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A hard tapping on the camper window awakened me in the middle of the
night. Roused from a deep sleep, the news was given that my younger
brother was dead.
The next days were a blur as I drove out of the Maine woods. There were
flights from Bangor to Boston and Boston to Denver, and a bus ride
north to Fort Collins. I felt nothing.
In the gathering of grieving family and friends, the air was heavy with
pain and sorrow. It all seemed so unreal, just a nightmare from which I
would awaken.
Mark had recently sent a cassette tape letter saying he would visit me
in Maine at the end of the summer. How could it be that he was gone?
Over the past year, we had become close as friends and brothers and
were just coming to a place of being able to share deeply with each
other.
Then I saw him in the open casket and my heart shattered. Tears came in a torrent.
After the burial, when the immediate family huddled together in a
mountain home, I was again struck by the hard pain of loss and had to
get up and walk outside. Someone came to find me and I broke down and
cried, “He’s gone. He’s really gone.”
Life moved on, though, and I returned to Maine. The first night back was dark and moonless, which matched my mood. Walking on a lonely country road, the weight of my heart slowed my steps.
When our parents were going through Mark’s belongings in his room, they
came across his handwriting on a single sheet of paper. It was titled
“Stargazing Wanderer.” All who read it were taken aback by the words.
It sounded prophetic.
Mark had mentioned in his tape letter hiking to a mountain ridge,
hearing coyotes howl, seeing a beautiful sunset, playing guitar and
being inspired to write songs. While copying the tape to send to family
members, I listened to it again.
He told of working that summer with the Youth Conservation Corps in the
northern Colorado Rockies. On his time off, he played guitar and wrote
songs.
One night he hiked up to a ridge about a mile and a quarter away from
the camp and sat down to do a little stargazing. He was amazed to hear
the coyotes. There would be a really soft howl and barking in the
distance and then it would echo in the hill across the ridge.
Another evening up on the mountain, he was inspired by an especially
beautiful sunset. He started writing, “The mountain is conquered, my
sky is red. Peaceful giant, and nothin’s said. Stargazing wanderer is
what I am.”
He worked out guitar chords for the song and shared in his tape letter that he had enjoyed it, though it was harder to write.
When I read his inspired words, I felt he had opened himself through
nature’s beauty to the depth of Source within. The more I read his
words and listened to his tape, the more deeply his message went. Mark
still speaks to me through his tape letter and handwritten song and I
meet him there, in the life beyond death, where his soul is arisen and
his being is free.
Stargazing Wanderer
The mountain is conquered,
my sky is red.
Peaceful giant,
and nothin’s said.
Star-gazing wanderer is what I am.
Eternal heaven grasps my mind
and carries it to a starburst field of flowers.
Can’t count the hours.
And the ebony god grants a vision,
my soul is arisen.
Flightless clouds in timeless night
suspend me with them.
Such unearthly delight is mine.
Perhaps a sign.
Silver threads of a golden dream surround me.
My being will be free.
- Mark Jonathan Smith
1957-1974
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Afterword
In the year 2000, Gary changed his life and moved from the southeast corner of America to the northwest.
His search for community led him to Ashland, Oregon.
Through a series of synchronicities, he met a German family who had literally sold the farm in Spain and come to America on a spiritual quest.
The Germans, knowing very little English, landed in San Diego and wandered through the southwest before arriving in Ashland the same week as Gary.
They met at a gathering of healers.
A year later, Gary and Kati were married.
Gary's older brother Alan died at age 19 when his car went off a mountain road. His younger brother Mark died nine years later at age 17.
Kati's sons from her previous marriage are Arne and Marc. They were 18 and 14 when Gary and Kati met. Arne and Marc are now Gary's sons as well.
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