I ran across this YouTube clip below:
The moment it started playing and showed those pictures of the mountains, it gave me a feeling and reminded me of how desperately in love I was with our mountain wilderness when I was a little boy.
I had two loves when I was a little boy. The first one was music. I had a little harmonica from the time I was 4 or 5 years old, and I'd play it like an organ, just playing chords, and changing the tone with the shape of my mouth. When I was 6, and learning to read in school, I noticed that I recognized both songs in the little "booklet" that came with it. Each word had a number above it and an arrow up or down.
With the help of one of my sisters, I discovered that the numbers matched the ones on my harmonica, and that an arrow down meant "blow" while an arrow up meant "suck". So, I played my first two songs on the harmonica. Then I started trying to play other songs that I knew, and pretty soon I was playing anything I knew. Of course, I quickly realized that some songs needed flats or sharps and my little solo-tuned Marine Band Hohner couldn't do that, so I was out of luck on those. Laura's Theme from Dr. Shivago was just plain impossible to play, and no amount of improvisation would make it work.
I remember wanting to play guitar so bad that it almost hurt. When I was 7, at Christmas, my parents gave me and my little sister both plastic, toy guitars. They had 6 strings, keys to tune them, and frets. My sister's looked like a small acoustic, mine looked like a bright red electric guitar. So for several months I strummed it open, and pretended that I was the Beatles or the Monkeys. Then, a few months in, my oldest brother (7 years older than me - he would have been a teenager) took my sister's guitar and the little booklet that came with it, and played a song. I was incensed! I was the guitarist! Me!
So, I found my older sister who had helped me with the harmonica and she helped interpret how to use the chord charts. Again, I played the two songs in my little booklet, then launched into anything I knew. I was either just 8 years old or about to turn 8. I can't recall exactly.
I played everything that I heard and loved. My only limitation was figuring out the words. No Internet. I had to hear the song on the radio and hope it came through clear enough for me to guess the correct words. Or, sometimes I wanted to play it so bad I'd make up words that sounded close enough. I was 8, poetic license for an 8 year old comes easy.
My favourite music genres were folk, (Peter, Paul & Mary, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, and others), rock (Beatles, Monkeys, Badfinger, Beach Boys, Rolling Stones), and gospel. Interesting mix, but there you have it.
At 9 years old, my best friend and I formed a "rock band" to play songs, mostly Beatles.
Now we come to my second love as a child.
Somewhere around the time I was 10 years old, I joined a wolf cub pack. My family was big into scouting, so that was not surprising, but I went on camps and discovered the outdoors. My first camp was at a cabin on Mount Seymour. My second camp was in Garibaldi Park, but the part that's now called Golden Ears Provincial Park (they split it in two). I fell in love with the outdoors.
At about the same time, I discovered John Denver, with much of his music having an outdoor theme. Somehow, his music resonated with my love of the outdoors, so I began to learn my favourite John Denver songs. When I was 12, my dad bought a John Denver 8-track tape, which we played in the car and at home, so for once I could hear the songs enough to get all the words right!
At that time, we moved to the town of Mission, leaving all my Burnaby friends behind. We lived on the massive hillside of the Fraser River valley, so to ride a bike, you had to do really nasty hills. I was devastated at first, but soon got really strong legs. I was the only scout registered in the district of Mission for about a year and a half. So, I'd get my dad to drop me off at some starting point, and I'd hike solo in the mountains, or I'd ride my bike up somewhere. I hiked the mountains and hills, waded barefoot in the creeks, swamps and swam in the lakes and bigger creek pools all around Mission. It was a perfect existence for a young teenage boy.
And John Denver's music seemed to express perfectly how I felt about the wonderful, wild, mountainous world I got to enjoy as my playground!
So, when I found and played the video embedded at the top of this post, there were some very strong memories and feelings that came back to me. It's that love for God's creation that I desire to share with others through music and through scouting.
I hope that some of you get a sense of that wonder and Joy, as you listen to John Denver's Windsong!
