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Farm
Journals
Where The Eagles Soar
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Butterfly Hollow Farm ____ The Path Leading Us Here ____ How The Farm Got Its Name ____ Restoring the Old Farmhouse ____ Where The Beefalo Roam ____ Saddle Up The Horses ____ Saving Wilderness and Farm Land ____ Farm Journals ____ Sharing The Farm ____ Guest Book ____ Site Map ____ |
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(November 1997) Where does a man begin in an attempt to capture the feelings, emotions, gratitude, and memories of a person whom I've never met, but has become woven into the true fibers of my soul? There have been many cross roads in my life and I can sometimes look back and see choices I've made and the rhymes and reasons for the thing that happened. We never really know the day we are making decisions that will be forever. A spring day of 1975 in Elementary school when I saw a bulletin board with a picture of John Denver, the coarse of my life was crossing a road that would ultimately mold and shape me into the man I have become today. And so sadly on an autumn day in 1997, the man responsible for some many of these world changes, and has become a part of so many people, stood for a brief second at another cross road and chose the path that led to where the Eagles soar. I'll never forget that day I came home from school and asked my parents who John Denver was. My folks were budding flower kids and very much into the environment and what JD stood for. They gleefully told me about him and his music. I don't think they had an album, but I guess their enthusiasm planted the seeds in me. It wasn't long after that I started identifying myself as a John Denver fan (though I still hadn't even heard him sing). I wasn't like the other kids in my Tennessee elementary school. It was probably because my family had migrated from Long Island New York that year. My father still had the long beard, my Mom wore her long brown hair in braids and I had long straight hair that was over my ears and down my neck. I stood out to say the least. This can be a good thing, but it can also allow a kid to make the wrong friends and find attention by doing the wrong things. Unfortunately these were beginning to be my patterns. I think my identity with JD changed my paths at this early age. I never became the scholar or valedictorian, but I began making friends that where true and good. That Christmas my aunt asked what I wanted for Christmas and I was never so happy to get my first John Denver album. It became a tradition from then on. Each Christmas I got a least one if not more. I sang them all as loud as I could, wore them down so much that they are barely listenable these day. But each time I sang his words they slowly began evolving into my own thoughts and feelings. I laid in my bedroom starring at his albums for hours on end looking into the pictures. I think I eventually believed enough and somehow I even started looking a little like him too. The next life change came when my folks moved from the small college town we where living in and bought a remote rustic log cabin that had a lake for a back yard, mountains and forests for a front yard, with the closet neighbor about a mile away with a farm. The moment we moved in, all the images and visions that were looking for space, found the freedom and energy they needed to grow. It was from this point in life that I joined the Boy Scouts, got involved in doing anything and everything in the outdoors. I found peace and solitude in being alone in the woods. I started listening. Started thinking. Started working on the farm. I still wasn't the typical young boy from the south, but this uniqueness was slowly becoming an asset. Being different, liking JD, having earth loving parents, and living in the wilderness in a log cabin became everything I was about. My parents both played guitar. My Dad also was a percussionist and taught music at a college. So there was always music in our home even if I was giving my JD albums a break. I started picking up Mom's guitar and tried to make sounds. I more often would end in a live air guitar concert in my bedroom with JD backing me up. I'll never forget the Christmas morning I unwrapped my guitar from my Mom. My aunt also joined in on the surprise and got me a JD song book instead of my traditional album that year. I started picking, writing poetry, putting them both together and had created my new best friend. I remember carrying my guitar to Junior High School for the first time. I had figured out a handful of JD songs plus the two or three tunes I had written about Leaves, Flying and living in the Mountains. I was so surprised that people where actually listening. I named the guitar Harmony and it started going to school with me everyday. I played in the hallways during break, outside during lunch, and anytime I could force my pre-puberty voice and JD songs into the air. My voice finally changed, and my songs got a little better. I did get to go to two JD concerts growing up. The second concert we went to came a few months after I had written him and had received a long anticipated letter back. It was short and had few words but put me on a high that I almost never came down from. During the concert he stopped and talked for awhile and began mentioning that there was someone in the audience that he wanted to introduce to everyone. I couldn't believe it. He was going to introduce me....probably invite me up on the stage to sing one with him...... My heart was beating so fast and time fell into a crawl as he started to announce my name......D......A.... nial something or other. Oh well.... I wrote him a couple times more. I always knew that he would eventually meet our family and see the cabin and lake we called home. When I left for college you might have guessed that I would find a school in Denver. I was finally there, finally able to be in those Rocky Mountains. But instead of clearing the focus or becoming more intune with the young man I was developing into, I put JD and that person on a shelf. His music and voice had changed or perhaps it was just me. But in any case I was getting frustrated with my guitar and all my songs sounding the same to me. So I began looking for new horizons on the music frontier and began broadening my repertoire of music. I started improving my piano playing skills and slid the ol' guitar under the dorm room bed. Like all life....we eventually find our way back to our roots and uncover the seeds that we pushed aside in trying to grow upward. What was planted will always be just beneath the surface. I found my boundaries in life while living in Colorado but eventually returned home to Tennessee. It wasn't an overnight re-birth or awakening but more along the lines of a slow evolution. I've now found my way back to a life that includes love, wilderness, peace, activism, animals, friends, community and music. I live the life on the farm that John shared with me so many years ago. I live so many of the things that he taught me as my sister and I sang his songs walking around the lake. My guitar proudly sits in the corner now and doesn't go too many days without echoing the words of the man who changed the world.
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info@butterflyhollow.com
Butterfly
Hollow
Gordonsville,
TN 38563