"The branches go downward and the roots upward. Similarly, this material world is a reflection of the spiritual world. The material world is but a shadow of reality. In the shadow there is no reality or substantiality, but from the shadow we can understand that there are substance and reality." - Bhagavad-gītā 15.01
The hotel had a massive banyan tree on their grounds. (The banyan tree is known for being the kind of tree the Buddha sat down in front of before becoming enlightened.
I had some time to kill before Ellen or her roommates came home so I wandered around the trails that go through the woods behind their home. Crazy tree.
Whenever Meredith sees a little nook or hole somewhere that might be the home of an animal she always walks up to it and says "Who lives here?" Hahahaha.
After we'd showered and stowed our gear, Mohamed and Hosam decided to take me out on the town to celebrate my new certification. Right before we were about to head out, we ran into one of the Japanese diving instructors who was experiencing some intense shoulder pain. Turns out he had been a little careless with his surface interval times after a couple deep dives and was experiencing the early symptoms of decompression sickness (The Bends!). We ended up having to drive him to the hospital to the nearest decompression tank! Scary! (A couple hours in the tank, and he was fine though).
After getting our eat on and saying goodbye to Aaron, Fatty and I left Grant alone to work on the book while we set out to do some more exploring of the ranchlands.
The Crackhouse's Tree, freshly cut, presumably from someone's lawn, adorned in all of its glory with soda cans, rubbers, a fern from someone's bio project that somebody else thought looked like dope, and a pentagram on top. This photograph was taken before the party started. Once the party got going, many others added their own creative decorations.
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