Some experiences resist ordinary language. One of them unfolded on the summit of Breakneck Ridge, about a year after our second trip to Cold Spring.

That day Alex and I returned there again. Ruslan could not come. It was August. We had been wanting to go back for a long time, and when the day finally arrived, it carried a quiet tension, a mix of anticipation and unease. Before trips like this, sleep rarely comes easily. Around noon we boarded a train at Grand Central, and an hour later we were in Cold Spring. As always, we stopped at a gas station, bought water, protein bars, cigarettes, and headed into the forest. Before entering, we paused and asked for protection, repeating inwardly that the forest loves us.

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This time we chose a different route, the most demanding one, through the old quarry. The trail was steep and rocky. We climbed for nearly two hours, losing the path twice and navigating by white markers. Reaching a summit is never simple. The body strains, balance shifts on stone, every step requires attention. Alex moved ahead. At one point a viper appeared on the trail, hissed, and slowly slid away. He had nearly stepped on it. We went around carefully, but the moment stayed. The day before, his mother had warned him about snakes there, something she had never mentioned before. It felt like a signal.

The forest was filled with mushrooms, large white caps scattered everywhere. I had never seen so many in Cold Spring. At times, nature creates a state where perception changes without effort. The air becomes clear, the silence deep, and the world feels both immense and close at once.

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We searched for the right summit. Breakneck has many. We passed it, circled, lost direction, and only after nearly two hours found a wide stone plateau. From there, Bear Mountain stood clearly across the river, and the Hudson opened fully below us.

We lay down on the rocks and took LSD again, this time a higher dose. Almost immediately it became clear that the entry would be difficult. A heavy pressure built in my chest. Breathing tightened. As the intensity rose, we both began thinking about the person who sold it to us. It did not feel like real LSD. There was a metallic edge, something off. We had bought it from someone unreliable, and the thought came that this might be an overdose.

I looked at Alex. His face confirmed it. Neither of us wanted to say it aloud, but the pressure kept increasing. Later he told me he felt his body locking, already saying goodbye in his mind. We were lying on top of a mountain, far from anyone. A thought appeared: let go, do not resist, let it pass through. But the weight continued to build.

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I said goodbye internally to everything I knew. A brief thought crossed my mind, almost absurd in its simplicity: this is how it ends. Two people climbed a mountain and decided to die there. I imagined someone eventually finding our bodies.

Mantras played quietly from the speaker. When I closed my eyes, shifting faces of death appeared, constantly changing form. There was almost no fear, only a strange acceptance. Alex later described seeing root systems beneath small bodies of water, as if something was being drawn out of him, tunnels opening, a force moving along his spine.

We looked at each other, said nothing, and remained there. Above us, two eagles began circling, slow and wide, as if the height belonged to them.

Then something shifted.

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It felt like crossing a threshold. The mind cleared. The experience opened fully. Time lost structure. Strength returned to the body, amplified, as if something had restarted from within. The forest began to move. Bushes and trees swayed. The forest was breathing. The mountains were breathing. The entire valley moved like one organism. Even the ground carried a faint vibration.

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Alex asked me to jump from one rock to another. As I moved, multiple trails of energy remained in the air. I repeated it again and again, overwhelmed by a sense of clarity and force. With a trembling hand, a cigarette burning between my fingers, I watched ants scatter across the surface of the rock.

Wherever the eye settled, patterns revealed themselves. Cracks in stone unfolded into repeating structures. Leaves and branches followed the same logic, visible through sustained attention.

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Then the structure appeared.

In the space before us, extending into depth, a three-dimensional geometric grid became visible. It did not feel like an image, but like the underlying framework of reality. Lines intersected, forming nodes, branching outward. It resembled both a mathematical system and a living structure, a field of possible paths crossing and diverging.

Each node felt like a point of choice, a place where direction could shift. In ordinary life, time appears as a single line. Here it became clear that it is not linear. There are countless potential paths, and each action alters movement within a shared structure.

The eagles continued circling. The wind moved along the slope. The air felt dense. Alex said quietly that we were in another layer of reality. Then new images emerged.

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On the opposite mountain, forms appeared that resembled ancient glyphs, almost Mayan in nature. They moved, fluid and alive, forming symbols like a language. The most striking part was that we both saw them. Perception overlapped. The sense of separation weakened, and observation became shared. It felt as though reality could communicate through images.

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We watched until sunset. As the sun dropped between the mountains, a figure formed out of light, resembling both Jesus and Buddha at once. The moment carried a weight that remained, as if the world acknowledged our presence. The sun descended over the valley like a vast orange eye, and the valley moved again as a single organism. We stood still, held inside its scale.

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When the sun disappeared, the temperature dropped quickly. We ate and began the descent into darkness. The forest at night was loud. Cicadas, crickets, frogs. The sound was dense, surrounding us from all directions. The descent required full attention. Flashlights cut through the dark, revealing unstable ground. Every step had to be placed precisely. From the backpack, the mantras continued.

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Eventually we reached the base and moved toward the old quarry. Once there had been a formation known as the Face of Saint Anthony, a massive rock profile destroyed during excavation. We stepped into the open space, surrounded by mountains. The sky was filled with stars. Something moved constantly in the bushes. We moved carefully.

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Then we saw it.

On a piece of asphalt, in large white letters: STOP. Underlined.

We looked at each other and understood without speaking. Going further did not feel right. We turned back toward the parking area.

Half an hour later we were out of the forest. It was close to midnight. We crossed the road and walked through a small wooded area to the river. At the first beach, we sat on a log and watched the water. The tide was low. Driftwood lay scattered along the shore. Awareness sharpened. Colors became precise. Presence deepened.

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We sat beneath an old tree, watching reflections of distant lights from the United States Military Academy across the river. Music played quietly. It felt as if life had begun again.

Later we walked along the shore, collecting driftwood. I had always been drawn to it. Each piece felt like a finished form, shaped freely by the river. At that time I was making objects and masks from these finds, sometimes integrating them into three-dimensional paintings.

We sat by the water for a long time in silence, absorbing what had happened. The river moved through darkness, reflecting scattered lights, and with its movement the mind gradually settled.

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Around four in the morning we walked to the station, joking about how commuters would react to two people carrying bags full of driftwood.

That experience became one of the most important in our lives. We approached a boundary where everything could have ended, and because of that it stayed.

Later, on the train, Alex said that after what happened on that mountain, we had become real shamans.

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The next day, trying to understand it, a simple thought emerged. Nothing matters as much as life. Breathing, seeing, feeling—each is already an immense gift.

What happened on that mountain, what felt like dying, does not disappear. Sometimes a person glimpses the structure of possibilities, their scale and their branching, and every step begins to carry weight.

It becomes clear that behind the visible world there are deeper layers. And not just one.

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