There are threads that run through a life.  There’s the vague story of birth – the shifting shadows and bright spots childhood – the teen years, every one of them – and what came next and next and next.  There are memories of scent and touch and sound.  Images of faces and bedrooms and meals and travels.  And there’s the land where you were raised.

Today the ashes remaining from the 56-year-old body of my childhood friend, Murry will be spread in the water running through land that raised both of us.  It’s a lovely symbol.  An important punctuation on a life.  But like that river and its flow – well, even when the sun dies out and this planet ceases to exist, what really happens with all of its stories?  What really happens with the unique vibration of any single life – the way it starts with two microscopic cells that join to ignite a contagion of liveliness – the way that form moves through a birth canal or is cut from a womb and brought into the astonishment that is its human lifetime until the body finally drops.

Start and stop.  Birth and death.  Yes…and just where is the origin of those two infinitesimal cells?  And the personality and character – that spirit – where does it go when the body dies?  It’s an empirical question, as far as I’m concerned.  And the answer is decidedly mysterious.  That’s that.

Murry and I sat together one day in early spring in one of the common areas of the dorm I lived in at Austin College.  By then we’d known one another 4 or more years, but when you’re in your late teens, that’s pretty much forever.  There were other people in the room, friends of ours, but I don’t remember who.  For me it was just me and Murry.  He was teaching me a song on the guitar; he was teaching me how to strike the perfect harmony.

His fingers on the strings were like old Hindu yogis – they made their movements without thought drawing instead on the vast and un-self-conscious intelligence of knowing beyond all seeking and practice.  His long black hair would fall into his face as he played.  Then he’d push it away to look up, to help me refine a chord or a rhythm, to encourage my voice toward some subtle precision.

To the best of my memory, this is what he taught me that night.  This is the song I sing today, for Murry, who’s spirit now unburdened with form, is only everywhere.

Deep in the Hillcountry

South of the plains

Out where the deer all run free

I hear the sound of a deep running river

Wilderness calling me.

Goin’ down by the sweet Guadalupe

That’s where I’m wanting to stay

Something is calling me back to the river

Gonna wash all my worries

Away.

Gonna build me a cabin

Of cedar and stone

Raise up the rafters high

Find me a woman to love all my life

Under that Hillcountry sky

Goin’ down by the sweet Guadalupe

That’s where I’m wanting to stay

Something is calling me back to the river

Gonna wash all my worries

Away.

Cedar and stone

And the sounds of the stillness

Down by the river alone

Such are my memories of Hillcountry heaven

And a peace I never have known

Goin’ down by the sweet Guadalupe

That’s where I’m wanting to stay

Something is calling me back to the river

Gonna wash all my worries

Away.

J Murry Owen

–taught to me (in perfect harmony) spring of 1976, Coffin Hall, Austin College, Sherman, TX