Sage's Ravine is the third movement of a large work I wrote in 1992 entitled, Four Places on the Appalachian Trail for violin, French horn, cello and piano.

The four places are depicted in the order in which a northern bound thru-hiker would encounter them:

I. Amicalola Falls - a 400-foot cascade in northern Georgia
II. Dragon’s Tooth – an outcropping in Virginia, shaped like a giant canine tooth
III. Sage’s Ravine – a darkly shaded slice on the border of Connecticut and Massachusetts
IV. Katahdin – the northern terminus of the trail in Maine

I have hiked through Sage's Ravine. I didn't encounter any sages there, but I like to fancy that it's a place where sages might be encountered -- New England sages, modern day Emerson’s and Thoreau’s.

What exactly is a sage? What makes someone a sage? What do sages do?

In the words of Odell Shepard, a latter-day New England sage whose writings I admire, a sage "thinks freely -- not as the member of any party, organization, institution, religion, caste, class, nation, or club, not as one having a reputation to gain or support, but simply as one man with his center inside himself, answerable to nothing but the truth ... such thinking as this [is] the hardest work and the finest sport in the world.”

What do they think about, these sages? They ponder the reconciliation of opposites: joy and sorrow, good and evil, the sacred and the profane. They strive to perceive the larger whole that contains those opposites.

From birth we are confronted with opposites: wake and sleep, day and night, hungry and full, mother and father. Later, we devise mental constructs to help us grapple with more complex opposites: young and old, past and future, boy and girl, right and wrong. We cannot unite into a larger whole any of the opposites we encounter in life; we can only try to arrange them into an order that makes some sense.

For Western societies, the reconciliation of opposites is a theological problem. How can an omnipotent, loving God allow the existence of evil? If God does not create evil, then is it self-creating? implying that God is not omnipotent after all?

The believer must simultaneously accept two contradicting ideas: the goodness of God and the existence of Evil. For many people, including a few whom I love, this is impossible. For them, the existence of Evil obviates the existence of God.

They ask, "If God is God, then how can Evil be? How can we thank God when good things happen but exculpate God when bad things happen?"

Theologians posit various responses. But most believers -- I am one -- only shrug and say, "We just do, that's all."

God is good, yet Evil exists. These two opposing assertions create a strain in all of us, believers and non-believers alike. It affects everything, including the way our artists shape their work and the way we respond to their work.

The stress of our inability to reconcile these opposites resonates when we encounter a work of art that succeeds in reconciling opposites into a coherent and pleasing pattern, be it a painting, a play or a musical composition. It seems to me that Western art, when it achieves this, is at its very best. Indeed, it seems to be the principal difference between the relatively few artistic expressions that touch my heart and the many other expressions to which I am indifferent.

To cite the most famous example: think of Mona Lisa's smile emerging from that dreary landscape. There are myriad others: remember how skillfully and satisfyingly Cezanne's greens reconcile his opposing blues and oranges? and the way his forms are depicted simultaneously from differing points of view? those apparently twisted tables, tilting teapots, floating apples and oranges?

Opposites are everywhere in Western music; the works of Bach and Beethoven are replete with them: jerky vs. smooth, energetic vs. plaintive, loud vs. soft, fast vs. slow, major vs. minor, the opposing tonic and dominant keys of a fugue or the sonata-allegro form.

The most salient characteristics of Shakespeare's characters are their ambiguities -- those wise fools, those flawed heroes, those villains who, maddeningly, mouth such good advice -- they are believable precisely because they are contradictory! And we love the Bard for having gifted us with them.

Here at least, we feel, here at last -- if rarely in Life -- we find opposites reconciled and we rejoice in it!.

(Contrariwise, the absence of opposites in a work of art renders it boring. We quickly tire of a flawless hero, a relentlessly villainous villain, a merely foolish fool, a painter who cannot take us beyond a narrow spectrum of form and color, a repetitive pop song with a never-varying beat, a cramped melodic range and the same, tired chords -- boring!)

In Sage's Ravine, I tried to depict sagacity by attempting to reconcile two opposing musics -- the music of sorrow and the music of joy. First comes the sorrowful music -- slow, mournful, in a minor key. Then comes a quietly joyous music, a tune that conjoins elements of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring with the American folksong Shenandoah. The opposites are established, repeated, and finally reconciled in what I hope is a coherent and pleasing pattern.

To hear Sages Ravine, beautifully performed by violinist Cheryl Trace, French hornist Robert Garcia, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba, click on the link above.

You can see a PDF of the score by clicking on the link above.

On December 14, 2012, public radio station WMRA of Harrisonburg, VA broadcast an interview with me about my Four Places on the Appalachian Trail on a program called "The Spark." I want to thank producer Martha Woodroof and host Bob Satterwhite for permission to share this interview with my friends and fans.

To hear the interview, go to this page:
http://www.sowash.com/recordings/vistas.html

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
May 4, 2014

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Dragon’s Tooth! That’s the name of a dramatic upthrust of rock, atop a remote mountain ridge in southwestern Virginia. Its topmost tip offers a 360-degree view, one of very few on the 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail.

You don’t casually stroll up there for a look-see. Dragon’s Tooth is very hard to get to, a long, steep, upward clamber, especially difficult when carrying, as I did, a 45-pound backpack full of gear and food for an eight-day, 80-mile hike. I made that hike with a group of friends when I was in my mid-thirties, trim and fit. Even so, it just about did me in. That 80-mile hike was the most physically challenging thing I’ve done.

Dragon’s Tooth is all about energy. Energy to get up there. And the immense energy of the Dragon, asleep under the mountain, his one, huge, ruthless tooth protruding. When he awakes, Lord help us!

The music I wrote about the place has a lot of energy, too. It’s the second movement of my Suite for violin, French horn, cello and piano, Four Places on the Appalachian Trail.

It’s one of the oldest myths of Western Civilization: a dragon guarding a great prize, be it a beautiful princess or a treasure of gems, jewelry and gold. It’s a static situation; the energy is kinetic. What’s needed is a hero to slay the dragon, fructify the princess and/or redistribute the hoard. Sure enough, a hero always arrives, sooner or later.

As with all great myths, it’s happening right now in the most intimate of human relations as well as the most public.

Most likely, you know or have known instances of it. I have. I was once the close friend of a beautiful, childless princess/treasure/woman whose dragon/husband was selfish, sarcastic and neglectful. I’m not in the business of rescuing princesses, but it wasn’t long before a suitable hero came along. He rescued the princess and the two of them have been together now for about fifteen years. The relationship has been, so I hear, fruitful and rewarding for both of them.

The Dragon myth speaks to public life as well. It offers a dark warning to The One Percent. Sooner or later, your hoarded treasure will be forcibly released from your grasp. Your gated communities will not avail you. The only question is whether your wealth will be redistributed peacefully (by means of taxation) or violently (by means of riots, revolution, the guillotine). It's the tax or the ax. One or the other. Only a matter of time. Me, I'd advocate the peaceful means, but it’s not up to me to decide! Who listens to a composer’s thoughts on such matters? It’s just as well. I don't want the responsibility.

You’ll hear evocations of the Dragon-Princess/Treasure-Hero myth in this music … the fierce energy of the dragon, the allure of the princess/treasure, the valor of the hero, the inexorability of Fate.

To hear “Dragon’s Tooth,” beautifully performed by violinist Cheryl Trace, French hornist Robert Garcia, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
April 17, 2016

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At this moment, while I’m sitting here, writing, and you’re sitting there, reading, some two thousand backpackers are in the first days and weeks of what they hope will be a ’thru-hike’ of the fabled Appalachian Trail. Early spring is when hikers head north from the southern terminus of the trail, in Georgia’s Amicalola Falls State Park.

Their friends or families drive them there, spend one last day together, take in the sights of the park; many dine and sleep in the park’s lodge. Next morning, they see their loved ones off with a good luck wish, a last embrace, a wave of farewell.

I imagine the feelings of the soon-to-be hiker, family and friends, gathered at the foot of Amicalola Falls, gazing upward at the tallest cascade in southeastern America, more than four times higher than Niagara. The hiker, perhaps a young son or daughter, a middle-aged adventurer or a newly retired grandpa or grandma, is excited, happy, eager to begin the trek they’ve long planned and dreamed. The well-wishers are wistful and a little anxious, especially if they are parents. How well I know that feeling.

I tried to express this range of feelings in “Amicalola Falls," the opening movement of my suite for French horn, violin, cello and piano entitled, Four Places on the Appalachian Trail.

I’ve been to Amicalola Falls, scrambled up the ever-wet, slippery stairs, surrendered my eyes to the fascination of the plunging cascades. “There’s three things you never get tired of watching,” a wise friend once said. “A flickering flame, water in motion and a baby’s face."

What’s more, I've heard the A.T.’s ‘clarion call of adventure.’ Shortly, you’ll hear it, too; there are lots of "horn calls" in the opening movement. I never heard it more clearly than at Amicalola Falls where so many would-be thru-hikers set out with high hopes of reaching Katahdin, the trail’s northern terminus, 2100 miles distant, way up in Maine.

Hiking the entire A.T. was a dream I once cherished; now I know I never will. "It’s all good,” as young people say. I've hiked various segments of the trail in GA, NC, VA, CT, MA and VT, about 250 miles in all. I served as a trail-worker for two ten-day stints at Konnarock, the A.T. volunteer basecamp in Virginia. I produced a CD, “Music for the Appalachian Trail,” donating a portion of the profits to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the group that oversees and protects the trail. And I wrote this suite.

Writing the suite took about as long as a thru-hike — four months — and I fancied, as I was writing it, that I was making the journey, vicariously. The four places are depicted in the order thru-hikers encounter them: Amicalola Falls in GA, where the trail begins, the rock outcropping named 'Dragon’s Tooth' in VA, Sage’s Ravine on the border of CT and MA and finally, the goal from the start, Katahdin.

Grand vistas are suggested often in this music, the big views the hiker comes upon, a relief from the long tunnels of green. I also included many quieter, more intimate, delicate passages, to express those moments when a hiker stops to gaze in wonder at the saffron-colored lichen on the rocks, a glistening spider's web or fern fronds dripping dew in the buttery morning light.

The musical motive representing Katahdin is heard in the opening bar of the first movement; only it's sort of upside down and backwards. To my way of thinking, it makes sense that the southern end of the trail and the beginning of the suite would consist of the same notes that will be heard in a reverse or retro form at the end of the piece, when the music depicts the northern end of the trail.

Further, to emphacize the opposite ends of the trail and the piece, the waterfall is evoked in descending, cascading figures, while the Katahdin motive, when it finally emerges at the beginning of the last movement, is a jagged, rising figure . But the two musical gestures are, in fact, the same — the trail is perceived from opposite termini and from two places in between.

Listen for the 'moonlight' section in the first movement, in a rapid 5/4 time, beginning at 2:28. It has a floating, almost meter-less character, a contrast to the rugged, rocky, four-square music on either side of it.

To hear “Amicalola Falls” from Four Places on the Appalachian Trail played by violinist Cheryl Trace, French hornist Robert Garcia, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
March 26, 2017

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[The Dragon Myth is] Perseus rescuing Andromeda from the sea serpent. It’s Bilbo burglarizing the dragon’s trove. It’s Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” when the queen turns into a dragon. It’s Han Solo freeing Princess Leia from the clutches of Darth Vader. The tale has been told since time immemorial.

As with all great myths, it’s unfolding right now in the most public of our doings as well as the most private...

The wealthy, dimly conscious of the situation, always extract a promise from the powerful: the wealth will be guarded -- ‘protected’ from ‘taxes on the rich’ and inheritance taxes.

“Now as then [in 1936] the profound inequities of American life are the result of laws written at the behest of the wealthy.”
-- from yesterday’s column by the NYTimes editorial board.

‘Twas ever thus. Cleverly dodging taxation, the rich unknowingly hasten the day when their wealth will be taken from them by means a good deal more unpleasant than paying taxes.

When Alexander the Great marched east, his armies came upon temples filled with gold. For twenty centuries, the treasure had slept there, sterile, unspent, guarded by priests and soldiers. Alex killed ‘em all and his men got the money. They spent it on wine and women. The women and the winesellers spent it, in turn, to feed and clothe their families, fix the roof and install cable tv.

Oh, but that was then and this is now. Can’t happen here? It happens daily as taxes are paid and thieves (white collar and otherwise) break in, figuratively or literally, one way or another.

The tale spells it out: if you have money, spend it, give it away, get rid of it. If you don’t, it will be taken from you. It’s only a matter of how and when.

Moral: Don’t be a dragon...

To hear “Dragon’s Tooth,” beautifully performed by violinist Cheryl Trace, French hornist Robert Garcia, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

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“Moby Dick” has to be a long, thick, heavy book. It’s about a whale.

Today’s email has to be oversized, too. It’s about mountains.

Growing up in the Midwest, I had no conception of mountains.

I was seventeen years old when I first set eyes on the Rockies. I arrived in Ft. Collins, Colorado, to attend a conclave of Explorer Scouts from all over the country. I was met at the airport by the organizers of the event who shuttled me to the campus of Colorado State University. As we rolled along, I looked out the window of the van and there they were, the Rockies.

I stared and stared.

When we met up with a student guide, assigned to showing us around the campus, I remarked, “I’d like to hike over to those mountains some afternoon.” He gave me a look. “How far away do you think those mountains are?” I could tell by the tone of his voice that they were further away than I had imagined, so I doubled the distance I had been about to posit. “Oh, about a dozen miles, give or take.” He laughed. “Those mountains are seventy-five miles away!”

I could hardly believe it. They were as far away from Ft. Collins as Cleveland was from Mansfield, Ohio, where I had grown up. It was as if I could stand on the courthouse square in downtown Mansfield and view Cleveland’s Terminal Tower, seventy five miles away.

I was, and have remained, amazed by and drawn to mountains.

Sheltering in place for who-knows-how-long, I won’t be in the proximity of mountains anytime soon though I often think about them. There’s a little something I do several times a day that keeps me in touch. I recommend it to you: look at the webcam images for Glacier National Park.

You will see ‘still’ shots, updated every quarter hour. You can watch the hourly changes of the light and the weather throughout a day, a month or a season. I watch the snow deepen as Winter comes in and I watch it retreat with the greening of Spring.

To view what’s happening right now in front of the Glacier webcams, go to:

https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm

‘Bookmark it,’ as we internet adepts say, so that you can return easily and often.

Be sure to ‘scroll down’ (another pixel of techno-jargon) to see the views atop Apgar Mountain and Logan Pass, the topmost stretch of the celebrated Going-to-the-Sun Highway. The pass has only just opened, after the road was finally cleared of snow. Spring comes very late to Glacier.

And here’s another way to visit a vista vicariously …

Listen to “Katahdin,” the final movement from my 1992 suite for French horn, violin, cello and piano entitled, “Four Places on the Appalachian Trail.”

I tried to find musical gestures that would evoke my feelings about Katahdin, “The Greatest Mountain.”

Mind you, I’ve never climbed it and, having had both knees replaced and finding myself short of breath after climbing a mere flight of steps, I know I never will.

Ten years ago, Jo and I climbed Old Rag in our beloved Shenandoah National Park. It just about did us in. And Old Rag ain’t nothin’, a geological pimple compared to Katahdin. Our stamina has not improved since. Some things slip beyond one’s reach. Many. Most. It’s “all good,” as young people say. Be at peace and enjoy thinking about them. For me, Katahdin emblematizes -- beautifully and nobly! -- The Unattainable.

Grand vistas are suggested in this music, the magnificent overlooks a hiker comes upon. But I also included quieter, more intimate passages, to express those moments when a hiker is stopped in his tracks by saffron-colored lichen on the rocks, a salamander crossing the trail, a dew-bedizened spider's web or a host of ferns, fragile yet strong, their fronded wealth a-gleam in the buttery, slanting morning light.

I’ve seen these things, up close, hiking on the A.T. and in national parks, but I have viewed Katahdin only from afar. Accordingly, I tried to present Katahdin as a distant ideal and, simultaneously, as “the rough and rugged rock” round which the proverbial "ragged rascals ran.”

The music is meant to sound steep, rocky and harsh at times. Parts of it have a weight and solidity that reminds me of bus-sized boulders. Not boulders tumbling in an avalanche; I mean boulders just sitting there, “active” in their unique, inert way of boulders.

“From stones and poets you may know,
Nothing more active is than that which least seems so.”

I think you’ll find moments of beauty and reverence in this music. The music reconciles those opposites -- harshness and beauty -- the way mountains do.

To hear an impassioned and rambunctious performance of “Katahdin” by violinist Cheryl Trace, French hornist Robert Garcia, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

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Suppose I asked you: “What music expresses joy?”

After a quick dip into your memory, you’d likely answer: Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” and / or Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”

Those two tunes express very particular kinds of joy.

Beethoven’s tune, which is -- have you noticed? -- similar to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” feels so simple and inevitable that almost anyone can sing it or recognize it. Rightly so, because the joy it expresses arises from a realization of shared humanity, that we are all brothers and sisters, even those long dead or as yet unborn. It’s the joy we feel when we know ourselves to be a part of all that is good about human beings.

Bach’s tune very specifically rejoices in the joy of knowing the incarnate God: sweet, gentle, loving and forgiving Jesus. This is plainly heard in the tune itself, even as the lyrics provide the verbal assurance.

Memory shapes composing, too. When I posed myself the challenge of creating a joyful tune, I pondered those two masterworks. Supreme as they are, neither addressed the particular kind of joy I had in mind. I wanted to express a joy separate from egalitarianism or theology, the joy of feeling close to Nature when she is at her most beautiful.

How does a composer come to find himself in need of such a tune?

I needed a tune for Joy and a tune for Sorrow and I needed to reconcile the two, the way a sage does, -- sagaciously! -- as a way of summoning “Sage’s Ravine,” a section of the Appalachian Trail on the border of Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Sage's Ravine is the third movement of a large work I wrote in 1992 titled Four Places on the Appalachian Trail for violin, French horn, cello and piano.

Although I didn't encounter any sages when I hiked through Sage's Ravine in 1982, I like to fancy that it's a place where sages might be encountered -- New England sages, modern day Emersons and Thoreaus.

What is a sage?

In the words of Odell Shepard, a latter-day New England sage I admire, a sage is someone who …

"thinks freely -- not as the member of any party, organization, institution, religion, caste, class, nation, or club, not as one having a reputation to gain or support, but simply as one man with his center inside himself, answerable to nothing but the truth.”

Sages reconcile opposites: joy and sorrow, good and evil, the sacred and the profane. They perceive the larger whole behind and beyond all opposites. They employ their perception to arrange opposites in a way that makes sense, that feels right, satisfying our need for order.

For Western societies, the reconciliation of opposites is the essential theological problem. How can an omnipotent, loving God allow the existence of evil? If God does not create evil, then is it self-creating? Then is God not omnipotent after all?

The believer must simultaneously accept two contradicting ideas: the goodness of God and the existence of Evil. For many people, including a two or three I love, this is impossible. For them, Evil obviates the existence of God.

They ask, "If God is good, then how can Evil be? How can we thank God when good things happen yet exculpate God when bad things happen?"

Theologians posit various responses. I have not studied the subject. It’s above my pay grade. Like most believers -- I am one -- I shrug and say, "We just do, that's all."

God is good, yet Evil exists. These two opposing assertions create a strain in all who inherit Western civilization, believers and non-believers alike. It affects everything, perhaps especially the ways our artists shape their work and the way we respond to their works. I am not a theologian but I am an artist.

The stress of our inability to reconcile these opposites informs our encounters with works of art that succeed in reconciling opposites. We are pleased by the coherence and pleasing patterns of such an art object, be it a painting, a play, a poem, a novel or a musical composition.

It seems to me that Western art, when it achieves such a reconciliation, is at its very best. Indeed, it seems to be the principal difference between the expressions that touch my heart and expressions which leave me feeling indifferent.

The most famous example is Mona Lisa's smile emerging from that dreary landscape. There are myriad others: remember how satisfyingly Cezanne's greens reconcile his opposing blues and oranges? and the way his forms are depicted simultaneously from differing points of view? His apparently twisting tables and tilting teapots do the work of reconciling, before our very eyes.

Opposites are everywhere in Western music; the works of Bach and Beethoven are replete with musical opposites: high-low, loud-soft, fast-slow, jerky-smooth, major-minor, the opposing tonic and dominant keys of a fugue or the first and second themes of the sonata-allegro form.

The most salient characteristics of Shakespeare's characters are their ambiguities -- those wise fools, those flawed heroes, those villains who, maddeningly, mouth such good advice -- we love the Bard for having gifted us with them, each a reconciliation of opposites. Think of Hamlet, Feste or Iago.

Here, in the presence of the greatest art we find, at least and at last -- if rarely in Life -- opposites reconciled. In that reconciliation we find delight.

(Contrariwise, we are quickly bored by the absence of opposites in a failed work of art. How quickly we tire of a flawless hero, a relentlessly evil villain, a merely foolish fool, a painter who cannot take us beyond a narrow spectrum of form and color, a repetitive pop song with a never-varying beat, a cramped melodic range and hackneyed chords -- boring!)

Thus, in writing Sage's Ravine, I tried to depict sagacity by attempting to reconcile two opposing musical metaphors -- the music of sorrow and the music of joy.

The movement begins with the music of Sorrow -- slow, mournful, in the key of D minor.

Then comes -- at 1:35 in the recording, measure 38 in the score -- the quiet of joy we find in Nature. It is scored in D major, the key of Beethoven’s Ode, and cast in 9/8, the meter of Bach’s Jesu.

Wanting to evoke the joy of our encounters with Nature at her most beautiful, I conceived a tune that has the same first nine pitches as the American folksong Shenandoah (excluding the pick-up pitch). I changed only the durations of the notes. That folksong has powerful associations for me, remembering hikes and happy times in the Shenandoah National Park, and our daughter, whose name is Shenandoah.

I wish I could sit down at a piano with you beside me to demonstrate this transformation. I doubt my verbal description above will be clear to all of you. You may listen for “Shenandoah” and not recognize it because the durations are so different. That’s OK. Very few listeners, hearing my tune, would perceive its origin in the folksong. The allusion is there but it will be perceived semi-consciously, tapping into dim memories of “Shenandoah” as well as the Bach and the Beethoven tunes “My” tune is an amalgamation of all three.

The opposites -- sorrow and joy -- are established, repeated, developed in the movement and finally reconciled in what I hope is a coherent and pleasing pattern. See what you think.

To hear Sages Ravine, beautifully performed by violinist Cheryl Trace, French hornist Robert Garcia, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba, click on the link above.

You can see a PDF of the score by clicking on the link above.

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At this moment, while I’m sitting here, writing, and you’re sitting there, reading, 2000+ backpackers are in the first days of what they hope will be a ’thru-hike’ of the fabled Appalachian Trail. They begin the trek at the southern terminus of the trail, in Georgia’s Amicalola Falls State Park.

Their friends or families drive them there, spend one last day together, take in the sights of the park, dine and sleep in the park’s lodge. Next morning, they see their loved ones off with a good luck wish, one last embrace, a wave of farewell.

Imagine the feelings of the soon-to-be hiker, family and friends, gathered at the foot of Amicalola Falls, gazing upward at the tallest cascade in southeastern America, more than four times higher than Niagara. The hiker, perhaps a young son or daughter, a middle-aged adventurer or a newly retired grandpa or grandma, having heard ‘the horn call of the mountains,’ is responsive, excited, happy, eager to begin. The well-wishers are wistful and a little anxious, especially if they are the hiker’s parents. How well I know that feeling.

Along with a musical depiction of cascading water, I tried to express these feelings in “Amicalola Falls," the opening movement of my suite for French horn, violin, cello and piano titled, Four Places on the Appalachian Trail.

I’ve been to Amicalola Falls, scrambled up the ever-wet, slippery stairs, surrendered my eyes to the hypnosis of the plunging cascades.

“Three things we never tire of watching,” a wise friend once told me: “A flickering flame, water in motion and a baby’s face."

Hiking the entire A.T. was a dream I once cherished. I heard the call and tried to give it expression in the horn calls you’ll hear in this movement.

Now I know I never will. "It’s all good,” as young people say. I’m content to have hiked segments of the trail in GA, NC, VA, CT, MA and VT, about 250 miles in all. I don’t need to hike the whole trail. I’ve done my part. I served as a trail-worker for two ten-day stints at Konnarock, the A.T. volunteer basecamp in Virginia. I produced a CD, “Music for the Appalachian Trail,” donating a portion of the profits to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the group that oversees and protects the trail. And I wrote this suite.

Writing the suite took about as long as a thru-hike — four months — and I fancied, as I was writing it, that I was making the journey, vicariously. The four places are depicted in the order a north-bound thru-hiker would encounter them:

I. Amicalola Falls in GA,
II. the rock outcropping named Dragon’s Tooth in VA,
III. Sage’s Ravine on the border of CT and MA,
IV. the northern terminus, Katahdin, meaning “Great Mountain” in the Penobscot tongue

Grand vistas are suggested often in this music, the magnificent overlooks the hiker comes upon, a relief from the long tunnels of green. The first one is heard at 1:44.

There are also quieter, more intimate, delicate passages, to express those moments when a hiker stops to gaze in wonder at saffron-tinted lichen, a glistening spider's web or fern fronds dripping dew in the buttery morning light.

The musical motive which eventually evokes Katahdin is heard in the opening bar of the first movement, upside down and backwards. To me, it makes sense that the southern end of the trail and the beginning of the suite would consist of the same notes that will be heard in reverse and right side up at the end of the piece when the music depicts the northern end of the trail. (I’ll share the “Katahdin” movement some other time.)

To emphasize the opposite ends of the trail and the piece, the waterfall is evoked in descending, cascading figures, while the Katahdin motive, when it finally emerges at the beginning of the last movement, is a jagged, rising figure.

Listen, too, for the 'moonlight' section in the first movement, in a rapid 5/4 time, beginning at 2:28. It has a floating quality, a contrast to the rugged, rocky, four-square music on either side of it.

To hear “Amicalola Falls” from Four Places on the Appalachian Trail played by violinist Cheryl Trace, French hornist Robert Garcia, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

On our way to Algonquin Provincial Park, a twelve-hour drive from north central Ohio, our busload of Scouts and adult volunteers would pull up at a restaurant for lunch. When the waitress would ask the leader of our expedition, my late friend Dick Ferrell, “How do you take your coffee, hon?” his invariable reply would be, “Hot as hell and black as death!” It was fun to watch her reaction: eyebrows shooting up and then a smile. We would laugh, the waitress along with the rest of us.

When I joined Scouts in 1961, Dick was my patrol leader and all our lives I looked up to him. As adults we were volunteer Scout leaders and led two 8-day canoe trips for the older boys and other adult volunteers into the wilds of Algonquin. We saw moose, bears, mink, loons and ducks. At night, we heard the wolves howling, dozens of them, all around us, some near, some far, a display of aural fireworks that I will always remember.

Even after I no longer volunteered as a regular leader, Dick would sometimes hornswoggle me into coming along with the troop for a weekend campout in the Ohio woodlands around Mansfield. One Friday, right after work, I hurriedly tossed a few things into my car and arrived at the camp in time for supper but less than prepared. “Be prepared” is the Boy Scout motto. Not me, not that time.

The next morning I borrowed Dick’s toothpaste and brushed my teeth with my forefinger. I borrowed his hand soap for the shower. Afterwards, having no towel, I spotted his towel hanging out to dry from a nearby tree and I simply used it, without asking. He spotted me in the act and was greatly amused. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked. I had my reply ready. I said, “I am instructing you in the importance of SHARING!”

He ‘razzed’ me about for this trespass many times, recounting the incident when we were swapping tales around the campfire.

He was two years older than I and he died two years ago. So now I’ve lived longer than he did, a strange thought. This Tuesday I’ll turn 74 and I can hardly believe it despite feeling the effects of aging almost at every turn.

Like everyone my age, I attend funerals more often than weddings. People pass on. Friends but famous people, too. I was taken aback to learn that Sam Elliott has passed on. I always liked him on screen and I thought of him as a friend of sorts though, of course, I never met the man. I will miss him, his gravely voice, his bemused expression, the twinkle in his eye. He reminded me of Dick Ferrell.

Such passings remind us that we too will make that transition.

Because he had asked me, I gave the eulogy at Dick’s memorial. He said he wanted me to tell a lot of stories about him and our times together. I delivered. I ended my remembrance of him an imagined encounter that I’d like to share, again, with you.

I said something like this.

“One of these days I’m going to be following after Dick, walking the path that leads to wherever he went. When I think of that, I have something like a vision. I imagine that I am walking through a green forest. It’s a warm summer day. The air is fresh and there is a light breeze. Through the trees ahead I see the glimmer of a lake and when I reach the shore, there’s Dick, about 35 years old, sitting in a canoe.
“He smiles and waves. ”Come on, Sodie, hop in and off we go!”
“But Dick, I don’t have anything along, no sleeping bag, no therma-rest pad, no food, not even a towel or a toothbrush!”
“Hey, I’ve got everything already packed up for you,” he says, pointing to one of two bulging backpacks in the center of the canoe. “Plus paddles, life jackets, fishing poles, everything! So what are you waiting for? Hop in! Hop in!”
I pause for a moment and look out across the lake. A beautiful scene. Gleaming waters, the pines crowding close to the shore, cumulus nimbus clouds above, a “V” of Canada geese flying high and honking like taxis.
I step carefully into the canoe, taking my position in the bow. Dick always insisted on being in the stern so that he could steer and go where he wanted to go.
We shove off and head out onto the lake, prepared for whatever adventures the days ahead may bring.

My best “adventure” music is in my suite “Four Places on the Appalachian Trail” and the final movement, “Katahdin,” is the closest the trail gets to Canada. The suite is on my CD “Vistas,” which Dick told me was his favorite among all my CDs. When he told me that, I felt happy. I always wanted my patrol leader to be proud of me.

To hear an impassioned and rambunctious performance of “Katahdin” by violinist Cheryl Trace, French hornist Robert Garcia, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

I'd love to know what you think about this music; reply if you're inclined. But please don't feel that you are expected to reply. I'm just glad to share my work in this way.

As always, feel free to forward this message to friends who might enjoy it.
Anyone can be on my little list of recipients for these mpFrees (as I call these musical emails). To sign up, people can email me at rick@sowash.com, sending just one word: "Yes." I'll know what it means.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Jan. 7, 2024

P.S. As you know, I never request any fees for my music. I give away the PDFs and mp3s of my scores, free of charge, to anyone who is curious to discover what I’ve done and what I am doing with my creative energy.

When any money does come my way, I use it to make yet more recordings of my new works, to be shared in these emails and sent to radio stations.

If you want to be a part of that, don’t send me a check. The best way would be for you to buy (and read) my new book “How Music Means.”

Cost: $25 for the physical book, $9.95 for the Kindle.

That puts a little money in my pocket to be passed along in turn to the musicians and engineers involved in recording the music.