The Many Lives of John Bullock

The many lives of John Bullock.

John Bullock was a joyous spirit who loved life so much he reincarnated many times and …

…believed he was over 800 years old. He carried in his heart the spirit of Chief Joseph.

I knew John Bullock when he lived what was evidently his last life on Earth. In the late Sixties, Bullock came to the canyon by taking over the Gerbracht Camp. Della Gerbracht known to her chagrin as “Della The Queen of the El Pasos,” was Bullock’s a long-time family friend, and a gun-slinging desert rat in her own right. Her story, however, is for another life and time.

Bullock and his young mining partner Mark Aslin took over Della’s cinder block cabin at a time when I was young and seeking the cosmos. Della’s father Fred had established the gold camp in 1905 on a high hill near the west end of Mesquite Canyon. From this perch Alsin and Bullock had a commanding view of Last Chance Canyon and Black Mountain. As it turned out, Aslin and Bullock also practiced shamanic magic from this lonely spot.

I knew little of the paranormal aspect of Bullock’s life in those days. To me he was another canyon character. He was over seventy, and wore a long white beard when I first met him at Bickel’s Camp. Aslin, then in his late teens, told me many years later that he was in fact Bullock’s apprentice and on a path to becoming a shaman in his own right. Bullock, a product of the Beatnik era, had been a key figure among a group of Los Angeles area poets, philosophers and writers. According to Aslin, Bullock was a friend of his parents and even lived with the Aslin family. Young Mark grew up hearing Bullock tell stories about adventures with the likes of Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Willie Lay, Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, and L. Ron Hubbard.

In particular, Mark remembered Bullock telling of a dinner party at Clarke’s house. It was at this party that Hubbard was said to have presented his idea of Dianetics. “According to John,” Aslin recalled, “ Hubbard never meant to start the Scientology religion. Hubbard was just looking for a way to help people learn how to think.” Nonetheless, Hubbard’s ideas were manifested in Herbert’s books. Aslin feels, for example, the Bene Gesserit witches of “Dune” represent the epitome of the mental discipline Hubbard envisioned. Bullock was Walt Bickel’s neighbor and good friend. In 1970, he wore a black ten-gallon Stetson hat, and carried a pear-handled six-shooter slung low on his hip like an old West gunfighter.

He was a giant of a man, standing around 6’7” with a booming voice and was given to loud raucous laughter. Back then, I assumed young Mark was a son or nephew John had taken to raise. Bullock told great stories around the wood stove in Bickel’s one-room cabin. His magical tales on cold winter nights were far better than television. One night Bullock claimed some of these tales came not from his imagination, but from “past lives.” In fact, he told those of us around the fire that he had perfected the ability of hypnosis. Further, he could “regress” willing people to former lives. So intrigued was I by the idea of regressing to former lives, I couldn’t get the concept out of my head. Eventually months later, I paid a visit to Gerbracht Camp.

It was sunny, warm, and the sky was a blue crystal dome. At the Gerbracht cabin table, I was sharing a cup of Mormon Tea (ephedra) with Bullock and Aslin, as we passed a hookah filled with dried Yerba Mansa leaves. John knew a great deal about useful and medicinal plants and made mixtures of desert herbs for a variety of uses. Perhaps one might find some explanation in this for what happened next. The view of Black Mountain out the cabin window seemed painted by a great artist, and was far too clear for mere reality.

So it was, I ask Bullock if he could really do hypnotic magic. The old warlock’s blue eyes sparkled, as he smiled and said, “you’ll have to be the judge of that.” That spring in the Gerbracht cabin when I was still a young 24 years old, the experience I was about to have seemed far more intense and meaningful then is does now. I did actually see former lives and wives, or at least believed I did. I can’t remember the exact technique John used to establish my hypnotic state, but it might have been the traditional pendulum and the suggestive, “you are getting sleepy.”

Regardless, deep in a trance I recall wondering when the bright sunny day had suddenly become darkness. Even the cabin was strangely dark and Bullock was an echoing voice across the room. Aslin could be perceived in the room but not seen. The young man sat just out of the lantern light watching. He was learning his trade I suppose. A series of Technicolor movies played in my mind as John’s reverberating voice spoke. I saw the movies in great clarity, and the images seemed to be projected behind my eyes. I recall being surprised that Bullock seemed to be seeing the same images.

True enough, I was likely just seeing ideas he planted. Yet, at times he would ask me to look at something more closely, and at other times would insist I ignore something I couldn’t pry from my imagination. Imagined or not, I recall being fascinated by the sight of a beautiful new barn that sat surrounded by a lush green cornfield. The corn was tasseled and the ears would soon be ready to harvest. The barn was newly built, erect and stood square. This sight pleased me to no end. The woodcuts on the barn wood were still blond and had not yet darkened. It was an indescribable joy to consider that this was my fragrant barn and my verdant corn crop. Yet, John’s distant voice annoyingly insisted I move on. He said this had indeed once been my life but it was unimportant. I should regress further, he insisted, to a far more interesting place.

Still I couldn’t tear myself away from the pleasing pastoral scene. Several events from this bucolic life flashed past. There was a beautiful red-haired woman, a wagon, a team of horses, and a nearby town. My spirit wanted to follow some cloudy past experience. “No, no no,” don’t waste my time with this,” John insisted, but I couldn’t stop. At that point the trance-like state seemed to clear and I was suddenly visiting quite normally with Bullock and Aslin. Bullock seemed a little angry and asked what I thought of the experience. He said from his perspective, he was rather disappointed with the result. I, on the other hand, was delighted with the outcome.

I couldn’t get over how real the experience seemed. Bullock shook his head and said he might not be able to regress me to any place of importance because I was too easily distracted. I recall we took a short break, and I was astounded that so much time seemed to have lapsed. Where had the sunny day gone? I went outside to urinate and couldn’t help but notice the brilliant stars in the desert sky. Bullock came outside too and saw me looking at the extraordinary night. “Now that’s where you should go,” he said cryptically.

At that point, I felt quite refreshed and asked Bullock if he felt we should again try regressing. We went back inside and in a short time I was again in an altered state. I was also soon back at what John said was a relatively recent life of a corn farmer. This time, however, the life flashed by in quick disturbing images that John insisted I ignore. There was a drunken event in town where I had lost all my money to whores and gambling. I saw anger and sadness in the eyes of the red haired women. Finally, with John saying, “Just go on it’s not that important,” I saw the barn and the cornfield burn.

John tried to get me to see another far older life I supposedly once lived here on Earth. This time the images weren’t clear at all. All I could see were my own sandaled feet as I walked an endless dusty road. I hated the path I was traveling and felt miserable. There was nothing in that life I wanted to see. I was depressed and couldn’t lift my head to look around. Suddenly John said, tell me what you see now. Unexpectedly, I was in a strange place surrounded by unusual machines and equipment of various kinds.

It appeared I was in some sort of laboratory. I felt quite comfortable and at home. There were various projects and experiments set up on tables. I moved from one experiment to another making observations. Each project brought great satisfaction, as I moved about a room of wonders. Curiously I knew what was going on with the various cell cultures, plants, animals and moving machine experiments. Yet, I had no words to explain what I was seeing. Finally I came to what seemed to be an enormous reclining chair with a vast number of controls and levers built into the arm rests. Setting in the chair, I was able to control not only body positions and movement, but also a vast array of other surrounding machines.

Then suddenly I was back talking normally with John and Mark. This time Bullock seemed more pleased with the results, but again insisted I had made a foolish mistake by not exploring the life of dirty sandaled feet an endless walking. He shrugged his shoulders and allowed that we might try that another time. We never did. There isn’t much to add to my recollection of the night when I allowed John Bullock take me on a magical mystery tour of past lives. There was his interpretation of the life in the science lab. Bullock insisted that this life was spent almost entirely aboard a spacecraft that was traveling from a distant star to Earth. In fact, at the time John even gave me the name of the planet

I was supposed to have traveled here from. I’ve forgotten the this planet’s name, and I really didn’t believe the story. Truthfully, I passed off most of this evening as science fiction enhanced by herbs. I’ve forgotten many of the details Bullock shared with me that night. I do remember him telling me my space-traveling job had been to create wonderful things aboard a starship. Bullock added that the chair was among my greatest achievements. So it was that somewhere in time I perfected the cosmos’ greatest Lazyboy. For some reason we never talked much about the night again.

In fact from then on I began to see less and less of John and Mark. Once after my dad had given me a Buck Knife, I stopped by Gerbracht Camp to ask John to help me put an edge on the blade. John was a skilled machinist and knew much about steel. John and I sat in the shade of the cabin as the old miner showed me how to hold a blade to the light and see the fine bead of a razor edge. He also brought out several knives from the cabin for me to use to hone my new skills.

As we worked, John talked casually about his past lives. He told of ancient space travel and how his people colonized earth. He talked of early history as if he had been present to see it happen. He claimed that he was once called Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt and was the leader of a people white men called the Nez Perce. He said history remembers him in that life as a Native American called Joseph. About a year later, John told me I had done him a great service by bringing him the love of his life. He was talking about a night I had forgotten. One night, a group of young people came to visit Bickel Camp. Alex Apostolides had just returned from some photographic adventure in Mexico and wanted to show us his slides.

My VW bus was filled with freethinking Hippies off to use John and Mark had a power generator for Alex’s slide projector. One girl in the back said she really hated the canyon and couldn’t wait to go home. She said everyone living there seemed crazy. She hadn’t met John yet and I wondered how talk of past lives on spaceships would go over. There was also a beautiful young redheaded girl among the travelers that night. This girl, named Jenny, pointed out to the unhappy young women that she was now among the most sane people she would ever meet.

Bullock told me that bringing Jenny to his cabin was one of my important tasks on Earth. Jenny was then in her early 20’s and that night she fell in love with the old white-bearded Bullock. Perhaps the crafty shaman had cast his spell on her. Regardless, they were married a few weeks from that meeting, and soon after Jenny was with child. The daughter was born in the Gerbracht cabin and called Amber. In 1972, Amber was a unique and unusul name. In fact, as common as the name is now, this is the first time I knew of the name being used. I saw baby Amber once at Bickel Camp.

She had honey red hair and a beautiful golden glow. Mark Aslin moved from the canyon near this blessed event and wasn’t heard again for decades. He only recently popped up and is now the caretaker at Bickel Camp. I don’t recall ever seeing John or Jenny much after Amber’s birth. I understand the family lived in the canyon for years until John’s Death. Jenny and Amber, I’m told, live someplace in Arizona. I once met Jenny’s mother at a reunion of old canyon friends. A few quick questions about John, however, made it clear she didn’t much like the man. Suffice it to say, she didn’t have a very high opinion of the old man who lured her daughter to the wilderness.

So that’s the John Bullock I knew–good, bad, true or false. From what I saw of his last life, he did a pretty good job of living to the fullest. I can’t speak about his past lives. But then, there are those historical pictures that Mark saw as a boy. These are pictures from the Civil War, and later of World War I that show a man who eerily resembles Big John. Who knows? I haven’t seen those old pictures, but I did have the weird and wonderful related experience. A little over a year ago, a picture of old John popped up on my computer screen.

I was writing for a desert discussion board about my experiences in and around Bickel Camp when a woman posted a picture of Bullock. She said she found the shot while hiking in Last Chance Canyon, and wanted to know who the man was. The woman, who called herself “Jayhawker,” said she saw the picture “blowing,” as Bob Dylan once observed, “in the wind.” There’s a button on this page leading to that cyberspace thread for those interested. Another person at that Website said he had once seen the shot on the outhouse wall at Burro Schmidt’s cabin. Probably no meaning in this, just a strange coincidence. Still, I like the idea of the old shaman speaking to us in images, and sending answers on the wind.