I learned, too, that it is not necessary to focus on a leader, a philosophy, or a technique to contact deep mystical currents. By facing intense sunlight and storms during the bike trek, I was in direct contact with the ancient, transcendental kingdom of nature. By observing my thoughts clarify as they projected and pulsed over fields, lakes, and mountains, I drew closer to the land, to the creation. By wrestling with winds born of colossal power, I was forced to make constant leaps of faith to merely carry on. But now, sitting by the Eskimo dog, I contemplated the awesome blackness of the night. I was unaware that the bicycle journey itself had been a natural expression of mysticism. The following day, I ascended the purple peaks of the Continental Divide. The sky was clear; the wind, calm. A sign indicated that waters to the east flowed toward the Atlantic, and to the west, the Pacific. It did not indicate that the waters might return and follow a different path. I dismounted the 12-speed. Fragments of Rama's deepest hooks still lurked in my heart. But I was doing better now. The healing process had begun. Facing the east while walking backwards to the west, I quickly retracted my thumb whenever a vehicle or driver seemed unsuitable or unsafe to take me for a ride. Epilogue Hidden between UCSD and the Pacific Ocean were burial grounds, Rama said, that were sacred to Native Americans. Surfers on their way to Black's Beach passed through this land of cliffs and ravines. They pointed to a graceful, white mansion and said, "Heyyy, duuuude, that's Atkinson's place, duuuuuuuuude." Several properties south of the UCSD Chancellor's mansion lay a burned-out car abandoned on a charred foundation. The address seemed to be 951, but in my mind the missing tile was in place: 9514 La Jolla Farms Road, where Rama became "enlightened" and where I moved into darkness. It was 1988. I parked my Volkswagon Bus at a mall one-and-a-half miles east of campus and walked with Nunatak toward the sea. I had cut through the not-yet-bulldozed chaparral just east of Interstate-5 many times since returning to UCSD--a twenty-seven year old undergraduate--but now the sun was setting and the air seemed heavy. Suddenly, I had a sense of where I was going. During the past two years I had dealt with my Rama experiences intellectually. But you can only sit cooly, unmoved and protected on the cap-of-things-that-were for so long before the cap blows and sends you tumbling. There are many ways to grapple with the enormity of what lies beneath the surface world of reason. I approached 9514 La Jolla Farms Road. The last time I got near the place had been the year before, with a friend. "I lived there once with some radical people," I had told her. "One of them became...enlightened." "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked. "That's where Atkinson lives," I said, pointing away.