Once Upon A Time

 

          One time there was a music promoter. He was not great. Nor was he well known. For the record, his name was Mitchell Kernwald. He was often called M.K., and he liked it that way. Crisp and direct, he thought.

            He loved the music. But he was not a musician. It was all magic to him. A magic which he served as he could and still made enough for a man to live on.
            He was not a joyful man. Not when we first meet him, but he was dedicated. It’s funny/odd when a person stops to think of the literal meaning of dedicated. It doesn’t just mean he spent most of his time dealing with the music, it means set apart or consecrated to a principle or purpose nowadays, or in his case, to the music. At one time it would have meant kept separate for service to a deity.
            He had some business to conduct in a smallish western city, near the coast of a body of water known as a sound. This city was rather near a mountain range. Now, M.K. was from southern California and he was curious about the great forests of the northwestern states. He had never seen them in person. A desire to visit the mighty forest was born in his heart, as he stood in a third story hotel window which faced eastward, toward the mountains and the sunrise. In fact, it rose in his heart like a sort of sunrise.
            Mitchell had flown into the local small airport, a great convenience actually. Then he had taken a cab down to Enterprise and rented a smallish sedan. So, he had wheels at his command. It was a completely standard silver thing.
            The next day was a Sunday. Spring was on the way, and he didn’t feel like flying home yet. No one waited there for him. Not even a cat. He was free to come and go as he wished, if  he wished.
            Just as the sun was rising the next morning, he left his things in the hotel room and went downstairs and out of the lobby to find his ride on the main street through the middle of town. It was odd to him that they didn’t have their own parking lot, but maybe they weren’t that busy.
            He didn’t take a map, but he had his iPhone if he needed help. He felt like just going uphill and seeing what was there.
            There was a two lane highway heading straight east, into the light. He went that way. There wasn’t a lot of traffic. At last, there was a smaller paved road heading northeast. That one looked inviting, so he turned up there. He slowed to about thirty mph and opened the window on the driver’s side just to smell the damp woodsy air.
            Eventually he came to a dirt road on the left side of the pavement. It was a forest road. One of those travel at your own risk unposted things. He made that left hand turn.
            He was on Green Mountain, though he didn’t know it. It was a pretty steep climb, but he kept at it until he found a wide spot where he could park out of the way.
            It was midmorning. The temperature in the lower forties felt cold to his California skin, but he had worn his jacket, so he was OK. There were birds, birds that he couldn’t identify. It was early in the year, but there were some insects, sleepy insects. No flowers yet, so no bees. He wondered if there were bears about. Or deer, or cougars.
            He walked uphill, into the massive Douglas firs. He had flown over Oregon and Northern California, so he had seen the forests from the air, but he had never walked among trees like this. They created their own atmosphere. Among the trunks and underbrush there was a hush almost like being indoors in a cathedral or some other huge body of enclosed air.
            The further he climbed the more mythical the place became. He forgot the rental car, he forgot why he was on this coast, he forgot his prosaic home apartment in hot dry California. He struggled to go higher. At last he was tired and looked about for a place to sit for a rest.
            Ah, there was a fallen tree. Some terrific storm must have taken it over. The root ball pulled up a great chunk of forest earth. So he sat next to the lower end and just looked around himself.
            A very large raven landed on the fallen tree and looked him over, then took off again. He had never been so near a raven before and he was quite enchanted.
            He heard singing! But what singing! It almost stood his hair on end, so unearthly it sounded, but beautifully.      
            Mitchell Kernwald wept. He wept out his barren broken heart. He wept for the beauty of the singing, like some crashing choir of angels. It was both thunder and high sweetness.
            He began to sing with the voices he heard. How could he, not knowing the words they sang? Well, that is just one of the mysteries of this story.
            A Forest Man saw him sitting there. The man he saw was slight, nearly six feet tall, tanned with black hair and in his forties. He was dressed all in fashionable informal clothing, browns and blues and he wore New Balance runners. His eyes were closed, and he was singing.
            Of course, we know who it was who saw him there.
            Ralph sat down beside Mitchell and just waited. While he waited he began to sing also, in his voice so deep that it sounds like a force of nature.
            At last the chorus faded out and M.K. opened his eyes and beheld Ralph sitting beside him. He was delighted. He began laughing, it was so marvelous to see such a being sitting right beside himself.
            “Who was singing?” said Mitchell.
            “Well, me, and my family, and the others scattered throughout the forest,” said Ralph, “we sing together sometimes. I think it was for you this time.
            “It was a song for the healing of broken hearts,” continued Ralph.
            “How can I thank you,” asked our music promoter quite seriously, because he felt reborn.
            “Well, as they used to like to say, just go on your way rejoicing, and being thankful,” said Ralph. “By the way, what’s your name? I find that if I keep a name in mind, it helps that person somehow.”
            So, they made their introductions to each other. Ralph went to join his family somewhere out among the trees. Mitchell walked back out of the deep forest and found his rental car. Then he drove it slowly back into the smallish city, to rejoin his life.
            And he did live happily ever after.