I knew that if a spirit lived in the oak, if there was such a thing, it would be a deity of the woodlands, pre-Christian, the kind of god that fights, fucks, lies, and feasts. With its very first words, that is what it revealed itself to be. “Only warriors that die in battle go on to fight and to feast in the afterlife.” Then another voice, a woman’s voice, more playful, sultry, and teasing, said, “He picks half, I pick half, wandering through the battlefield, from the corpses.” Then she answered a question I hadn’t spoken. “Yes, in the place we’re from, sex and death are united with beauty, with grace, honor.” Then, laughing, “With trickery, treachery, longing, and lechery.” I knew her. Her chariot, it was said, was pulled by cats. The part of my mind that was able to still hang on to our standard earthly sphere, the modern one, of science, secularism, and rationality, knew there was humor and wonderful puns in there, but also knew that if I said anything about being pulled by pussy power, the hallucinations would be offended and leave.

The ravens called and pulled my focus back.

The wind was growing stronger, blowing harder, and melded its power into His voice, giving it more gravitas and it came out lower, deeper, and stronger all at once. He said, “Thus spake Zarathustra.” Perhaps it was a joke, because he laughed, and his laugh was so large and rumbling that it rolled like thunder rolls in the Catskills, all the way down the mountain, into the valley, and up the other side, bouncing off it as an echo. “Nietzsche,” he said, “was a humbug asshole. Did you ever hear anything dumber than ‘What does not kill us, makes us stronger’? That from a man who went mad from syphilis. But from time to time his aphorisms are instructive. Try this one on for size. ‘True man wants two things, danger and play.’ ” I stood up. Everything was spinning around, but I was not dizzy.

The ravens were cawing. Squirrels chattering. The wind was making the trees bend and bow, snap and moan. Leaves were falling all around. The gods in the oak were chortling.

I was mad—not angry, ha-ha, no-no, not at all, I thought it was quite gracious of my hallucinations to be so open and conversational with me—I mean, insane. I’d clung on to enough realism to at least know that.

It was necessary to walk away from the hallucinatory part of myself, toward where my more normal self was known to live, while that was still possible. I attempted to do so. As I took the first steps down the hill, away from the great oak, I did become dizzy. I felt that all the chattering and chortling and the wind-driven noises were affecting my inner ear, making me lose my ability to balance myself.

One step at a time.