In lieu of a fourth of July honorary bar-b-que, I decided to take it to the next level. Fireworks in New York City just aren’t the same anymore, and the sky is clouded with industrialism and synthetics. I went to a place where I could see a tapestry of stars and experience real patriotism, the kind of shit Puritans saw when they stepped off the Mayflower and the land was populated by more trees than people. Where was this mystical forest? Sherman, New York. Amish Country. Acres and acres of land and nothin’ on ‘em but cows and horses and pastures, and a sparse farm store with an appellation like, “Beef & Ice Cream,” or “Burgers & Dairy.”

All city slicker smiles at the natural beauty and the smells of cow manure, I went on my first camping adventure. In the wild. Spiders the size of fists creepy crawling up my legs. My first few hours in nature weren’t exactly what I expecting. But that isn’t to say I didn’t fall in love with the unexpected: sunny tree tops, grassy knolls, and hundreds of campers already set up, sitting outside their tents with coolers of beer and some “holistic” entertainment. “Whoops” echoed through the forest, making their way around thick tree trunks, people passing them around like Thanksgiving yams. If you weren’t part of it yet, you would be soon. The rain must’ve clung to the earth in beautiful Sherman because the ground was muddy as all hell. Before we even found a campsite, my legs were covered in brown spots up and down town.

After we had set up our tents, and secured a campfire spot, we proceeded to crack open some cold refreshments. Surrounding us were Grateful Dead tapestries, hammocks, tents, grills. Shirtless men, bathing suit clad women. Taking a walk through the forest to the main stage, “Happy Heron” screams were chucked at us amicably. All city slicker smiles at the natural beauty and the smells of cow manure. I could tell this was going to be a good time.

Little twangy tunes were buzzing at us from light opening at the widow’s peak of the forest. Buzzing closer and closer as we approached. The ground felt less moist and squishy, and the trees closed up behind us with a light suction, like mud molding around our feet. It wasn’t too crowded out there. As if the land expanded further and further to accommodate everyone. The audience was sparse, and we took our spots inside it, twirling baton arms and snake legs. Sid Redmond Band was mollifying the listeners and then getting them all riled up again with its bluegrass chimes. Cowboy hats bobbed in front of me, dreads shook in back. My feet had become accustomed to sticks, small rocks, and dust, encapsulating them in wrinkles and crevices of the soles. I would bring them home and shake them out in the bathtub later where they would flow down the New York City drain system, away from their native homeland of Sherman.

I was beginning to feel funny, woozy, squishy. My stomach rumbled and expanded like a balloon. Purple hues drifted in and out of my vision as I fell down, laughing and crying until little threads of saliva dripped down the corners of my lips. It seemed we were all doing the same thing. Laughing until water burst from our tear ducts, and our stomachs expanded and we bounced along the shore of the lake to the porch string music of Sid Redmond. The grass tickled my feet, and I laughed even harder, wheezing, gouging long, breathless Hahaha’s from my belly button. We were far and close at the same time.

The tribal beats echoed from the dance tent when we were far enough away from the main stage. We floated over on our stilt legs and moved them like spiders in the midst of a rain storm, a crowd of people twittering.

There were maybe seven of us, at times it seemed like all of 40, my head swam from losing count so many times. I counted leaves on trees, fingers, toes, daddy long legs, one two, skip a few, clouds, slugs, and then the sky descended with a big thud. Sun-setting. It sublimated my body into a different atmosphere. Maybe Chemistry 101 wasn’t as hard as I always thought it was. After all, I was participating in chemical processes myself: condensing, evaporating, combusting. After all, I am organic, I rationalized. Water and carbon and not much else.

“Happy Heron!”

I anchored my UFO brain onto the ground. It stood the test until finally faces stopped morphing Dionysian around me. The mud was creeping back to us, but we weren’t afraid. It had kept us safe in the forest, and it would keep us safe on the outskirts as well. Drums and didgeridoos poked at us through speakers, tickling our sides, making us undulate.

This is pretty weird, I thought. It’s the strangest damn thing that’s ever happened to me. Will my parents go looking for me? I’m in

another dimension, don’t they know? All of a sudden, it dawned on me. I’d been waiting for it all my life. Transcendence. My, me, mine, I, they were all gone. It was just we. All of us. The collective impetus of one giant ball of energy. It was going to ladle us into the next phase of being. The giant primordial soup.

“Cuidadooooo Motherfuckers!” Slo-Mo and Mic Wrecka stood up on the stage. Interrupted, I looked around at my friends and their glimmering disco ball eyes. We were swallowing each other with hungry pupils. “Cuidadoooo Motherfuckers!” Everyone chanted. People’s faces were breaking into crooked slit smiles.

I backed away, trying to find a loophole back into my mind’s eye again, but it was gone. I took someone’s hand. Maybe it was someone I knew, and maybe it wasn’t. It didn’t matter a wink. I was beginning to feel more in control, more solid than I’d felt in hours. More put together.

I’ll have to come back next year, I promised myself. I’ll have to. Slo-Mo and Mic Wrecka were launching into a new song. It was a peaceful, culling sound, stroking the overworked neurons in my brain, securing me in its happy, carefree, musical embrace. It was like we were the performers, and Slo-Mo and Mic, the audience. We were drawing them into our trance, singing their lyrics, “I hum a little tune and my buzz comes back, my buzz comes back, my buzz comes back...”