I’m 14 years old. I’ve been playing guitar for a few years, but I was struggling to get better. I played my guitar any chance I could get, but my favorite place to sit and play was up at my family’s camp in the Adirondacks. I used to sit on the concrete porch of the old hunting camp - We called it The Miller Camp, named for the family who originally built the old farmhouse back in the late 1890s. In the summertime that old concrete porch was a nice place to sit outside and play - There would be all kinds of people coming and going, and someone would stop to listen to me play. One of the members of the club, Rick, played guitar too and I used to look forward to seeing him when we would go up. I never knew when he was going to get up so it was always a treat when I saw him. He was one of my early guitar mentors - A few years earlier he had taught me the first song that I really knew, Horse With No Name by America. The song really only feature two easy chords that you could play with just your first two fingers on your left hand. E minor and D6/9/F# - I know the second chord sounds kind of big, but I didn’t even know the name of it at the time. It was just a kind of D chord to me. Anyway, I digress; I played that song so much, Just trying to get the rhythm and inflection right. But this summer when I saw Rick, He taught me a new song - And the first song I ever learned in what is known as drop D tuning. Rick was a big Neil Young fan and he had just released a new Album, “Harvest Moon”. Rick showed me how to play the title song, and after some learning and jamming, I began to play that haunting song. I remember thinking of the time that I’ve never heard anything so beautiful.
I still play that song to this day, And every time I think of Rick. But I also think about everything that I’ve been through in those over 30 years and how much more pertinent the content of that song has become to me. Music that travels with you from boyhood to adulthood has a real special place in the heart. Earlier this evening, I was feeling a bit down and alone. I don’t play my guitar much these days because the neuropathy in my left hand has gotten very bad and it becomes difficult to play sometimes. But I picked up my guitar and I tuned my low E string down to a D and I began to softly play that song. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so alone, and I felt all the years of joy that music had brought me stir inside my old heart. And for a second, I felt like I was sitting on that old porch again - a young man with his whole life in front of him, strumming beautiful chords to a song that a wonderful mentor taught me. I’m so glad my life has been full of these little beautiful moments. And as I stared up at the moon this evening, I realized how lucky I have been in so many ways.
