Juan  went
on. "You can do that yourself without my help.
     But the  forces  that guide  us  brought you to me,  and  I  have  been
endeavoring  to  teach you  to change your  stupid  ways and live the strong
clean life of  a hunter. Then  the forces guided you again and told  me that
you  should learn to  live the impeccable life  of a warrior. Apparently you
can't.  But  who can  tell?  We  are  as mysterious  and as awesome as  this
unfathomable world, so who can tell what you're capable of?"
     There was an underlying tone of  sadness in  don Juan's voice. I wanted
to apologize, but he began to talk again.
     "You don't have to look at your hands, " he said. "Like I've said, pick
anything at all. But pick one thing in advance and find it in your dreams. I
said your hands because they'll always be there.
     "When they begin  to  change  shape you must move  your sight away from
them and pick something else, and then look at your hands again. It takes  a
long time to perfect this technique."
     I had become so involved in  writing that I had not noticed that it was
getting dark. The sun had already disappeared  over the horizon. The sky was
cloudy  and  the  twilight was imminent. Don Juan stood  up and gave furtive
glances towards the south.
     "Let's go, " he said. "We must walk south until the spirit of the water
hole shows itself."
     We walked for perhaps half an hour. The terrain changed abruptly and we
came to a barren  area. There was a large round hill where the chaparral had
burnt. It  looked like a bald head. We walked towards it. I thought that don
Juan was going  to climb the mild slope, but he stopped instead and remained
in a very  attentive position. His  body  seemed  to have tensed as a single
unit and shivered for an  instant. Then he relaxed again and stood limply. I
could not figure out how his body could remain erect while his muscles  were
so relaxed.
     At that  moment a very  strong gust of wind jolted me. Don  Juan's body
turned in the direction of the  wind, towards the west. He  did not  use his
muscles to turn, or at least he did not use them the way I would use mine to
turn. Don Juan's body seemed rather to have been pulled from the outside. It
was as if someone else had arranged his body to face a new direction.
     I kept on staring at him.  He looked at me from  the corner of his eye.
The expression  on  his face was  one of  determination, purpose. All of his
being was attentive, and I stared at him in wonder. I had never been in  any
situation that called for such a strange concentration.
     Suddenly his body shivered as  though he  had been splashed by a sudden
shower of cold water. He  had another jolt and then he started to walk as if
nothing had happened.
     I followed him. We flanked  the  naked  hills on the east side until we
were at the middle part of it; he stopped there, turning to face the west.
     From where we stood, the top of the hill was not so round and smooth as
it had seemed to be from the distance. There was a cave, or a hole, near the
top. I  looked  at it  fixedly because don  Juan was doing the same. Another
strong  gust of wind sent a chill up  my spine. Don Juan turned  towards the
south and scanned the area with his eyes.
     "There!" he said in a whisper and pointed to an object on the ground.
     I strained  my  eyes to see. There was something on the ground, perhaps
twenty  feet away. It was light brown and as I looked at  it, it shivered. I
focused all my attention on it.
     The object was almost round and seemed to be curled; in fact, it looked
like a curled up dog.
     "What is it?" I whispered to don Juan.
     "I  don't  know, " he  whispered back as he peered at the object. "What
does it look like to you?"
     I told him that it seemed to be a dog.
     "Too large for a dog, " he said matter-of-factly.
     I  took a couple of steps towards it, but don Juan stopped me gently. I
stared at it again.  It was definitely some animal that was either asleep or
dead. I could almost see  its head; its ears  protruded like the  ears  of a
wolf.  By  then  I  was  definitely  sure that it  was a curled-up animal. I
thought that it could have been a  brown calf. I whispered that to don Juan.
He answered  that it  was  too compact to  be a calf, besides its ears  were
pointed.
     The animal shivered again and then I noticed that it was alive. I could
actually  see  that  it was  breathing, yet  it  did  not  seem  to  breathe
rhythmically.  The breaths that it  took were more like irregular shivers. I
had a sudden realization at that moment.
     "It's an animal that is dying, " I whispered to don Juan.
     "You're right, " he whispered back. "But what kind of an animal?"
     I could not make out  its  specific features. Don Juan took a couple of
cautious steps towards  it. I followed him. It was quite dark by then and we
had to take two more steps in order to keep the animal in view.
     "Watch out, " don Juan whispered in my ear. "If it is a dying animal it
may leap on us with its last strength."
     The  animal,  whatever  it  was, seemed to  be on its  last  legs;  its
breathing was irregular, its body shook spasmodically, but it did not change
its curled-up position.  At a  given  moment, however,  a  tremendous  spasm
actually lifted the animal off the ground. I heard an inhuman shriek and the
animal  stretched its  legs; its claws were more than frightening, they were
nauseating. The  animal tumbled on its  side  after stretching its legs  and
then rolled on its back.  I  heard a formidable growl  and  don Juan's voice
shouting,
     "Run for your life!"
     And  that was exactly what I  did. I scrambled  towards  the top of the
hill with unbelievable  speed and agility. When  I was halfway  to the top I
looked back and saw don Juan standing in the  same place. He signaled  me to
come down. I ran down the hill.
     "What happened?" I asked, completely out of breath.
     "I think the animal is dead, " he said.
     We advanced cautiously towards the animal. It was sprawled on its back.
As  I came closer to it I nearly yelled with fright.  I realized that it was
not  quite  dead yet. Its body  was  still trembling.  Its legs,  which were
sticking up in the  air, shook wildly. The animal was definitely in its last
gasps. I walked in front of don Juan. A new jolt moved the animal's body and
I could see its head. I turned  to don Juan,  horrified. Judging by its body
the animal was obviously a mammal, yet it had a beak, like a bird.
     I  stared  at it  in  complete and absolute horror. My  mind refused to
believe it. I was dumbfounded. I could not even articulate  a word. Never in
my  whole  existence  had  I witnessed  anything  of  that nature. Something
inconceivable  was  there  in  front of my very  eyes. I wanted  don Juan to
explain  that  incredible  animal  but I could  only  mumble to him. He  was
staring  at  me. I  glanced at  him  and glanced  at  the  animal,  and then
something in me arranged the world and I knew at once what the animal was. I
walked over to it and picked it up. It was a large branch of a bush.  It had
been  burnt, and possibly the  wind  had blown  some burnt debris which  got
caught in  the  dry branch and thus gave the appearance  of a  large bulging
round animal. The  color  of the burnt  debris made it look  light brown  in
contrast with the green vegetation.
     I  laughed at  my idiocy  and excitedly explained to don Juan  that the
wind blowing through it  had  made it look like  a live animal. I thought he
would  be pleased with the way  I  had  resolved the  mystery, but he turned
around and began  walking to the top of the hill. I followed him. He crawled
inside  the  depression  that looked like a  cave. It was  not  a hole but a
shallow dent in the sandstone.
     Don  Juan  took some small branches and used  them to scoop up the dirt
that had accumulated in the bottom of the depression.
     "We have to get rid of the ticks, " he said. He signaled me to sit down
and  told me  to make myself comfortable because we were going to  spend the
night there. I began to talk about the branch, but he hushed me up.
     "What you've  done is no triumph, " he said. "You've wasted a beautiful
power,  a power that blew life  into that dry  twig." He  said that  a  real
triumph would  have  been for me  to let go and  follow the  power until the
world had ceased to exist.
     He  did  not  seem  to  be  angry  with  me  or  disappointed  with  my
performance. He repeatedly stated that  this was only the beginning, that it
took time to handle  power.  He patted me  on the  shoulder  and  joked that
earlier that day I was the person who knew what was real and what was not.
     I felt embarrassed. I  began  to  apologize for my tendency  of  always
being so sure of my ways.
     "It  doesn't matter, " he said. "That  branch was a real  animal and it
was alive at  the moment the power touched it.  Since what kept it alive was
power, the trick was, like in dreaming, to sustain the sight of it. See what
I mean?"
     I  wanted to  ask something else, but he hushed me up  and said  that I
should remain completely  silent but awake all night and that  he alone  was
going to talk for a while.
     He said that the  spirit,  which knew his voice, might  become  subdued
with the sound of it  and  leave us  alone. He explained  that  the  idea of
making  oneself  accessible  to  power had  serious  overtones. Power was  a
devastating  force  that  could easily lead  to  one's death and  had  to be
treated  with  great  care.  Becoming  available to  power  had  to  be done
systematically, but always with great caution.
     It involved making  one's  presence obvious  by a contained display  of
loud talk or  any other type of noisy activity, and then it was mandatory to
observe  a  prolonged  and  total  silence.  A  controlled  outburst  and  a
controlled  quietness were the  mark of a  warrior.  He said that properly I
should have sustained the sight of the live monster for a while longer. In a
controlled  fashion, without  losing  my  mind  or  becoming  deranged  with
excitation or fear, I should have  striven to "stop  the world."  He pointed
out that after  I had run up the hill for dear life I was in a perfect state
for "stopping the world."
     Combined in that  state were fear, awe, power and death;  he  said that
such a state would be pretty hard to repeat.
     I whispered in his ear, "What do you mean by 'stopping the world'?"
     He gave me a ferocious look  before he answered that it was a technique
practiced  by those  who  were hunting for  power, a technique by  virtue of
which the world as we know it was made to collapse.

     THE MOOD OF A WARRIOR

     I drove up to don Juan's house on Thursday, August 31, 1961, and before
I even had a chance to greet  him he stuck his head through the window of my
car, smiled at me, and said, "We must  drive quite a  distance to a place of
power and it's almost noon."
     He  opened the door of my car, sat down  next to me in  the front seat,
and directed me to drive south for about seventy miles; we  then turned east
onto a  dirt road  and followed  it until we had  reached the slopes of  the
mountains.  I parked  my  car off the road  in a  depression don Juan picked
because  it  was deep  enough to hide  the car from view. From there we went
directly to the top of the low hills, crossing a vast flat desolate area.
     When  it  got  dark don Juan selected  a  place to  sleep. He  demanded
complete silence.
     The next  day we ate frugally  and continued our journey in an easterly
direction.  The  vegetation  was  no longer desert shrubbery but thick green
mountain bushes and trees. Around  mid-afternoon we climbed  to the top of a
gigantic  bluff of  conglomerate rock which looked like a wall. Don Juan sat
down and signaled me to sit down also. "This is a place of power, "  he said
after a moment's pause.
     "This is the place where warriors were buried a long time ago."
     At that instant a  crow flew right above  us, cawing. Don Juan followed
its flight with a fixed gaze.
     I  examined the rock and  was wondering how and  where the warriors had
been buried when he tapped me on the shoulder.
     "Not here, you fool, " he said, smiling. "Down there."
     He pointed  to  the field right below us at  the  bottom of  the bluff,
towards the east; he explained that the field in  question was surrounded by
a  natural corral of boulders. From where  I was sitting I saw an area which
was  perhaps a hundred  yards in diameter and  which  looked like a  perfect
circle.
     Thick bushes  covered its surface,  camouflaging the boulders.  I would
not have noticed its perfect roundness if don Juan had not pointed it out to
me. He said that there were scores of such places scattered in the old world
of the Indians. They were not exactly places of power, like certain hills or
land formations  which  were  the abode  of  spirits, but  rather places  of
enlightenment where one could be taught, where one could  find solutions  to
dilemmas.
     "All you have to do is come here, " he said.  "Or spend  the  night  on
this rock in order to rearrange your feelings."
     "Are we going to spend the night here?"
     "I thought so, but a  little crow just told me not to do that." I tried
to  find  out more about  the  crow but  he hushed me  up with an  impatient
movement of his hand.
     "Look at that circle of boulders, " he said. "Fix it in your memory and
then someday a crow will lead you to another one of these  places.  The more
perfect its roundness is, the greater its power."
     "Are the  warriors' bones still buried  here?"  Don Juan made a comical
gesture of puzzlement and then smiled broadly.
     "This is not a cemetery, " he said. "Nobody is buried here.
     I said  warriors were once buried here. I meant they used to come  here
to bury themselves for  a night, or for two days,  or for whatever length of
time they needed to. I did not mean dead people's bones are buried here. I'm
not concerned with cemeteries. There  is no power in them. There is power in
the bones of a warrior, though, but they are never in cemeteries.
     And there is even more power in the bones of a man of knowledge, yet it
would be practically impossible to find them."
     "Who is a man of knowledge, don Juan?"
     "Any warrior  could become a man of knowledge. As I told you, a warrior
is  an  impeccable hunter that hunts power. If he succeeds in his hunting he
can be a man of knowledge."
     "What do you . . ."
     He  stopped my  question with  a  movement of  his  hand. He  stood up,
signaled me to follow, and began descending on  the  steep east side  of the
bluff. There was a definite  trail in the almost perpendicular face, leading
to the round area.
     We slowly  worked  our way down the perilous path, and when we  reached
the bottom floor don Juan, without stopping at all, led me through the thick
chaparral to the middle of the circle. There he used some thick dry branches
to sweep a clean spot for us to sit. The spot was also perfectly round.
     "I intended to bury you here all night, " he said. "But I know now that
it is  not time yet.  You don't have power. I'm going to bury you only for a
short while."
     I became very nervous with the idea of  being enclosed and asked how he
was  planning to  bury me. He  giggled like a child and began collecting dry
branches. He did not let me help him and said I should sit down and wait.
     He threw the branches  he was collecting inside the clean circle.  Then
he made me lie down with my  head towards the east, put my  jacket under  my
head, and made a cage around  my body.  He constructed it by sticking pieces
of branches about two  and a  half  feet  in length  in the  soft dirt;  the
branches, which ended in forks, served as supports for some long sticks that
gave the cage a frame and the  appearance of an  open coffin. He closed  the
box  like cage  by  placing small  branches and leaves over the long sticks,
encasing me from the shoulders down. He let my head stick out with my jacket
as a pillow.
     He  then took a thick piece  of dry  wood and,  using it  as a  digging
stick,  he loosened the dirt around me and  covered  the  cage with it.  The
frame  was so  solid and the leaves were so well  placed  that no dirt  came
inside. I could move my legs freely and could actually slide in and out.
     Don  Juan said  that ordinarily a warrior would construct the  cage and
then slip into  it and seal it from  the inside. "How about the animals?"  I
asked. "Can they scratch the surface  dirt and sneak into the  cage and hurt
the man?"
     "No, that's not a worry for a warrior. It's a worry for you because you
have  no power. A  warrior,  on  the other hand, is guided by  his unbending
purpose and can fend off anything. No rat, or  snake, or mountain lion could
bother him."
     "What do they bury themselves for, don Juan?"
     "For enlightenment and for power."
     I experienced an extremely pleasant  feeling of peace and satisfaction;
the world at that moment seemed at ease. The quietness was exquisite and  at
the same  time unnerving.  I was not accustomed to that  kind of silence.  I
tried to talk but he hushed me.  After a  while the tranquility of the place
affected my mood. I began  to think of my life  and my  personal history and
experienced a familiar sensation  of sadness and remorse. I told him  that I
did not  deserve  to  be there, that his world was strong and fair and I was
weak, and that my spirit had been distorted by the circumstances of my life.
     He laughed and  threatened to  cover  my head with dirt  if I  kept  on
talking  in that vein. He said that I was a man. And like any man I deserved
everything that was a man's-lot-joy, pain, sadness and struggle-and that the
nature of one's acts was unimportant as long as one acted as a warrior.
     Lowering his voice to almost a whisper, he said that  if  I really felt
that  my  spirit  was  distorted I  should simply fix it  purge it,  make it
perfect-because there was no other task in our entire  lives which was  more
worthwhile. Not to fix the  spirit was to seek death, and  that was the same
as to  seek  nothing, since  death  was going to  overtake us  regardless of
anything.
     He  paused for a long  time  and then he said with  a tone of  profound
conviction, "To seek the perfection of the warrior's spirit is the only task
worthy of our manhood."
     His words acted as a catalyst. I felt the weight of my  past actions as
an unbearable and hindering load. I admitted that there was no hope  for me.
I began to  weep, talking about my life.  I said that I had been roaming for
such a  long  time that  I had become callous to pain and sadness, except on
certain occasions when I would realize my aloneness and my helplessness.
     He did not say anything. He grabbed me by the armpits and pulled me out
of  the cage. I sat  up when he  let  go of me. He  also sat down. An uneasy
silence set in  between  us. I thought  he  was  giving  me  time to compose
myself. I took my notebook and scribbled out of nervousness.
     "You feel like a leaf at the mercy of the wind, don't you?"  he finally
said, staring at me.
     That was exactly the  way I felt. He  seemed  to empathize with  me. He
said that my mood reminded him  of a song  and  began to sing in a low tone;
his  singing voice was very pleasing and the lyrics carried me away: "I'm so
far  away from  the sky  where  I  was  born.  Immense nostalgia  invades my
thoughts. Now that I am so  alone and sad like a leaf in the wind, sometimes
I want to weep,  sometimes  I want to laugh with longing." (Que  lejos estoy
del  cielo  donde he nacido. Inmensa  nostalgia invade mi pensamiento. Ahora
que estoy tan solo y triste  cual hoja al viento,  quisiera llorar, quisiera
reir de sentimiento.)
     We did not speak for a long while. He finally broke the silence.
     "Since  the day  you  were born, one way or  another, someone has  been
doing something to you, " he said.
     "That's correct, " I said.
     "And they have been doing something to you against your will."
     "True."
     "And by now you're helpless, like a leaf in the wind."
     "That's correct. That's the way it is."
     I  said  that  the  circumstances  of  my   life  had   sometimes  been
devastating. He listened attentively but I  could  not figure out whether he
was just being agreeable or genuinely  concerned until I noticed that he was
trying to hide a smile.
     "No matter  how much you like  to feel sorry for yourself,  you have to
change that, " he said in  a  soft tone. "It doesn't jibe with the life of a
warrior."
     He laughed and  sang  the  song again  but contorted  the intonation of
certain words; the result was a ludicrous lament. He  pointed  out  that the
reason I had liked the  song was because  in my  own life I had done nothing
else but find flaws with everything and lament. I could not  argue with him.
He  was correct. Yet  I  believed  I had  sufficient reasons  to  justify my
feeling of being like a leaf in the "wind.
     "The  hardest thing in the  world is to assume the mood of a warrior, "
he said. "It is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing
so, believing that someone is always doing something to us.  Nobody is doing
anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.
     "You  are here, with me, because you want to be  here. You should  have
assumed full responsibility by now, so the idea that you are at the mercy of
the wind would be inadmissible."
     He stood up and began to disassemble the cage. He scooped the dirt back
to where he had gotten it from and carefully scattered all the sticks in the
chaparral. Then he covered the clean circle with debris, leaving the area as
if nothing had ever touched it.
     I commented on his proficiency. He said  that  a good hunter would know
that we had been there no matter how careful he had been, because the tracks
of men could not be completely erased.
     He sat cross-legged and told me to sit down as comfortably as possible,
facing the  spot  where  he  had buried me,  and stay put until  my  mood of
sadness had dissipated.
     "A  warrior  buries himself  in  order to find power,  not to weep with
self-pity, " he said.
     I  attempted  to explain but he made me stop with an impatient movement
of his head. He said that  he  had to pull  me  out of the  cage in  a hurry
because  my mood was intolerable  and  he was  afraid  that the place  would
resent my softness and injure me.
     "Self-pity  doesn't  jibe with power, " he said. "The mood of a warrior
calls  for control over himself and at the same time it calls for abandoning
himself."
     "How can that be?" I  asked. "How can he control and abandon himself at
the same time?"
     "It is a difficult technique, " he said.
     He seemed to deliberate whether or not to continue talking.
     Twice  he was on the  verge of saying  something but he checked himself
and smiled.
     "You're not over your  sadness yet, " he said. "You still feel weak and
there is no point in talking about the mood of a warrior now."
     Almost an  hour went by in complete  silence. Then he abruptly asked me
if I had succeeded in learning the "dreaming" techniques he had taught me. I
had  been  practicing  assiduously and  had  been able,  after a  monumental
effort,  to obtain  a degree of control  over my  dreams. Don Juan  was very
right  in   saying  that  one  could  interpret  the   exercises   as  being
entertainment. For the first  time in  my life I had been looking forward to
going to sleep.
     I gave him  a detailed report of  my progress. It  had  been relatively
easy for me to learn to sustain the image of my hands after I had learned to
command myself  to look at them. My visions, although not always  of my  own
hands, would last  a seemingly long time, until I would finally lose control
and  would  become  immersed  in  ordinary  unpredictable dreams.  I had  no
volition whatsoever over when  I would give myself the command to look at my
hands, or to look at  other items of the dreams.  It would just happen. At a
given moment I would remember that I had to look at my hands and then at the
surroundings.  There were  nights,  however, when I could not recall  having
done it at all.
     He seemed to be satisfied  and wanted to know what were the usual items
I  had  been  finding  in  my visions.  I  could not  think  of anything  in
particular  and started  elaborating  on a nightmarish dream I  had  had the
night before.
     "Don't get so fancy, " he said dryly.
     I told  him that  I had been  recording  all  the details of my dreams.
Since I had begun to practice looking  at my hands my dreams had become very
compelling and  my sense of  recall had increased to the point that  I could
remember  minute details. He  said that to follow them was a waste of  time,
because details and vividness were in no way important.
     "Ordinary  dreams get  very  vivid  as  soon  as  you begin to  set  up
dreaming" he said. "That vividness and clarity  is a formidable barrier  and
you are worse off than anyone I have ever met in my life. You have the worst
mania. You write down everything you can."
     In all fairness, I believed what I was doing was appropriate. Keeping a
meticulous  record of my dreams was giving me  a degree of clarity about the
nature of the visions I had while sleeping.
     "Drop it!" he said imperatively. "It's not helping anything. All you're
doing is distracting yourself from the purpose of dreaming, which is control
and power."
     He  lay down and  covered  his  eyes with  his  hat and talked  without
looking at me.
     "I'm going to remind you  of all the techniques you must practice, " he
said.  "First you must focus your gaze on your hands  as the starting point.
Then shift your gaze to other items and look at them in brief glances. Focus
your  gaze on as  many  things as you can. Remember that if you only  glance
briefly the images do not shift. Then go back to your hands.
     "Every time  you look  at  your hands  you  renew the  power needed for
dreaming, so in the beginning don't look at too many things. Four items will
suffice every time. Later on, you may enlarge  the scope until you can cover
all  you want, but as soon as the images begin to shift and you feel you are
losing control go back to your hands.
     "When you feel you  can gaze at things  indefinitely  you will be ready
for a new  technique. I'm going to teach you this  new  technique now, but I
expect you to put it to use only when you are ready."
     He was quiet for about fifteen minutes. Finally he sat up and looked at
me.
     "The next step in setting up dreaming is to learn to travel, " he said.
"The same way you have learned to  look at your hands you can will  yourself
to  move, to go places. First you have to establish a place you  want  to go
to. Pick a  well known spot-perhaps  your school, or  a park, or  a friend's
house then, will yourself to go there.
     "This technique is very difficult. You must perform two tasks: You must
will yourself to go to the specific locale; and then, when you have mastered
that  technique, you  have  to  learn  to control  the  exact  time of  your
traveling."
     As I wrote  down his  statements I  had  the feeling that I  was really
nuts. I was actually taking down insane instructions, knocking myself out in
order to follow them. I experienced a surge of remorse and embarrassment.
     "What are you doing to me, don Juan?" I asked, not really meaning it.
     He seemed surprised. He stared at me for an instant and then smiled.
     "You've been asking  me the same question over and over. I'm not  doing
anything to you. You are making yourself accessible to power; you're hunting
it and I'm just guiding you."
     He tilted his head to the side and studied me. He held my chin with one
hand and the back of  my head with the other and then moved my head back and
forth. The muscles of my neck were very tense and moving my head reduced the
tension.
     Don Juan  looked  up  to the sky  for  a moment  and seemed to  examine
something in it.  "It's time to leave,  "  he said  dryly and stood  up.  We
walked in an easterly direction until we came upon a patch of small trees in
a  valley  between  two large hills. It  was  almost five p.m. by  then.  He
casually  said that  we  might  have  to spend  the night in that  place. He
pointed to the trees and said that there was water around there.
     He tensed his body and began sniffing the air like an animal.
     I  could see the muscles of  his stomach contracting in very fast short
spasms as he blew and inhaled through his nose in rapid succession. He urged
me to do the same and find out  by myself where the water was. I reluctantly
tried  to imitate  him. After  five or six  minutes of  fast breathing I was
dizzy,  but my nostrils had cleared out in an extraordinary way and  I could
actually  detect  the  smell  of river willows. I  could not tell where they
were, however.
     Don  Juan told me to  rest for  a few  minutes  and then he  started me
sniffing again. The second round was more intense.
     I could  actually  distinguish a  whiff  of river willow coming from my
right. We headed in that direction and found, a good quarter of a mile away,
a swamp like  spot with stagnant  water. We walked around it to  a  slightly
higher flat mesa. Above and around the mesa the chaparral was very thick.
     "This place is crawling with mountain lions  and other smaller cats,  "
don Juan  said casually, as if  it were a commonplace  observation. I ran to
his side and he broke out laughing.
     "Usually I wouldn't come here at  all, " he said. "But the crow pointed
out this direction. There must be something special about it."
     "Do we really have to be here, don Juan?"
     "We do. Otherwise I would avoid this place."
     I had  become  extremely nervous. He told  me  to listen attentively to
what he had to say. "The only thing one can do  in this place is hunt lions,
" he said. "So I'm going to teach you how to do that.
     "There is a special way of constructing a trap for water rats that live
around water  holes. They serve as  bait. The  sides of the cage are made to
collapse  and  very sharp spikes  are put along the  sides. The  spikes  are
hidden when the trap is up  and they do not affect anything unless something
falls on the cage, in which case the sides  collapse  and the  spikes pierce
whatever hits the trap."
     I  could  not understand  what  he meant but he made a diagram  on  the
ground and showed me  that  if  the side sticks of the  cage were placed  on
pivot  like hollow  spots on the frame, the cage would collapse  onto either
side if something pushed its top.
     The spikes were pointed sharp slivers  of  hard wood, which were placed
all around the frame and fixed to it.
     Don Juan said that usually a heavy  load of rocks was placed over a net
of sticks, which were connected to the cage and hung way above it. When  the
mountain lion came  upon  the  trap baited with  the water  rats,  it  would
usually try to break it by pawing it with all  its  might;  then the slivers
would  go  through  its  paws  and the  cat,  in  a  frenzy, would jump  up,
unleashing an avalanche of rocks on top of him.
     "Someday you might need to catch a mountain lion, " he said. "They have
special powers. They are terribly smart and the only way to catch them is by
fooling them with pain and with the smell of river willows."
     With astounding speed  and skill  he assembled a  trap and after a long
wait he caught three chubby squirrel like rodents.
     He  told me to pick a handful of willows from the edge of the swamp and
made me rub  my  clothes  with  them.  He  did the same.  Then, quickly  and
skillfully, he wove  two simple  carrying nets  out  of reeds, scooped up  a
large clump  of green plants and mud from the  swamp, and carried it back to
the mesa,  where  he  concealed  himself. In  the meantime the squirrel-like
rodents had begun to squeak very loudly.
     Don Juan spoke to me from his hiding place and told me to use the other
carrying net, gather a good chunk of  mud and plants, and climb to the lower
branches of a tree  near the trap where the rodents were. Don Juan said that
he did not want to hurt  the cat or the rodents, so he was going to hurl the
mud at the lion if it came  to  the trap. He told  me to be on the alert and
hit  the  cat with  my bundle  after he had, in order to  scare it  away. He
recommended  I should be extremely careful not to fall out of  the tree. His
final instructions were to be so still that I would merge with the branches.
     I could not see where don Juan was. The squealing of the rodents became
extremely loud and  finally  was so dark that I could hardly distinguish the
general  features  of the terrain. I heard a sudden and close  sound of soft
steps and  a muffled  catlike  exhalation, then  a very  soft growl  and the
squirrel-like rodents  ceased to  squeak. It  was right  then that I saw the
dark mass of an animal right under the tree where I was.
     Before I  could  even be sure  that it was  a mountain  lion it charged
against  the  trap, but  before it reached it  something hit  it and made it
recoil. I hurled my bundle, as don Juan had told me to do. I missed,  yet it
made  a  very loud  noise. At  that  instant  don Juan let out a  series  of
penetrating  yells  that  sent chills through my  spine,  and the  cat, with
extraordinary agility, leaped to the mesa and disappeared.
     Don Juan kept on making the penetrating noises a while longer and  then
he told me to come down from the tree, pick up the  cage with the squirrels,
run up to the mesa, and get to where he was as fast as I could.
     In an incredibly short period of time I was standing next to don  Juan.
He  told me to imitate his yelling as close as possible in order to keep the
lion off while he dismantled the cage and
     let the rodents free. I  began to yell but  could not produce  the same
effect. My voice was raspy because of the excitation.
     He said I had to abandon myself and yell with real feeling, because the
lion was still around. Suddenly I fully realized the situation. The lion was
real. I let out a magnificent series of
     piercing yells. Don Juan roared with laughter.
     He let me yell for a moment and then he said we had to leave  the place
as quietly  as  possible,  because  the lion was  no fool and  was  probably
retracing its steps back to where we were.
     "He'll  follow us for sure,  " he said. "No matter how careful  we  are
we'll leave a trail as wide as the Pan American highway."
     I walked very close to don Juan. From time to time he would stop for an
instant and listen. At one moment he began to run in the dark and I followed
him with my hands  extended in  front of  my eyes to protect myself from the
branches.
     We finally got to the base  of the bluff where we had been earlier. Don
Juan said that  if we succeeded  in climbing to the top without being mauled
by the lion we were safe. He went up first to show me the way. We started to
climb  in the dark. I did not know  how,  but I followed him  with dead sure
steps.
     When we were near the top I heard a peculiar animal cry.  It was almost
like the mooing of  a cow, except that it was a bit longer and coarser. "Up!
Up! "don Juan yelled.
     I  scrambled to the top in  total  darkness ahead of  don Juan. When he
reached the flat top of the bluff I was already  sitting catching my breath.
He rolled on  the ground. I thought for a second that the exertion had  been
too great for him, but he was laughing at my speedy climb.
     We sat in  complete silence  for a couple of  hours and then we started
back to my car.

     Sunday, September 3, 1961

     Don  Juan was not  in  the house when I woke up. I worked over my notes
and had time to get some  firewood from the surrounding  chaparral before he
returned. I was eating when he walked into the house. He began to  laugh  at
what  he called my routine of eating at  noon, but he  helped himself to  my
sandwiches.
     I  told him that what had happened with the mountain lion  was baffling
to me. In retrospect, it all seemed unreal. It was as if everything had been
staged  for my benefit. The succession of  events had been so  rapid  that I
really had not had time  to be afraid. I had had enough time to act, but not
to  deliberate  upon my  circumstances.  In writing my notes the question of
whether I had really seen the mountain lion came to mind. The dry branch was
still fresh in my memory.
     "It was a mountain lion, " don Juan said imperatively.
     "Was it a real flesh and blood animal?"
     "Of course."
     I  told him that my suspicions had been  roused because of the easiness
of the total event. It was as if the lion had been waiting out there and had
been trained to do exactly what don Juan had planned.
     He was unruffled by my barrage of skeptical remarks. He laughed at me.
     "You're a funny fellow, " he  said. "You  saw and heard the cat. It was
right under the  tree where  you were.  He didn't  smell you and jump at you
because of the river willows. They kill  any other smell, even for cats. You
had a batch of them in your lap."
     I said that it was not that I doubted him, but that everything that had
happened that night was extremely foreign to the events of my everyday life.
For  a while, as I was writing my notes, I even had had the feeling that don
Juan may have  been playing the role of the  lion. However, I had to discard
the idea because  I had  really seen  the dark shape of a four legged animal
charging at the cage and then leaping to the mesa.
     "Why do you make such a fuss?" he said.  "It was just  a big cat. There
must be thousands of cats in those mountains.  Big  deal. As usual, you  are
focusing your attention on the wrong item. It makes no difference whatsoever
whether it was a lion  or my pants.  Your feelings at that moment were  what
counted."
     In my entire life I had never seen or heard a big wildcat on the prowl.
When I thought  of it, I could not get over the fact that I had been only  a
few  feet  away from one. Don Juan listened patiently while I went over  the
entire experience.
     "Why the awe for the big cat?" he asked with an inquisitive expression.
"You've been close to most  of the animals  that live around here and you've
never been so awed by them. Do you like cats?"
     "No, I don't."
     "Well, forget about it then. The lesson was not on how to  hunt  lions,
anyway."
     "What was it about?"
     "The little crow pointed out that specific spot to me, and at that spot
I saw the opportunity  of making you understand how one acts while one is in
the mood of a warrior.
     "Everything you did last night was done within a proper mood. You  were
controlled and at the same time abandoned when you jumped down from the tree
to pick up the cage and run up to me. You were not paralyzed  with fear. And
then, near the top of the bluff, when the  lion let out a  scream, you moved
very well. I'm sure you wouldn't believe  what you did  if you looked at the
bluff during the daytime. You had a degree of abandon, and  at the same time
you had a  degree of control over yourself.  You did not let go and wet your
pants, and  yet you  let go and climbed that wall in complete  darkness. You
could have missed the trail and killed yourself.
     To climb  that wall in  darkness  required that you  had  to hold on to
yourself and let  go of yourself  at the  same time. That's what I call  the
mood of a warrior."
     I said that whatever I had done that night  was the product  of my fear
and not the result of any mood of control and abandon.
     "I know that,  " he said, smiling.  "And I wanted to show you  that you
can spur  yourself  beyond  your  limits  if you are  in the proper mood.  A
warrior makes his own mood. You didn't know that. Fear got you into the mood
of a warrior,  but now that you know about it, anything can serve to get you
into it." I wanted to argue with him, but my reasons were  not clear. I felt
an inexplicable sense of annoyance.
     "It's convenient to always act in such a mood, " he continued. "It cuts
through the  crap  and  leaves one purified. It was a great feeling when you
reached the top of the bluff. Wasn't it?"
     I told  him  that I understood what he meant,  yet  I  felt it would be
idiotic to try to apply what he was teaching me to my everyday life.
     "One needs  the  mood of  a warrior for every  single act,  "  he said.
"Otherwise one becomes distorted and ugly