American Demons

Geological Blast Furnace

Cornelius Kammschneider waits for Cotopaxi to erupt. The crater wears a white collar. Fire and snow come together in a fantastic way. Psilocybin intensifies the effect: the Kenyan-German travel writer, amateur ornithologist and occasional botanist has obtained magic mushrooms and feels like he has just been transported back to the beginning of creation.

Thirty-five years after Alexander von Humboldt, Kammschneider reached the foot of Chimborazo in August 1837. He climbed a fair bit up the mountain for the view. No ambition drove him. He liked to be alone in good spirits.  

In his notes, Kammschneider reports on "fire-breathers who have been inactive since time immemorial" in the neighborhood of Chimborazo. He set up camp at precipitous height. Far below him llamas grazed. Phosphorescent beetles and lunar light phenomena created atmospheres like drug intoxication. Kammschneider wrote the poem Chimborazo in the moonlight. It became a classic of Romanticism. The next morning, as he walked down the valley, he noticed strange activity.

When he set off for the valley the next morning, he noticed a strange hustle and bustle. Wretched figures dragged themselves across a plain with sparse vegetation. Shaggy outlaws moved about in their haze like overseers. Kammschneider was on his guard, for he had already heard of outcasts banding together in dangerous communities. 

The unfortunates themselves recognized the need to stay away from good humanity.The comb cutters were horrified. What was the job of the burly types at the edge of the dubious, burlesque procession? Were they driving the weaklings like cattle to a pasture? The scholar was at a loss. He sighed. What if the anthropophages were marching?Kammschneider decided to hide from the man-eaters. He chose a sacral-sculptural series of staves as a cover. The staves survived dolmens that had been erected in a natural amphitheater.

The fearsome ones reached the Neolithic artifacts. They moved in circles with growing excitement. A drummer set the rhythm. Soon they were falling over each other. Unheard-of things were happening under a terrified sky.  

*

Cornelius Kammschneider eagerly awaited an eruption of Cotopaxi. The crater wore a white collar. Fire and snow came together in an unlikely way. The impression was reinforced by psilocybin; Kammschneider had bought some magic mushrooms and felt like he was traveling back in time to the beginning of creation. The crazy mushrooms intensified the feeling of discovery. The explorer sees something that is part of the everyday life of millions and feels personally addressed by God because he also sees it. Half delirious, Kammschneider jotted down the first verse of the poem Cone Pyramid.A few years before Kammschneider, Alexander von Humboldt had witnessed how a geological blast furnace in the Latin American Andes quickly cleared its own crater of snow. "In a dark red glow, the column of fire from the spraying rain of slag rose to enormous heights. The mountain rebelled so terribly that its complaint was heard (in the Colombian) Honda" - a distance of eight hundred miles as the crow flies.