexico and that his entire relationship with Anna was in jeopardy. He was convinced I would chew him out royally for running out of gas, but I was never angry with him. I knew I was under some kind of Pluto Saturn transit and had actually gotten off easy. I only felt badly that everyone was so worried for so long. Aaron and the rest of my family were just the actors in my adventure drama, and they played their parts perfectly. I was simply happy to see them, my heart open, full of thanks and forgiveness for whatever had taken place. Best of all, I knew this would make an excellent story. The best stories, of course, are the misadventures where catastrophe rears its head but in the end all is well.

POSTSCRIPT

I had time to have many feelings and thoughts during this adventure. Mainly I realized how amazingly out of control life can seem at times and how it can test us to the limit when we are least expecting it. Reacting with fear or anger is worse than useless because it promotes a negative outcome. The only solution is to be proactive by enjoying the event and making sure that the outcome is resonant with positive feelings and thoughts.

Sudden spontaneous events are filled with power. Remember that they involve a mystery, a place where power likes to reside. They inhabit the border between the predictable world of known events and those unknown to the personality. The trick is to realize in the moment that the personality seldom knows what is happening and that this is perfectly fine because essence knows exactly how to navigate. This requires something called trust: trust in Spirit and trust in self, trust that all will be well. The initiation is not designed to defeat but to teach about becoming powerful.

EXERCISE

Reflect on times when you have been lost — physically, emotionally, and/or psychologically. How did you lose your way? How did you approach your dilemma? How did you go about getting found? In hindsight, were you really lost or just in transition? Were there antagonists or was it you, your worst enemy, who gave you the most trouble? How would you tell this in story form?