Spicy. Earthy. Moist. Aged.
That’s what ayahuasca smells like to me.
When I think of it, I think of the actual vine first. More so than the actual brew that gets drunk.
It feels likes a thin dark brown velvety moss layer on a thick stick. A moss that gets under my finger nails as I hold the the stick on the ground with one hand, and swing a mallet decisively down on it.
The vine splinters. It’s very strong. And tightly wound together.
There are thick knots in the them too. And it takes a number of swings of the mallet to get them to even crack enough, exposing the peach flesh of the inside of the vine. My hands end up cramping from the swings.
Making the aya brew is part of the experience and ritual in the jungle. The first night’s ceremony you drink the brew the previous retreat group made. The second night ceremony you drink the fresh, warm batch you made that day. And you drink that for the rest of the week.
After four ayahuasca retreats – even with the last pure aya one being over five years ago – I know that cooking experience and the smell that comes with it well. It stays with a person a long time.
I’m imagining decades, even.
And I find myself tasting and smelling it occasionally. Randomly.
This week it has been whenever I walk into my office at home. Just as I enter through the door and am only a few steps into the room, the smell is present. That spicy, earthy smell.
The medicine is calling me.
The medicine is calling me?
I have burned sage, Palo Santo, and incense… All to try to clear the space and push out the fragrance notes.
But that doesn’t appear to have worked yet.
And I know well enough what it means when you randomly taste or smell it years after having done it…
It’s time to engage again.
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