“I breathed in the scenery, deeply wanting to capture every last bit of it.”

I tried Kiva’s pineapple-habanero-flavored, THC-infused gummies first, each one coming in at 5mg of THC. The combination of spicy habanero and sweet pineapple turned out to be a revelatory and distinct combination. The onset of the gummies came on a little later than I’m used to with gummies—about an hour and a half in before it really got cooking. Once I was fully awash in good vibes, I felt as if nature herself was throwing pebbles at my window and beckoning me to come out and play. So I did.

I decided, almost at the moment I felt the edible hit, to take a hike to the top of Boney Peak. This is a nearby mountain located in Pt. Mugu State Park and is a formidable climb by all accounts. I rode my bicycle to the trailhead and then set off on foot through a terrain recently scorched by wildfires. This gave my high an almost sinister quality right from the get-go. Then I spotted a photoshoot in progress where a young man holding a guitar was posing in the bed of his pickup truck. I imagined that I had stumbled on the making of a country album cover in progress. Such became the nature of my high that it had become wide open to suggestion and intent on finding meaning in the mundane.

“They propelled me in the way a gust of wind motivates a sailboat.”

It was this sort of intrepid spirit that defined an arduous nine-mile hike. I think subconsciously I was setting off into the mountain range depicted on the bag of my Kiva Camino gummies. The packaging has a distinct Old West vibe and it was this motif that seemingly stretched out before me. There were rugged equestrian types trotting past me on their horses, a Native American replica wigwam near a quaint cultural center, and cactus patches sprinkled throughout the horizon. I breathed in the scenery, deeply wanting to capture every last bit of it.

Before long, the charred landscape gave way to rolling hills of dry grass and the towering peaks of the distant Santa Monica mountains. These spicy little edibles did not uplift me in the sense that they kicked me into high gear and had me reach the top in record time. Instead, they propelled me in the way a gust of wind motivates a sailboat: slow and steady with a probing eye towards nature’s grandeur. It made me appreciate more than accelerate and that turned out to be the right gear for a five-hour hike.

When I had reached the summit overlooking the Conejo Valley, I felt instilled with a sense of peace and gratitude. I was also still high, which made for a holy triumvirate of sensations at an altitude where I saw no sign of mankind. Then, just as soon as I perched myself on a rock to take in the 360-degree vista, an ill-dressed hiker who looked like he slept in the park turned the corner and started to engage me with a flurry of nonsequiturs. He made it clear that he was living on the streets and that he had come to Los Angeles to record a rock album (he literally started to play the air guitar at one point). When he mentioned he did time in a New York state prison, I quickly took stock of the situation and pictured myself winding up in a future episode of Dateline. It was not easy peeling myself away from his one-sided conversation, but after giving him a granola bar, I backed away ever so strategically and made some lame excuse about having to get back home for dinner. As I turned the corner to leave him he shouted in my direction, “Hey man, thanks for the fucking granola bar! That was awesome!”

“A deep relaxation washed over me and I let my mind wander freely.”

My encounter with the chatty drifter sobered me up in a flash. I remember passing a group of young hikers on my way down and thought briefly about telling them about who awaits them at the top but ultimately decided against it. After all, it’s the unexpected that turns a walk in the woods into a genuine adventure and who was I to deprive them of that?

When I trekked back down to the trailhead, I was properly spent. I chose this time to eat two of Kiva’s Wild Berry Camino Gummies, also containing 5mg of THC each. These were even more delicious than the Pineapple Habanero and would give a THC-less candy of any stripe a run for its money on flavor alone. I was looking for a good recovery edible and these fit the bill. By the time I arrived home and showered up, I all but melted into my sofa. I laid there for quite a while, staring off into the whirring ceiling fan and taking stock of the day.

I made the mistake of eating a large plate of pasta while the gummies were still doing their thing and this caused some trouble in the stomach department. But when that subsided, I was locked in for the night. A deep relaxation washed over me and I let my mind wander freely from creative pursuits to absurd scenarios where I had to battle the ex-convict hiker high above the valley floor in a battle of mountain supremacy. Such are the whims of a dynamic edible at work. Before long, I would fall into a deep sleep, dreaming of vistas suitable for an Andrew Wyeth painting and giving my body some much-needed rest.