Because the universe said so

Chapter 20

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One year of questioning leads to another, and another. My former plans for life are abandoned on transcontinental jet trails. I become a wanderer.

I have little sense of what I want except for the universe to tell me what I want. I no longer ask dad to show me the way since I envision his atoms fully dispersed and riding cosmic currents. Dad is now the universe.

I interpret events as sign posts and follow them. I find myself through others and look to them to make decisions for me. With little trust in myself, I instead trust the universe. At best, this can be a great exercise in surrender and faith. But for an impressionable, fragile ego, I am left clinging to misattributions of causality in lieu of a deeper, more honest relationship with myself.

When I find myself in situations I no longer want to be in, I stubbornly persist, leaving a trail of relationship carnage behind me. Because the universe wants me to be here. Because magic brought us together. If I stand on my own two feet, brush off my knees and say, “I’m out of here,” I am a failure of my own doing. I don’t want to feel accountable for my wayward unhappiness. I don’t want to know the universe doesn’t care.

Lost but not found

In early 1999, while still imperfectly managing my thyroid, I enroll in an ethnobotany course through the California Institute of Integrated Studies (CIIS) to study Ecuadorian rainforest medicines. The research director, Professor J, is dark and handsome (thank you course catalog headshots!) I’d be lying if this doesn’t persuade my enrollment. The possibility of meeting an interesting man heavily influences my career decisions. My lifestyle suggests I’m an independent adventurer but in truth, I look to men to define me. I have no clue who I am, much less what I want from life so I flip-flop between my outdated pact with dad to pursue medicine or following a boy around so his life can give shape to my days.

The CIIS course is an enticing blend of both, so in early spring I fly to Ecuador to study tropical rainforest plants and meet my new ethnobotanist husband. It’s clear within minutes of meeting Professor J that he’s unavailable and uninterested so I redirect my thoughts to magical thinking and the green spirits of the jungle. Maybe when I’m two days down the Amazon River and away from civilization, plants will finally talk to me. The class convenes briefly in Quito and then a large bus escorts us from clouds to rainforest floor—over 8000 foot elevation drop—arriving at a concrete hostel after dark for a short night’s sleep.

Just past midnight, I vomit my way to the bathroom and fall asleep on the cool floor hugging the toilet, only to be awakened by pounding on my locked door at 6am. Delirious, emptied, but better, I splash water on my face and answer the door—it’s time to go. I grab my backpack and make a note-to-self: no more roadside chicken.

We travel another few hours on the winding, asphalt Amazon, descending into its vibrant, more fluid realm. I keep my gaze fixed out the window, hues of gray dotted with the vibrant reds and blues of Ecuadorian textiles eventually yield to a wall of green.

After another eight hours—wheels giving way to motorized canoe—we finally arrive. Shamans Don Elijio, Don Cesario and their families greet us barefoot, smiles mirroring the wide, ochre shoreline they stand upon. When the two elders and Professor J embrace, it’s clear their long-standing and mutually beneficial transaction has also nurtured a deep friendship. We unload gear and are ushered to a large, open palapa where cassava, plantain and beans restore our weary bones. This is my first real meal since the roadside campylobacter. I feel light-headed and disoriented but the two giggly, wiggly children flanking my side invite my cells to land. I am nurtured as much by the meal as their rooted, unquestioning bodies.

Following dinner, we are instructed to find sleeping spots. I grab my tarp and mosquito net and scan the sprawling, fading-from-light, rainforest. “You can set up anywhere,” the elders say, “just not over there,” gesturing to the far end of the property. I look, but only see dark jungle. I skirt just south of the forbidden area and discern a round structure with a large, thatched roof in the distance. A narrow path tangled on both sides by heavy, twisted vines leads toward the entrance.

Exhausted from food poisoning and two days of travel, I drop my tarp on a cleared space near the path and fall asleep. I dream the group is gathered around a burning pyre of skeletons. We chant quietly, our song crescendoing as the flames grow in size. We rise and dance in a circle around the pyre, but as the bones are engulfed in flames, flesh returns. The more we sing and dance, the more the skeletons disappear under muscle, sinew and skin. Eventually, fully formed women’s bodies stand up in the flames and walk from the pyre.

The next morning I am awakened by chatter a few feet from my head. I can’t decipher their conversation—high school French be damned!—so I slip on my flip flops and emerge, liminal chanting still pulsing in my brain. Don Cesario and Professor J nod a greeting and then continue conversing. Unsure of what to do, I shyly, respectfully walk away. During breakfast, the director approaches me, chuckling, “Kim, you’re sleeping in the middle of a sacred ayahuasca garden.”

Ayahuasca, or yagé, is a vine that grows predominantly in South America and is used for spiritual ceremony among indigenous tribes. Don Cesario and Don Elijio have both “journeyed” with yagé two hundred times in about as many days—part of their initiation as shamans. In Quechua, aya means "spirit, soul” or "corpse", and waska means "rope" and "woody vine.” People across the globe partake in these ceremonies, some traveling to South American rainforests, others drinking the concoction in the nave of their local Christian church. Many extoll the revelatory powers of the medicine—finding their purpose, downloading secrets of the universe, healing trauma or talking with the deceased.

Only academically familiar with ayahuasca, I am intrigued to learn the medicine is nearby. But as I sit at a long table over breakfast, listening more than talking, it becomes clear the vine’s presence is not an accident. It is actually the raison d’être for the entire ethnobotanical journey. We’re not here to study a diversity of Ecuadorian rainforest plants. We’re here to study one—yagé.

Don Cesario and Don Elijio

a motley crew

After the vine is boiled down to a potent tea, the group prepares for the journey. Women on their menstrual cycles are forbidden to participate so I’m eliminated from the ceremonies. I’m relieved. Other than a few memorable trips with ecstasy and psilocybin in college, my body and drugs aren’t a friendly match. I’m the girl who stares blankly at a wall after smoking a little weed. Or worse, passes out. No matter, I’m sleeping in the ayahuasca patch. Oddly, I’m not banished from the sacred garden so I reason the vines will speak through my dreams instead.

After a day of fasting, the participants are ready. What I don’t know about my vine garden accommodation is that it is also in ear-shot of the ceremonial palapa. Before yagé takes effect, it works its way through one’s GI tract like a freight train. My romantic notion of sleeping with the sounds of the rainforest end here. Instead of rhythmic chirping and the gentle rustling of palms, my lullabies are violent retching and bowel explosions. And once the vine’s shape-shifting hallucinations set-in, I rise and fall for seven nights to Homo sapiens yowling with phantom fur.

To this day, I am unsure how I overlooked the central purpose of the trip. Or did the course catalog cloak it in more generic, ethnobotanical terms so as to avoid scrutiny? I don’t know. But each day, while the rest of the group recovers in hammocks before the next ceremony, I put on my rubber wellies and hike through the forest. My senses stave off loneliness by consuming the thick, wet persistence of photosynthesis and survival.

Naively, I don’t wear socks with my boots. Large, oozing sores develop on my heels and I bathe the open wounds in the muddy river bank at the end of each day. A week later I develop a delirious fever and spend my last few days in the rainforest in a fitful, shivering sleep. Two other participants also get sick (later diagnosed as Hepatitis C) so we ship out to Quito, get some trusted pharmaceuticals, and try to recover at 9000 feet. But the elevation makes things worse so we fly to the coastal town of Guayaquil and cab it to a remote beach. We check into a small hosteria where we can rest and heal.

With only a spinning ceiling fan to hear my thoughts, I grow desperate. My trip to Ecuador makes no sense. Why did I have to come all this way, only to feel miserable? I’ve had no revelations. Even the ayahuasca was silent. My body is weak, sustained on fried plantains and rice. I don’t know what foreign bacteria is vacationing in my blood but I struggle to keep anything down. I fade in and out of sleep, recalling threads of fever dreams.

I am swimming. Or maybe I’m sinking? I hover, weightless, near the ocean floor. A faint light reaches from above and a dolphin swims through the pale-blue cylinder.

And in the anything-goes manner of dreams…

The dolphin introduces himself to me. “My name is Ambato. Follow me.”

The next day, feeling a bit better than terrible, I’m sitting at the hostel’s outdoor patio when a mob of tan, sun-bleached men approach a nearby table. Tiny sensors in my cochlea are called to attention and try to decipher a lifeline, but “sick waves” and “off-shore winds” leave me hanging. A few men have large video cameras at their side and wet longboards litter the area. With magical thinking as my warmest bedfellow, I quickly fantasize that this entourage will turn my disappointing journey into something meaningful. Maybe a new love, or better, my soulmate is here. Maybe the camera crew needs an assistant and I’ll begin an exciting new career in film. The heat, my empty stomach and even emptier heart make me delusional and desperate for serendipity.

Impulsively, I walk over to a younger-looking man with kind eyes and introduce myself. His sandy blonde curls are tied into a messy ponytail. His jaw is wide and strong and the Australian accent that falls from it makes my heart flutter. He is shy, but so am I. After a few minutes of “Hey, who are you what are you doing here,” I privately cast myself in the final act of their film, Secret Spot, a longboard surf documentary about undiscovered Ecuadorian waves. The professional surfers are on their last leg up the coast, catching a few fun rides today and then heading home.

At last, with a choose-my-own-ending fantasy in reach, l head to the beach that afternoon to watch my fantasy soulmate surf.

His name is Beau.

While walking back to my room, I recall the dream. The dolphin’s name was “Ambato.” I’m sure of it. But am I? Maybe I heard it incorrectly in the dream? Maybe it was Beau? Maybe it was abbreviated? Maybe he said “My name is Ambato but you can call me Beau?”

That sounds right. It must be right.

The more I think about it, the more I convince myself THIS IS THE REASON WHY I NEEDED TO COME TO ECUADOR. THIS IS THE REASON WHY I GOT SICK. THIS JOURNEY HAPPENED SO I COULD MEET BEAU.

Late that afternoon, after Beau rides a few last waves, we sip tea on the beach, exchange a friendly kiss and contact info and say goodbye.

When I return to the states, a message is waiting. “Hey, one of my board sponsors is in Japan. I’m headed there in a month. Come meet me.”

We spend a few months in Japan and another year living together in Australia. Beau’s Japanese friends loosely translate my name Kimberly—KinBaRi—to mean “Golden Wings Returns Home.” I oblige. The eastern hemisphere becomes my new home.

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