Moab, Archlands National Park, and the moneyless tribe

After leaving Grand Junction in Colorado, I had wanted to visit the Colorado National Monument but found out it cost $10 to get in to see it. I didn't feel like paying money for that kind of privilege, so I turned around and headed to Utah.

Moab, which was my destination, is an adventure town through and through, geared (no pun intended) towards 4x4 off-roading, cycling, climbing, and similar types of sports. It's basically a sport resort that thrives in the summer and goes dormant in winter.

My meeting with Daniel Suelo had been set for 2pm at the Moab library, and I arrived with half an hour to spare. I ate some lunch, and just as I was about to enter the library, I spotted a bicycle with a trailer attached to it, leaned up against a tree nearby. Around it were strewn various items including food and water, and this, for me, gave away Daniel's presence. I walked into the library, looking for the man whose face I knew from the cover of the book written about him by Mark Sundeen as well as a few photos on facebook.

Daniel was sitting in the back of the library, and he looked up as I approached. A shy smile lit up his face as we shook hands.  He mentioned that a few of the others were there with him as well, and briefly explained that there were now several people camped out with him, something he had alluded to in one of his earlier messages. One of these, Daryl came out to make my acquaintance, and then retreated back into the library.

Daniel and I sat under the tree where his bicycle was resting and proceeded to briefly get to know each other. We were eventually joined by Daryl, who is originally from Las Vegas, Adelaide from Ohio, and Jake from Salt Lake City. Daryl and Adelaide had come out to Moab to meet Daniel and stay with him, and Jake had met him while hiking in a canyon when Daniel was still staying in the caves. They had now relocated to the Moab wetlands after being evicted from the desert.

As we all sat under the tree chatting, a man appeared on a recumbent bike and brought us turkey soup and mashed potatoes from a school cafeteria. This was Pete, who is a friend of the tribe, and whose house sometimes serves as a base.

After a while we started to walk in the direction of Pete's house, stopping at a little hole-in-the-wall shop in an alley titled Fresh Moab Coffee. This is a tiny coffee roastery run by a local named Bob who has a coffee machine which anyone is free to use 24 hours a day, payment being on an honor basis.
We sat there for a bit, eating soup with potatoes, drinking coffee, and philosophizing. Afterward we made our way to Pete's, where I parked my van. I had hoped to be invited to Daniel's camp, which did indeed transpire. I packed my sleeping bag, some warm clothing, and we set off for the wetlands.

The trip from the town to Daniel's camp takes about 40 minutes on foot but I think it took us longer that night. We were loaded down with food and other stuff, plus it was dark, and we weren't in a rush.
We left the town behind and walked down through the wetlands, finally arriving at a spot within the treeline that serves as the moneyless tribe's camp. There were two teepees set up, one unfinished, a central area for a fire and seating, a spot behind the teepees where food was kept, and the beginnings of a well which Daniel had started to dig earlier.  At this point I can't quite remember whether we made a fire that night or not, but we eventually retired. I installed myself in the finished teepee together with Adelaide and Daryl, while Daniel and Jake slept outside.

The next morning, Wednesday, we had breakfast and chatted around the fire. We eventually dispersed, each going about their own business, and I made my way back to town with the intent to connect to the internet at the library and perhaps do some slacklining.  Along the way I took a dip in the very cold Colorado river, and felt clean and refreshed.
My first stop in town was the grocery store dumpster. Here I must back up a tad and explain how Daniel and the rest of the moneyless tribe obtain their food. Most of what they eat comes out of the garbage. It is a fact that a tremendous amount of food gets thrown away all across North America every single day, both by grocery stores and restaurants. Most of this food is still edible, either just expired or about to expire in a few days, which in no way makes it unpalatable. Many stores, especially bigger ones, either destroy all their garbage on the spot using large compactors, or lock up their dumpsters. Some encourage their employees to destroy whatever food gets thrown away by pouring chemicals such as bleach on them, sometimes even resorting to using rat poison. This is a sad fact which compounds an already depressing phenomenon, that of large-scale food waste. In fact, North America is not alone in this as food is thrown away all over the world. Fortunately many places, especially in Europe, are now taking steps to reverse this process either by producing less waste or simply by donating whatever is unsold directly to charities.
I had known about this for a while now and had in fact tried diving into a dumpster once in Edmonton, but somehow I couldn't get into it fully (not the dumpster, the habit), in large part because I never had a real need to obtain food freely, but also because of an aversion I naturally harbored towards food from the garbage. Recently I had been following the exploits of Rob Greenfield, an American man who has several times cycled across the United States, eating only out of dumpsters, in order to showcase this terrible habit we have of wasting good food. Rob actually collects enough food to feed large numbers of people.

I wanted dumpster diving to be part of my current lifestyle, but I needed that extra push, as it were. Spending time with Daniel turned out to be this push. My first foray into a dumpster was on Wednesday. I pulled out a huge deli sandwich, a pack of donuts, a kiwi fruit, a box of strawberries, a container of potato salad, and a box of crackers. Lunch was served. I found this extremely liberating and have since eaten primarily out of dumpsters. Every day I have found bunches of bananas, all kinds of fruits and veggies, bread, and a variety of other foods. It is important to be circumspect when eating from the garbage as some food may in fact be spoiled, but a quick glance at the appearance of each item as well as a sniff test quickly reveals the freshness (or lack thereof) of this bounty.

After my wonderful free lunch, I grabbed a coffee at FMC, spent a few hours on the internet, then went on a bike ride and returned to camp after dark. When I got back only Daniel was up, playing his flute in the second teepee, which had been fixed up that morning, and which now became his sleeping spot. Daryl and Adelaide had gone for a free church dinner, and we had been joined by Julia, another regular within the tribe who tends to come and go, and her friend Tory. Jake had left that morning and I didn't see any more of him afterward.

Thursday morning I was invited to an ayahuasca ceremony by Julia, to be held at sundown. I went to town for the day, repeating my routine from Wednesday, but did end up finding a slackline park in Moab, upon Tory's recommendation. This is a park established by the town of Moab specifically for the purpose of slacklining, something I hadn't seen before. It was close to a skate park and consisted of a square of sand with large wooden posts for attaching lines to. I hung out there for an hour and then headed back to camp in order not to be late for the ceremony. When I arrived, Daryl and Adelaide were preparing to leave as they didn't wish to take part in the ceremony, each for their own reason. This left myself, Daniel, Julia, and Tory. The ingredients used for the ceremony, which we had discussed in the morning, were not the same ones used by shamans in the Peruvian Amazon, who created this ritual. We used substitutes that contained the same active ingredient, DMT (Dimethyltryptamene) and MOAI (Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitor).

Ayahuasca was something I'd wanted to try for a long time, and this unexpected opportunity caught me by surprise. I was excited to find out what would happen. I had been told that analytical people (such as myself) sometimes don't feel the effects of this drug mix, and in fact I had tried magic mushrooms in the past, with no effect. In a strange way I both hoped that something would happen and that it would not.

We first took a handful of dried Syrian rue, which is a source of DMT, then waited half an hour. Afterward we went to sit in a meadow in order not to vomit in the camp. The normal reaction to ayahuasca is vomiting as one of the ingredients is a purgative. We each drank a cup of acacia confusa, the source of MOAI, and waited. After half an hour or so, each of us retired to our own space, without having puked. I lay in my sleeping bag with my eyes closed, waiting to see what would happen. I must have fallen asleep because I woke up when Daryl and Adelaide returned to camp. They had gone to watch a movie at a friend's place in town, but after waking up I felt like it was morning, though only a few hours had elapsed. I didn't feel anything out of the ordinary except for painful cramps in my lower intestines. I felt as if I had to relieve some pressure there, but nothing wanted to come out. I endured this for a few hours and eventually slept again. In the morning all was fine and I felt neither side effects nor any residual pain.

We discussed this experience around the breakfast fire and concluded that the concoction had been too weak. None of us had vomited, though all besides me had in fact seen visuals of varying intensity. I'm still hoping that it wasn't simply my analytical mind that prevented me from experiencing anything special, and perhaps one day I'll get to try ayahuasca in its original form, ideally in the Peruvian Amazon.

The rest of the morning went by languidly with chatter, jokes, and lunch preparation. Adelaide made us soup from a bunch of vegetables and mushrooms we had obtained from the dumpster, and we ate it with bread. After this I packed up my things, said goodbye to everyone, and walked back to camp. On my way I took another dip in the frigid river and felt wonderful. By the time I got to my van I was sweaty again, and exhausted. My plan was to stop at a bike shop to pick up a second bottle cage, grab a last coffee at FMC, and head off towards Arches National Park.

I did all this, and hit the road around 4pm. I got to the northern part of Arches within an hour, parked, and hiked up to Delicate Arch, a gorgeous natural sandstone arch which graces Utah license plates. By the time I got back to the van it was dark, so I headed back to town in search of a laundromat to wash my sleeping bag, and a place to spend the night.

My experience with Daniel Suelo and his friends was not only eye-opening, but extremely pleasant, and I've certainly learned from it.  Daniel himself is a multi-faceted man with a fascinating background and a unique philosophy on life. He is talented both linguistically and musically, able to converse in Spanish, and playing different instruments such as guitar and flute, but besides that he is well read, informed, quick-witted and always ready with a joke (often of the "that's what she said" variety) or pun. He is warm and friendly and despite rejecting money and the comforts of the capitalist system he is no Luddite and certainly not anti-social. For me it was a tremendous pleasure to finally meet one of my inspirations and to spend time living life the way he does. I will carry this memory with me as I continue on my journey across the world.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to head back to Colorado to see Mesa Verde and the Anasazi cliff dwellings, and then onward to New Mexico. New adventures await me.