F  L  A  U  N  T

It was day five of a six-day journey on the Greek isle of Icaria. I was with Will, the yet-to-be realized love of my life who had curated the journey for us in an effort to woo me. We had met in Patmos, the island of both Revelations and Apocalypse. The plan for day five was set in stone: we were to dose home-grown psilocybin magic mushrooms and visit a Mushroom Chapel on the northside of the island. This mission was, according to Will, the climax of the trip. The experience was to categorically change my life, but I was suspicious. After all, the namesake of the island is Icarus: a boy who burned his wings when he flew too close to the sun.

We crossed into the gated entrance of a small hamlet overlooking a vast pine forest that was itself surrounded by turquoise colored sea. We traversed the small staircase towards a white basilica. It was indeed beautiful but not enchanting enough to change my life let alone capitulate once and for all Will’s confident professions of love.

I stood and stared at the faded frescoes of the 16th century chapel; my eyes glued to the map of cracks. I zoned into the patina awakened by time-passing. I struggled to see how the small conventionally designed basilica chapel could possibly be described as shroom-like. The magic mushrooms hadn’t kicked in, but I could feel my body inching towards intoxication—a palpable slowdown of the otherwise neurotic and hyper-tense state of my thinking mind. I looked at Will. Perhaps I am too persnickety, I thought, as my jaw fell performatively agape. 

“Just you wait,” Will said.

“Oh, there’s more?” I responded in relief. My performance was for nothing. I wondered if he could sense my artificial awe.

He grinned: “Of course, there’s more! You thought that was the fucking chapel didn’t you?”

Giggling, we walked out from the basilica and headed up through the immaculate gardens of the Theoktistis Monastery. I imagined Frodo and Sam popping their jubilant heads out from a dahlia bush. The setting was at once theatrical and solemn. For centuries, monks tended the flower beds; their green thumbs loaded up with holy love and faith in the big G. Though the monks left decades ago, the Monastery is kept by a family of graceful women. Succulent scents of traditional Icarian donuts soaked in honey drifted from a stone-house on the right.

I commented on the granite metamorphic rocks, which loomed over us like guardians of the garden, all fortress-like. Will smiled again, “Just you wait.” He squirmed with anticipation that I could only fully appreciate after the fact.

We ascended cracked steps passing curved ancient trees. There was no wind. We rounded the corner and up perched within the forest was the Mushroom Chapel. I instantaneously felt high once my eyes fell upon this glorious and seemingly impossible act of architecture. The roof was a rock. Or rather, the mushroom cap was a large granite rock that rested at a perfect slant on the forest’s body. Carved into the underside of the granite, presumably by hand, were gills, or were they already there? As if magically placed, the body of the chapel was a tiny and chalky white crevice ensconced between stone on both sides.

The philosophy and physics of the Chapel’s architecture were lost in time. The why and the who are as much a mystery as the how. The namesake of the chapel is the patroness Saint of Icaria, Osias Theoktistis. Born in the 9th century in Lesbos, Saint Theoktistis was only eighteen when she was captured, escaped from Saracen pirates, and fled to the island Paros where she remained for the rest of her life. Centuries later, Icarians found her crypt on Icaria at the Monastery—55 miles across the sea from her supposed burial site. The Icarians moved her remains into a nearby cave and built a chapel around her dust. How did they mold nature into shape and make it stay? Were they shrooming too?

I grabbed Will’s hand as if to ground myself in the physical realm. Useless. Holding his hand had the opposite effect. This man with a beautiful brain and sun-bleached hair had successfully swept me off my feet and wooed me into a state of unabashed bless. I mean, bliss. Was I grounded? No. Flying high? Yes.

“Come, we’re going up here,” Will said with determination.

We strolled around the chapel perimeter through the thick forest of pine and spindly oak before lifting ourselves onto the roof of the Chapel to marvel at the expansive vista. The slant of the rock-roof held us. There was enough friction to keep from free-falling, but the possibility of tumbling down still flirted with us. Balanced between the wild possibility of death and the controlled happiness of comfort, we sat and overlooked the Icarian Sea. We were, without a doubt, buzzing; buzzing in unison with the cacophony of the vibrating cicadas who were, like us, composing beats in unison. The sun poured down like honey while we sipped on amphora aged Begleri, an indigenous white grape cultivated by the wine-loving monks of the island. Cigarette smoke escaped our lips when they weren’t interlocked. My mouth was, for all intents and purposes, wide open. 

We were in real awe of the Mushroom Chapel, an against-all-odds piece of architecture carved out of forest and granite rock and surrounded by flowers. A little pocket of home, man-made from myth, crafted with love.

Intertwined and in pure bless bliss, we laughed together at our impossible fortune. Of two strangers falling in love on a Greek island and finding faith in our future together. A future we brought into existence when we laid in knotted limbs on the Mushroom Chapel holding onto our new home for dear life.