Quoted By:
>be with friend doing mushrooms in Golden Trout Wilderness
>friend starts having a breakdown crying
>his crying makes me cry
>look out at the trees through the mesh roof of the tent and they look like “simmering” brains
>”holy fuck the trees are mad that we turned them into paper”
>begin spiraling into insanity
>all of a sudden a tapping outside the tent
>a posh English aceent asks “excuse me, would you happen to know how far it is to Lone Pine?”
>unzip tent cautiously, thinking im hallucinating, but me and the friend both hear it
>open tent and a leathery old man (and I mean LEATHERY) wearing simple clothing with backpacking gear is standing outside
>immediately blurt out “im not going to lie to you, we are both on mushrooms and its not going well”
>”ohhhhhhh” he quietly replies
>“well come on out lets have a chat, with your “mushrooms” and all”
>uhhhhh okay is this real?
>“so whats your name?”
>he stands up tall
>“they call me Phantom - The Raspberry Blower!”
>then he blew a fucking raspberry and I started laughing hysterically
>“uhhhh what does that even mean?”
>“oh well thats my trail name, my real name is (I forget)
And then he talked to us for 4 hours straight as we peaked, mostly about the Annapurna circuit, Appalachian trail and PCT, which he had been through hiking for the last few months.
Dude was endlessly fascinating and absolutely saved that trip. One of my all tome favorite memories.
Then, he smoked a bit of weed with us. The last time he smoked weed, he said, it was hash, on a boat in the middle of a lake in Nepal with a “beautiful view of Macchapuchare”. On this boat he said, was the “Hash Man”, a fat man with a large mustache who did not know how to communicate in English outside of the phrase “Hashish?”.
He truly wad one of the most inspiring, positive, polite, entertaining, articulate, funny and all around badass dudes ive ever met.
