Death Transformed - the Song of the Star-Gazing Wanderer

In a recorded cassette letter, Mark told of sitting on a high ridge at sunset, writing songs and playing guitar.

A few weeks later, Mark was hit by a drunk driver and died at age seventeen.

The words of the song were found in his room. He called it Stargazing Wanderer.

While the story seems sad or tragic to some, there is also enormous beauty in the larger picture, the higher purpose of Life. It carries a message of the continuity of life beyond death, and that humans are attuned to the ultimate mysteries when they relax and allow their innate true nature to arise.

:::

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.

Finding the Song

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 ridge in the front range foothills of Colorado near Rocky Mountain National Park, 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

Afterword

In the year 2000, the writer changed his life and moved from the southeast corner of America to the northwest.

His search for community led him to Ashland, Oregon.

Through synchronicity, 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 to Gary like sons and brothers.