Anger Management

Dear Jared,

It’s been seven years since you killed yourself. This past year has been emotionally tougher for me than the past few, and I have struggled with keeping my own life, so deciding how to mark this seventh anniversary has proven more than a bit difficult. I have spent hours staring at blank paper with tears in my eyes and heavy blood in my heart, sitting in the library, at the cabin, in bed, and in parking lots, wondering what I could possibly write that would make sense of everything I feel, persuade others to get help before they abandon all hope, and relieve some small measure of the mighty grief and pressing guilt that plague me to this day.

I considered writing a piece on the things I have learned over the past seven years about suicide and its impact on survivors, but everything I wrote sounded selfish and insensitive. For a few days I considered recounting my own emotional struggles over the past several months, but again, selfish and insensitive, with a touch of melodrama. I thought I’d write a short story about searching the shallow waters of the Lamprey river for your James Dean watch, the one that fell off your wrist during one of our canoeing adventures, but I found myself lost and alone in a canoe made for two, riding a tidal river of memories and paddling without success against a thick and salty current of regret.

I was told in therapy a long time ago that I would one day be angry with you, and that only then would I be finished mourning your loss and be able to move on with my life. A week or so ago I fell apart and wondered if that time had come. I spent some time alone in the woods, recklessly chopping down tall trees, shooting invisible targets with Grandpa Bond’s shotgun, and driving higher and higher into the thinning air on roads and trails that were not meant for careless drivers.

But I’m not angry with you, not yet. Maybe it would close some doors if I were, but for now they remain open, and I suppose that I am glad, because inside those rooms I can sit and visit the rawest of my emotions, the ones that remind me I am alive. In recent weeks I have caught myself seeking sensory overloads. Standing naked and sweating in the hot sun, banging my head against my fist, and staying awake until my head hurts have provided stark reminders of what it is to be alive, and a strange, cooling relief from everything burning inside of me.

Don’t fret and worry yourself over my situation, however; these frantic moments are few and far between. I have Elizabeth and the kids, and with them in my life I remain a fair distance away from that dark line, the one that you stepped over, the one that you crossed and kept walking away from until you were lost into a place from which you couldn’t make your way back. If only you had found someone like Elizabeth, someone to cling to, someone who you couldn’t bear to leave behind…

So, the kids are good…

Caleb is determined to write professionally, and that makes me smile. It helps that he is blessed with talent, more than I ever possessed at his age. He will improve with time, experience, and practice, and the world will know his name for it. He talks about you a lot, telling me what he remembers about you, and stories about my life after you died, but from his perspective. Caleb inherited so many of your mannerisms and ways of thought that I sometimes have to gulp at the air around me when I see you in him. I don’t think he minds when I call him by your name, a mistake I have made often, because he loves you, and because he know that his resemblance to you is that strong.

Hannah is a can of gas thrown on a gas-fueled fire, with gas raining down on it from a gas cloud above; she can’t stop, she won’t stop, and the world better stay out of her way. She won’t be completely happy until she is eating fruit and doing yoga in Bali, and I hope to someday visit her there and try my hand at both. A couple of weeks ago I shaved her head (at her request), and she looks beautiful. Being an independent teenager, she doesn’t allow much physical contact, and the time spent with my hands on her head and my fingers tangled in her long hair was like water to a withered sprig. She is so much like me that I feel a heavy guilt to think that I may have cursed her future, but I know that she will do better than I ever will at life.

Solomon is my sea anchor, stabilizing my worn and swaying vessel in white-capped stormy seas. The kid makes me laugh and pulls my lips into a wide smile on even the darkest days. He has a quick wit to accompany his scampy charm, and is loved by anyone who gets to know him, except for his school principal, for whom the boy has little if any respect. Solomon has smooth criminal moves fueled by a confidence that I would kill for, and yet he lacks any hint of pride or malice in his heart. He draws, he writes, he dances, he loves, and he jokes, all of them well, and I can’t wait for the world stage to throw wide its curtains for his one man show. Fortunately for me, he has made a conscious decision to stay young for the time being.

Elizabeth misses you. She is soft and quiet about you, holding her Jared moments close to her chest. I often wonder what my life would have been like had I embraced you without conditions from the moment I met you, the way she did. I admit to being guilty of stealing the limelight when it comes to grief over your loss, but she has never once accused me of being selfish in my emotional hijackings. She is patient with me, believes in me, and has permanently hitched her wagon to my sad, stubborn, aimless and weather-beaten mule, expecting a sudden strengthening of muscle followed by a frightening burst of speed towards the starting line of success. Her confidence in me fuels my greatest fear, which is that I will let her down.

As for the world, it marches on in your absence. Technology is outpacing thought, greed has all but broken the spine of necessity, and discussion is losing ground to contention. I love so much about this world and all it offers, but a greater and greater part of me wishes I had long ago followed my teenage dream of heading into the Alaskan wilderness to homestead. I hope that I have succeeded in teaching the kids (and in the process remind myself) that in the end, no amount of wealth, gadgets, knowledge, faith, or possessions will be counted when it comes time to determine whether you were a good person or bad.

I wish you were here to see the happier moments and share in the bouts of laughter when they come, because on most days they outnumber the sad. But you aren’t, so I will do my best to live well until we meet again. Fortunately, I am blessed to have a small but able crew that is willing to push me forward through the storms and the darkness. I will be forever sorry that I could not, that I did not, that I would not, do the same for you. It is my great regret, and I cannot truly make amends for it. Perhaps the best thing I can do is to find some measure of anger towards you in this life, so that our next time around can be as sweet, fun, loving, and thrilling as the first one should have been.

Tonight I will spend some time up in the mountains, hoping to see the bear that has taken to visiting the cabin in search of something sweet to eat. I spent a few nights up there alone this week, and I watched him the other evening as he lumbered through the green. I felt no fear as he came closer to me, only a reverent thrill at seeing him in his wild habitat. Free from any other care but that of achieving the happiness that would come from filling his belly, his innocence reminded me of your simple and sensitive desire to be nothing more than happy, filled with love from others.

This letter has been a bit heavy, and I don’t know how to end it, other than to say that I wish things were different. I wish I was writing you about our upcoming road trip through the southwest, and how we are going to chase tumbleweeds, climb colored mountains, and meet weirdos in strange and beautiful places.

But things are not different, and they never will be.

You know what? That kinda makes me angry…

West of Independence Soundtrack Part 2

To Recap:
1. Willy Porter "Unconditional"
2. David Bowie "Heroes"
3. Journey "Don't Stop Believin'"

4. Matt Hires "State Lines"

Road trips are for me like therapy sessions without the couch. Wind from open windows blows the cobwebs from my mind and fills my lungs with the fresh air of adventure-fueled perspective. Junk food becomes healthy, familiar songs sound new, and strangers are made into friends. There is a healing power in those painted lines, and every mile marker passed offers new memories while troubles shrink away in the rear view mirror.

My family has a lot of healing to do. I haven’t had any great measure of a relationship with them for some time now, and I am not sure what the future holds for us. I am happy with my life, and sometimes the thought of never seeing them again is okay with me. There are moments, however, when I imagine one final family road trip to make it all right.

"we're crossing over state lines, and we're making up for lost time..."

Are there roads in the afterlife? I hope so.

From West of Independence page 46:

“And we are still in Oklahoma? I forgot how huge these states are out here.” Connor pulled out another cigarette.

“And flat,” I said, rolling down the windows. “You can see so far that you feel like you’re crawling, even when you’re doing close to ninety miles an hour.”

In the darkness, miles ahead of us, I could see the tiny flashing lights of a construction zone, proving my point. It took several minutes to reach the first blinking arrows, which indicated an impending split of the westbound lanes. When the time came I veered to the left, and we found ourselves speeding between parallel cement barriers. Our little car was so low to the ground that we couldn’t see over them, and it seemed as though we were driving through a canyon of grey.

“It feels like we're in the Death Star trench!” Connor turned to shout so I could hear.

I smiled and looked dead ahead, watching as the cement blurred into the grey walls of Darth Vader’s infamous death moon. The dark sky above, spotted with the bright twinkling of stars, added to the effect. I imagined Tie Fighters above us, the whine of their ion engines threatening as they gave chase. My imagination sent them careening into the walls behind us, their large, flat wings spinning off into space, leaving the ball-shaped cockpits to plow into the bottom of the trench with explosive displays of good winning over evil.

“Matthew, trust your feelings, feel the force within you!” I heard Connor shout over the thunder of battle, which was in truth just the wind whistling through the open windows.

I reached up and turned off the GPS, a young Jedi-in-training turning off his targeting system. We sped through the trench for another mile or so, and as it ended I swerved over to the right lane as if I had just fired the kill shot into that tiny exhaust port and wanted nothing more than to get away as the Death Star disintegrated into flaming space dust.

“Did you hear, that?” I shouted.

“Hear what?” Connor asked.

“I swear I just heard Han Solo shouting ‘Yahoo!”

5. Toad the Wet Sprocket "Windmills"


My demons lumber about on the horizon, just within sight. They never look my way, but why should they? I don't frighten them in the least. I am the one that is scared, and they know it. To say that I chase them is a delusion; the truth is that they lead me.

One day I will tilt against my windmills and chase them away for good. Until then, I give chase follow.

From West of Independence Page 50: 

As we neared the Texas border, the sun came up and my bladder neared its bursting point. Connor had been sleeping through the last stretches of highway that Oklahoma had to offer, and though I really had to pee, I had not wanted to pull over and risk waking him. He looked peaceful and at rest in the passenger seat, curled up as close to the fetal position as one could get while wearing a seat belt in such a tiny car.

To sacrifice an hour or more of internal pressure and let him sleep a while longer as we sped across the open plains was no small gift that I could give to my little brother. I knew that much like myself, Connor had slept very little over the past several months, the level of physical comfort having nothing to do with it.

Cotton fields began to line the highway, the acres of white blossoms laying low to the ground like clumps of melting snow. I decided that when Connor woke up we would pull over to pick some cotton.In the meantime I spied towering windmills dotting the plains in long white ranks, their blades turning lazily in the winds sweeping across the plains. In an instant Connor unwittingly became Sancho Panza to my Don Quixote, and together we gave chase to the savage titans that terrorized the land. I thought of Ella as my sweet Dulcinea back home. She had encouraged me to follow through on my quest, and I was lucky to have her.

“Are we in Texas yet?” Sancho was awake and wondering as to our progress.

“Almost. I have to piss like nobody’s business,” I said.

“Me too,” Connor yawned.

“Ok, we’ll stop at the border. I want some pictures of us at the welcome sign.”

We passed the next few miles in silence, and I returned to chasing windmills.

6. The Damnwells "Texas"

Have you ever been so far away from someone that you've never felt closer to them? Without separation, there can be no reunion. It is in those moments of loneliness, the times when I miss the ones I love, that I rediscover why it is that I love them.


From West of Independence page 57:

Back on the road, I looked in the mirror and threw Jared a smile. After a shaky start, the trip was shaping up to be everything I had hoped it would be.

7. Ian Axel "Gone"

I would like to think that homes creak and groan in the night out of memory reflex, because they miss someone whose life they shared. Floorboards chuckling as they think of tiny feet that once skipped across them, door frames creaking as they reach out to accept the imagined shoulder of someone who used to lean on them, and walls groaning in an attempt to recreate the happy sounds of laughter that bounced between them long ago.

Experience is telling me that the secret to a happy life isn't in leaving behind a big empty space that is difficult to fill when you die, but rather in making room in your life for others, and in appreciating the space that they fill around you.

Before they are gone.


From West of Independence Page 82:

Once through the fence, we ran towards the abandoned town like sixth graders let off the bus on the last day of school. We slowed to a walk and surveyed the area as we approached the front steps of the nearest building, a little house with front porch and boarded windows. To one side of the house we could see an ancient truck. The yellow paint of the cab was mottled with rust, and it had long ago settled comfortably onto flat tires that dug into the red earth beneath them.

I followed Connor up the steps and onto the sagging porch. He entered the house, but I stayed outside, fascinated by the yellow truck. I imagined the family that had lived there long ago. I pictured a husband, his wife, and their two little girls. The young couple had spotted each other across a dance hall in Albuquerque. He had been too scared to ask such a pretty girl to dance, but both his friends and hers had pushed them out onto the floor. They were married three weeks later. Soon a baby was on the way, and he had moved them out to their own little house, far away from the pressing matters of the “big” city.

They had been happy. A second baby girl had added to their joy, and his modest trucking business had provided well enough. His weeks were long, but coming home after a haul was the greatest feeling in the world. He would honk his horn as he drew up, and his girls would come running out, waving and laughing as he parked his bright yellow truck next to the little house. He would leap from the cab, scoop his daughters up in his arms and spin them around, kissing them and loving on them, their laughter and adoration renewing his will to live. As he put them down and they spun away in dizzy circles, his wife would step out onto the porch, an apron tied tightly around her tiny waist, a smile on her face. He would approach the porch, stopping before the top step so as to look straight into her happy eyes before kissing her deeply.

It was their heaven on earth, their own private eternity. Everything they could ever want was growing old within the walls of that house.

West of Independence Soundtrack Part 1

Music will always be a part of West of Independence. A long playlist accompanied me as I wrote the book, and readers won't find a page of it that was written in silence. At every moment of the process, music was sounding in my ears, making me smile, causing my heart to race, or filling my eyes with tears.

I have long believed that books should be sold with a recommended playlist attached, and have often wondered why someone hasn't figured out a way to make it happen. Well, since writing West of Independence, I have come to understand why. Each chapter of such a personal story deserves to live with the music that helped to write it, and whittling the playlist down to something reasonable requires the elimination of songs that are not easily let go. I set out to do it, and the task has proven to be my Gordian Knot.

Nevertheless, I have done my best to build a "soundtrack" that I feel comfortable releasing to the world. But rather than list them all at once and be done with it, I am going to pay them each the respect that they deserve and post them a few at a time, along with carefully selected excerpts from the book and links to the best playable versions I could find on the web.

I hope that these songs adds to the experience of reading West of Independence, because it certainly added to the experience of writing it.

1. Willy Porter "Unconditional"

"maybe he was a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew...I hope that he was laughing when off that bike he flew...maybe he struggled to believe, just like me and you...as the ambulance is too late arriving...now he stares into the sky above, into the face of unconditional love..."

The words of this song inspire me while putting me to shame. I have learned the hard way that selfishness, no matter the driving force behind it, cannot exist in the same heart with unconditional love.

From West of Independence page 25:

"It was hard for me to accept that my older brother was gay, and so I didn’t. While I loved him for so many reasons, I also hated Harrison for causing so much confusion in my life. I was incapable of seeing his lifestyle as anything other than a bad choice, his failure to find love and comfort with girls driving him to decide that he must be gay. It disrupted my parent’s lives, and since I had blindly followed my parents into the black and white fog of unyielding religious beliefs, it disrupted my life as well. I felt committed to my parents and all that they had taught us growing up in the Mormon religion. Harrison had decided to be gay, and therefore was subject to harsh judgments, condemnation, and a life full of misery. He would never be truly happy, and would risk the dangers of a promiscuous and unnatural life, namely AIDS and a horrible death.

And Harrison's earthly life wasn't the only life at risk. My big brother was endangering his eternal soul, and along with it the eternal nature of our family. Without him we could not be an Eternal Family, a blessing promised to the obedient and faithful.

I didn’t want to believe this, and secretly hoped that God would have some small measure of mercy for my brother, if not for his sake, then for mine."

2. David Bowie "Heroes"

Anyone who knew Jared will remember that he loved David Bowie. We spent weeks worth of time in our attic bedroom listening to his Bowie records, and together we went to see Bowie's Glass Spider rock show in the late Eighties. I remember walking all around the stadium with Jared, looking for some part of the fence through which we could enter ahead of the crowd, since our tickets were general admission on the field, and I feared being so far back into the crowd that Jared wouldn't be able to soak up the full David Bowie experience. We found our gap, made a mad dash for the front, and ended up center stage. It was hot and humid that night, and people were passing out all around us as "Ziggy Stardust" wowed us with his voice, his music, and his theatrics. I will never forget the smile on Jared's happy face as he stood oblivious to the chaos around him, captivated by his musical hero. 

To do the same again with Jared, "just for one day" would be worth anything you might ask of me.

From West of Independence page 30:

"Weeks passed, and though it was tight quarters, no one complained. Jared slept while we were at work, and woke up to eat dinner and spend some time with us before walking to work. I was employed cleaning carpets at the time, and Jared would abandon sleep a couple of days a week to work with me and make some extra cash. We drove around Seattle together in a big van with a colorful carpet cleaning super hero painted on the sides.

The job sucked. Cleaning dirt, food, sewage, and various bodily fluids from stranger’s carpets was gross, but the time spent working with Jared became something to look forward to each week. We made a habit of raiding the customer’s kitchens for food, turning their stereos up too loud, and riding the carpet buffer across their living rooms. We dreamed aloud of being free and happy, living as we pleased someday, un-tethered by the worries of the average jerk. I hoped to become a published writer, and Jared a successful artist, but we gave little thought to the effort and heartache required to achieve such elusive aspirations.

To dwell on the hows was too depressing anyway. I had little hope or talent with which to materialize my own dream, while Jared was sure to succeed due to the raw creative genius that seemed to course through his veins and flow out his fingertips as he drew or painted."

3. Journey "Don't Stop Believin'"

Has anyone ever taken a road trip without listening to Journey? I am pretty certain there is a federal law that states "when crossing more than two state borders in a car, no fewer than six Journey songs must be played at full volume, without regard for embarrassment during vocals and air guitaring."

Tell me, what good is a road trip without nostalgia, and with that nostalgia, a little self inspection and regret?

From West of Independence page 41:

“Uh-huh,” Connor said, acknowledging my request. He dropped the Ipod back into the dock, and the car was filled with the sounds of keyboards, guitars, and the Eighties. The unmistakable music of our youth threatened to blow the speakers as we cruised down the highway in our tiny black rental car, trying to match the singer's long high notes and jamming out the well-known but never tiresome riffs on our air guitars. I knew it was silly and cliché, but it didn’t feel that way. We kept it up for miles, working our way through a long list of favorites.

When the playlist ended, Connor reclined his seat and settled in for a nap. The ability to sleep anywhere, at any time, was a skill that both my younger brothers had always possessed. On all of our many road trips as kids, outside on our trampoline, and while camping with our friends in high school, I had watched them drop to whatever disagreeable surface was available, falling asleep without too much trouble while I laid awake, uncomfortable and jealous of their deep breathing and unconscious state.

Connor had once slept in the bottom of our canoe for an entire day on a river, not even stirring when we ran some rapids. I was so worried he might be dead that I poked him hard with my paddle. It was like waking a sleeping bear by sticking a lit cherry bomb up his ass. Connor was so pissed off at me for waking him up that he thrashed around and nearly dumped us into the water.

I smiled at the memory, and at the realization that once more I had found myself awake with my little brothers at rest around me. Setting the cruise control at eighty-five, I sat up tall in the driver’s seat and gripped the wheel, my hands at ten and two in order to ensure that I would not relax too much and risk falling asleep. The white center lines whipped past, disappearing into the darkness as the miles stacked up behind us."

It Amazes Me

I saw an online article about John Denver's upcoming birthday (it would have been his 70th) and a dam burst somewhere inside of me, setting free a torrent of memories. This piece will be written without respect for continuity, because that's the way memories flow.

It amazes me.

My first memories of music are of John Denver’s “Back Home Again.” I was only four years old, but I remember. Mom would slide the album out of its sleeve, drop it on to the turntable, and slip the massive headphones over my ears as the music began. The rhythmic strumming of the title track would transport me to the cab of a big rig out on the open road, where I would ride alongside its driver, eager as he was to get back home to his wife, the light in her eyes, and supper on the stove. A montage of love and family would dance through my head as John sang of what it meant to return to the one you loved in the place you called home.

“Back Home Again” took me home, but “On The Road” drove me back out onto that lonesome highway, with my own father at the wheel of an old Mercury V8. It was just the two of us against the world, following the open road, searching for imagined love in the shape of a girl at a truck café. In a family of nine there were few moments that I spent alone in the car with my father, so I had to rely on John to provide me the setting for what I believed would be the greatest road trip I’d never take.

“Grandma’s Feather Bed” was always a fun break from sentiment, with its silly suggestion that it took the feathers of forty ‘leven geese to make it, and that it would hold eight kids, four hound dogs, and a piggy stolen from the shed. The images of laughing cousins, dozing beside the fireplace, and waking up in a giant heavenly bed still linger with me today.

My name is Matthew, and so is one of my favorite John Denver songs. It never fails to evoke memories that I have never lived, paint my mind’s canvas with landscapes that must be experienced, and promise reward in a lifestyle full of challenges that few can fathom. To be like Matthew would be to live a life worthy of a standing-room-only funeral. My father quoted the song when speaking to an audience about me when I was about to leave home for the first time at the age of nineteen. About to serve a two year mission in Paraguay, I was unsure of myself, frightened by all the uncertainty that lay ahead. To hear my dad say that I was made of joy was a rare moment in my life; hearing him suggest that I was something he could be proud of is something I have not forgotten. Indeed, the thought of it carried me through some rough moments over the following two years as I served others, and I was able to find joy in some of my darkest hours in a foreign land.

But the memories don’t end with the songs from “Back Home Again.”

The album “Poems, Prayers, and Promises” can be credited in great part for my propensity to think deeply at a constant clip, more often than not to a fault. As a young boy I hadn’t yet experienced most of what John was singing about, and so my mind was forced to stretch itself in order to grasp how sweet it is to love someone, to the point that their tears belong to you. My maternal grandmother was a member of the Blackfoot tribe, and so dancing about the house to the wild, angry cries of “Wooden Indian” meant something more to me than I could possibly understand at the time, but listening to it I knew that some great injustice had been done to her people. The mournful tones of “Junk” suggested that my father was not so misguided in his passion for antiques, and while we never owned a parachute or a sleeping bag for two, the belief that memories lived within the pieces he collected was not lost to me.

For many years and over many circumstances I considered my three brothers to be prodigal sons of the family, but the words of “Gospel Changes” have since suggested to me that as a firm believer in a higher power I should have been a better example of unconditional love. I hate to think it, but I know that had I been, my little brother might not have taken his life.

We all have heroes, and one of mine was a man named Pete. He taught me how to fire a muzzleloader, the art of a great campfire story, and what it meant to be a good man in spite of shortcomings. We lived in Connecticut, but his heart had never left his family’s farm down in West Virginia. I remember his eyes filling with tears and light whenever he spoke of that little plot of heavenly land. In the cassette player of his Jeep was a tape with “Take Me Home, Country Roads” recorded over and over again on both sides. I don’t recall any other song ever playing through those speakers, and to hear it now dredges up miles of memories that make me smile. I had the chance to drive through West Virginia last year, and in Pete’s memory I played the obligatory song on a loop as I passed through towns where time runs backwards in a good way.

The playlist of songs and the memories and moments they evoke continues…

My father was never a seamstress; he preferred hammer and nails over needle and thread. But I still have the shirt that he gifted to me one Christmas when I was a young boy with dreams of being like John Denver. The shirt looked just like John’s from the cover of “Spirit.” Dad probably pricked his fingers to the point of severe blood loss while embroidering the sunshine onto the shoulder of that little blue button-down shirt. It wasn’t quite finished, but I didn’t care, in my eyes it was perfect. I wore it for our family photos the following summer, and again when I was John Denver for Halloween. It took Dad more than a decade to finish sewing on that sunshine, but when he finally did, he wrapped it and gave it to me for Christmas all over again. Sunshine on my shoulder does indeed make me happy, and then again sometimes it makes me cry.

You know, I’ve always wondered just what a Berkley Woman is, and whether or not there would be hunger in my stare should I see one…

My maternal grandmother may have been a Native American, but that didn’t stop her from marrying a cowboy. My grandfather was the first in my short list of heroes. He slept with a six-shooter under his pillow until he died, wore a cowboy hat with authority, and understood what it meant to be a man. When I take his shotgun up into the mountains behind our home I can’t help but think of him, and in those moments I want nothing more than to be a cowboy, to ride the range, see the high country, and lay down my sundown in some starry field. All of these thoughts play out in my mind accompanied by John’s music, and his lyrics make me believe that my dream is not so impossible after all. Hell, I already live in a rodeo town on the side of a mountain, so the stretch to becoming a cowboy is not that far.

Yes, I live in the mountains nowadays, having left most of yesterday behind me. Every breath at altitude brings the high that John knew and sang about so well. My hope is that my children will look back and remember with fondness the paradise that we moved to when they were young, the place where eagles lived in rocky cathedrals, where they were free to shoot at empty pop bottles with their pistols, and where the days are all filled with an easy country charm. One of the greatest advantages to living in the west is that you can almost always see where you are going, even if you don’t always know where you are headed. Here in the mountains I have enjoyed the blessing of listening to God’s casual reply to my many questions, and I can’t see myself living or dying anywhere else. John’s music means that much more to me now, because I can drive through our valley and see his lyrics living all around me.

I moved to this paradise with my very own Darcy Farrow, whose voice truly is as sweet as sugar candy (most of the time). We have been married almost 21 years, pushing through a share of troubles and strife that are ours alone to know. Not long after our courtship began, Elizabeth discovered that I loved and still listened to John Denver. She later confessed that this fact further solidified her belief that I was the one for her. It does not embarrass me to say that she is my personification of Annie’s Song, and that the barely audible, comfortable sigh of contentment heard after the first line is reminiscent of the way I feel when I think of spending forever with her. I fear that should she leave this life before I do, I will be buried with her on that terrible day, because life without her is something in which I have no interest. I don’t have to experience it to know that it’s a hard life living when you’re lonely.

I started listening to John when I was just two feet high, and today I listen to him standing six feet tall. When I was five, my parents took me to see him perform. Mom still says it was the longest I have ever sat totally still, and that she marveled at how fixated I was on John as he sang songs that I had only heard amid the crackle of my father’s turntable. John’s music truly does make pictures, and for me it will always tells stories. Not one of his songs fail to transport me back through time, to moments when life looked more like a long and comfortable drive down a familiar country road than a four-lane highway congested by the heartbreak, responsibilities, and trappings of adult life.

As a child I would listen to John’s rendition of “It Amazes Me” over and over again. As the song climbed higher, louder, and faster, I would drop to all fours and buck across the living room like a wild bronco, much to the delight of my family. I have never ridden a real bronco, but that hasn't kept me free from the occasional bucking. The music to which I live my life has at times built itself into crescendos of wild wondering and untamed circumstance, and I find that I’ve gotten lost on my way, shouting “where can I hide?”

In moments such as those, I sometimes think that maybe that little boy in the sunshine-shouldered shirt turned out to be a little like John Denver after all.

In “Around and Around,” John confessed to hoping that once he was gone, others would think of him in moments when they were happy and smiling, and that the thought of him would comfort them in moments when they were crying.

I do, and it does.

Thanks John.

Bon Vivant

"Man, this woman is going to be your wife forever!" Alex almost shouts, pointing at Elizabeth.

I grin, and look over at my forever-wife. Elizabeth is fanning her denimed butt over the flames of a gas fireplace. She shakes her head in dismissal of our conversation about love, life without passion, and NORAD. The mock dismissal is forgiven when she smiles wide at us.

Us: Alex Dezen, lead singer of The Damnwells, and me, author of "West of Independence," standing together on the back patio of a stranger's house.

"I'm singing in my sleep, driving across Texas with you..."

Surreal doesn't cut it, while epic is just stupid and exhausted.

Comfortable; that's what this is.

Ryan steps through the sliding glass door, a red cup of warmth in one hand, two pieces of pizza in the other. Nazi-hunting-war-corresponding-tour-managing-sidekicking buddy to Alex, Ryan is more than a character. This self professed "bon vivant" carries knowledge and experience on constant offer, and he underlines all of it with a humor-colored highlighter.

"What are we talking-whoa, drop it like it's hot!" Ryan interrupts his own question when he notices Elizabeth waving her tush over the fire.

"You look so good..."

My head feels light, but it isn't the altitude.

To say that this is a moment long in coming would be a lie. I had never bothered to imagine the chance to personally thank Alex for keeping me company on my drive across Texas in 2009, my little brother's ashes resting in the back seat.

Ryan is arguing with Elizabeth; he thinks she has long legs.

Alex has just played a private show for us. Every song had spread a new layer of goosebumps over the tiny crowd. Emotion arced across the room, interrupted only by the banter, praise, and laughter shared in between songs.

And then he sang "Texas."

A sleepy poem about love and distance, put to music made for counting highway mile markers, "Texas" is a song that sneaks up on me and puts a comfortable pressure on my chest. By its end I am miles from home, the one that I love most in the world sleeping in the passenger seat as we drive through the night across the flat, wide, thought-provoking expanse of the southwest.

"I could stay another day with you, stall the winter's pain 'til June..."

The song is as much a part of "West of Independence" as the paper (or pixels) upon which it is printed. It not only journeyed with me across Texas, but across page after page of the writing process as well. As Alex began to play it, I held my phone up to record the moment. A few lyrics in, and I couldn't hold the phone steady; my arm shook and my eyes clouded. As a lump filled my throat, I turned off the phone, choosing to live the moment rather than record it.

And to drive across Texas one more time.

Thanks Alex.