My name is Roger Bobo, I was a musician in a symphony orchestra in the USA for most of my life and now at age 67 I am a conductor and a teacher in Japan. I am not a religious man although in my agnosticism I have to admit I am a searcher. Further, I have to say I have no history of occultism, extra sensory perception or communication with the dead, etc. I take an interest in such things but nothing much deeper that enjoying the Harry Potter books. I am aware that for some reason those who practice the occult arts are attracted to me and I do sometimes find them fascinating; perhaps in the occult as in religion, I should also call myself a searcher. But as in religion it's not the answers that I feel are important, it's the process of the search that makes my life richer.
On Valentine's Day 1971 I lost my three and a half year old son Jan, who I loved dearly; I still miss him and I will miss him until the day I die. After his death through my years of searching there is something truly amazing I would like to share with anyone who might be interested. In my skepticism regarding the occult I've paid little attention to what people call miracles or magic but through this period of searching on three occasions I encountered something that requires I must pay attention and I feel it needs to be told.
When I was a boy of five, six and seven years old, my family would all get into the dark blue 1938 Plymouth four door sedan and drive the three hundred fifty mile eight hour trip north to June Lake in central California not far from the Nevada border. From that very first trip in 1943 my world started opening and expanding far beyond the horizon seen my home in Eagle Rock, a middle class suburban part of Los Angeles. For a young boy of five, June Lake and its surrounding area with it's rich geological history and amazing natural beauty was a truly magical place. The ancient volcanoes, the beautiful lakes, the animals, the mountains and the smell of the forest, were all enhanced by a togetherness of my family, my mother, father and my two sisters, Martha and Peggy. There were the day trips to a place that had huge cracks in the ground caused by ancient earthquakes that men climbed down in to and disappeared in the deep dark shadows, mountains of lava and obsidian, views from the rims of long inactive volcanoes that were now filled with lakes of vivid green water, and there was the travertine rock mine with red and white stones that looked like strips of bacon in a mysterious place where nothing grew and stories echoed of secret sacred Indian grounds.
And there was the fireplace in the cabin where the family would sit and talk into the night about things I did and did not understand. One year there was talk about a powerful bomb that America dropped in a city in Japan called Hiroshima and that the war might end soon; it's strange to think that sixty years later I would be working and living in that city. There was fishing with my father when I caught fish and he didn't. And there were the walks with my father into the mountains, those mountains above June Lake that are as magical today as they were then.
Those hikes into the mountains with my father were monumental in my life and I think perhaps they were monumental in his too. We would get up before sunrise, walk down the road to two giant boulders, one was balanced on the other, that's where we would turn and find the trail that went up the mountain.
It was just starting to get light and as we ascended the ground was covered with a carpet of small pinecones; they were so perfect and so beautiful and as I filled my pockets with them to take home my dad told me to save room for other beautiful things we would see on the way. He also said that the most beautiful thing of all would be the sunrise, which would happen in just a few minutes. Not knowing what to expect I waited as we walked and soon it happened, first the sky started to turn a pinkish orange color, then to yellow which got brighter and brighter until it exploded into a blinding gold. As it shined through the trees it made golden stripes that spotlighted the ground, the small pinecones ignited with the golden light and the woods came to life. We could hear and see many different kinds of birds and we even saw two deer dash across a small meadow as they sensed our arrival. We passed a place where there were many white rocks on the ground amongst the pinecones. My dad told me to take some of these rocks in my pocket too; when we got to water they would float. I did and when I got back to June Lake they floated. 'We may see bears too', and I was ready; even today I'm not sure if I was relived or disappointed that we never saw them.
My dad was a great woodcarver, he could take a piece of wood and turn it into a dog, cat or horse and once he carved a lizard on a log, which was so real that people jumped, thinking it was the real thing.
At that age I had been ill and the walk up the mountain was hard for me and frequently my father would pick me up and carry me on his shoulders. Subsequently, having carried Jan on my shoulders on another June Lake trail, I am now aware how tiring it must have been especially since Jan was younger and smaller than I was at that time with my father. However, I walked most of the time and I watched my dad make himself a waking stick, probably to support his back after carrying me up hill. And, of course, when he had a walking stick I wanted one too. I think he welcomed the chance to sit and rest while he worked making me one. I remember it very well; he found a very straight piece of wood about an inch in diameter and a little over a meter long, took his knife and peeled the bark off, then he carved a beautiful spiral from the top about eight inches down and under that he carved five notches for each of my years; I was very proud of that walking stick, I wish I had kept it but at some point in the day I left it behind somewhere. I remember both my dad and I were disappointed that it was lost.
My father kept saying 'let's go a little further, we'll reach a stream very soon'. I tried but I just couldn't make it and it was clear he couldn't make it either if he was going to have to carry me any further on his shoulders. We ended up in a huge beautiful grove of birch trees and my dad took out his knife again and carved a massive R for Roger on one of the trees next to the trail. He told me that I could come back to that spot in fifty years I would still be able to see that R.
That hike was one of the finest times I ever had with my father.
Late September 1971
Jan had died eight months before and his mother and I had separated three months before, she had moved back home to Amsterdam, Holland. I was in bad shape and if it was not for my position in the Los Angeles Philharmonic I'm sure I wouldn't have survived. Now there was a two-week break from the orchestra and I had to do something to focus my scattered mind. I decided to get in the car and drive to June Lake and try and find some center, some stability to my life.
I left Los Angeles before daylight and I saw the sunrise as I was driving through the Mohave Desert; the sun appeared over a descending hill on the distant horizon line; with the car moving it gave the allusion that the sun shot into the sky then settled back to the horizon and rolled across the desert until it found it's correct place.
I arrived in June Lake in the early afternoon. It was Indian summer and the colors were amazing. It was a strange feeling as I drove down that road to the balanced boulders, through the village and to a motel where I rented a cabin. I spent the afternoon following the places I used to go with my family in the summers of 1943 to 45; much of it was unchanged. I had been there with Jan and his mother, Margot for a weekend a year before but this time was different; this time for me it was no longer same world.
After a small dinner I went to bed early so that I could wake before daylight and find the trail up the mountain. It will have been twenty-eight years since I hiked that trail.
Before sunrise I passed the balanced boulders on the road and turned up a dirt road that I remembered lead to the beginning the trail but no trail was visible. No matter where I looked I could not find the trail and finally, I just went back to where I thought it was in the first place, and started my hike. After about five minutes the trail slowly became visible; it had not been maintained for a many years and I could only hope that I was really on that trail of twenty-eight years before. As it got lighter it was clear that it was the trail, or better put what was left of the trail; clearly this was no longer a frequently used path.
It was getting lighter and I was anticipating the sunrise I experienced twenty-eight years before. I was not disappointed; in fact it was even more beautiful than I remembered. First came the pink, than the orange, the yellow and the explosion of gold. Because it was autumn the colors were far more vivid than in 1943. It was colder and the wind was blowing and as I looked up I could distinguish the different sounds the wind would make as it went through the different types of trees and I could hear from the sound which directions the winds were changing. Although certainly it wasn't the same meadow as 1943, suddenly several deer appeared out of nowhere and just as suddenly disappeared; deer are not delicate Bambyesque beasts, they are powerful and very fast.
The carpet of pinecones was there again but there was more to see and feel as a 32 year old than a 5 year old. These pinecones were layered on the ground by years. The top layer was the new ones that had just started to fall, golden brown and perfect, just below were the ones from the previous year, a little grayer and starting to crumble and so about every two inches you could see the decomposition down to dark gray and black fragments and finally a merging into a rich mountain soil. They were also very pleasant to walk on because their structure created a sort of springiness. Holding one of the most beautiful new ones in my hand I wondered if it would ever be possible for a diamond cutter to copy that structure in the faceting, not with perfect jewelers symmetry but with natures slightly distorted symmetry, which at least to my eye is far more beautiful.
My heart was beating faster as I approached the grove of birch trees where my father had carved that R twenty-eight years before; not having planned it, suddenly it I realized that my quest for the day was to find that tree.
Through the next hours I allowed myself to become a child again, randomly walking, carefree and exploring everything in sight. I looked under logs to see if I could find animals, I jumped up and grabbed branches on trees and swung and I would pull loose bark from trees looking for insects. I would find rocks and do target practice on distant trees and I would find sticks and jab and explore anything and everything that seemed interesting to me. While I was being a child I still hoped I would and wouldn't see a bear. I never did. And through all the light heartedness I kept looking for that R.
While in this mode of play I was also more or less following the trail and I had a sudden shock when in the midst of the birch trees I arrived at a huge clearing that had not been there the last time. Quickly, I saw that it was the top part of the elaborate June Mountain ski lift complex.
Suddenly I realized that I was standing in a spot where a year before I had carried Jan on my shoulders and twenty-eight years before I was sitting on my father's shoulders. I rode up that ski lift with Jan, put him on my shoulders and walked up the dirt road that was used for the lift's construction; the dirt road and the old trail crossed. Unthinkingly I reached down and pulled a piece of wood from old a fallen tree that had obviously been split by lightning many years before. The piece of wood that I pulled off was extraordinary.
It was about a meter long, the surface that had been facing the elements was silver gray and the inner surface that had still been attached to the main body of the tree was that golden brown color. A third of the way down was a branch about 18” long and on the inside was the rest of the branch, a beautiful taper, which had been imbedded in the body of the tree trunk. In other words I was holding a cross, a beautiful organic cross, created by nature. The symbolism of that cross at that place, where I had been a boy on my father's shoulders and where, as a man, I had carried son on my shoulders, was deeply moving.
I was brought up as a Christian but later made the decision to seek my own answers. This extraordinary piece of wood certainly brought to mind the father, the son, and … now comes the question; what should that apex of the cross represent, the holly ghost, the holly spirit? I'm not completely satisfied with that. What is that place at the cross section between being a child and being a parent? Perhaps it is the present; perhaps the bible quotation could also be explained as that state of consciousness peculiar to our species, the past, the present and the future. Isn't it strange how trying to move beyond a dogma often we create another dogma? I will continue looking for the answer.
I never found the R that day.
In 1989, just before I left my life in southern California, I gave that piece of wood, that cosmic cross; to a dear friend who's daughter was dying of brain cancer, now, seventeen years later that daughter is healthy and a collage graduate; I make as little out of that as possible. I may ask for the cross back someday.
Late September 1972
By this time I had moved to Topanga Canyon, an artist community and a Mecca for people who were searching to find themselves and to find the way they wanted to live their lives. There were many such people, these were turbulent times; Viet Nam, a verity of new and old social issues and a myriad of personal problems, many exacerbated by the social unrest. Topanga seemed to attract the searchers and the desperately lost. Sometimes this was called the hippy movement but, of course, that is an extreme simplification; the variety of these searchers was huge. There were emotionally disturbed Viet Nam veterans, poets, writers, artists, musicians, witches, wizards, fortunetellers, mediums, cowboys, Gypsies, transvestites, prostitutes, and many bums, just hanging around because it was easy to do nothing and not be noticed. Some of these characters were talented and productive, many were chronically in a drug-induced fantasy world; it was a hard time, it was a beautiful time. I found these people fascinating and they unknowingly helped me find my way back to planet Earth. Still, though through all this time of turmoil I'm sure, if it were not also for my position in the Los Angeles Philharmonic, I would not have made it back.
The trip to June Lake the previous year, with its symbolism and beauty, was so memorable that I decided to make it again this year. This time I took a woman I was seeing who's name was Christy. She was a divorced mother with two boys who, like me, was trying to find her way in her new world just like the many other Topanga people; for a short period of time we were a two person support group for each other.
The hike was almost the same as usual except we started much later, but it was still overwhelmingly beautiful. I told Christy about the R on the birch tree and that I would like to find it and I told her about the stream and that I would like to hike until we reach it. We reached the birch grove and continued across the ski lift clearing and back into the woods. The trail was well delineated now with markers so when we reached the other side of the clearing we were still on course. About an hour later we reached the stream; it was small and had the best tasting water I have ever drank. After a short rest we decided to go further and find a place to stay a while and have some lunch.
On this trip I had been carrying my alphorn, assembled it was almost four meters long but it came in three pieces and had a comfortable shoulder bag that was perfect for hiking. We found a meadow, rested, and I began playing, improvising for as long as my lip would function, and if I remember correctly a little longer. The chances of anyone except Christy and the many unseen and probably agitated animals hearing what I was playing were close to zero. Certainly I'm not going to try to qualify my alphorn playing as good or bad but it unquestionably created an atmosphere of reflection. Christy and I sat for a very long time saying nothing and listening to the wind.
Like the wind my mind was moving and changing directions, and like the wind that day, I felt always a sense of tranquility. Finally the wind the beauty and the tranquility allowed me to release my senses and the memory of Jan became a part of me again; thoughts that been incarcerated in protective custody waiting for a safer time. I was not ashamed as my feelings filled my mind and tears filled my eyes. Christy asked me what was wrong and for the first time since the tragedy I was able to tell the story.
It's not my intention here to ask a reader to commiserate with me on that tragic night but a little history is necessary before I can tell the rest of the story.
On February 13, 1971 after playing a concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic I stopped on the way home at Dante's, a jazz club in North Hollywood. I listened to two sets and arrived at my home a little after midnight. Margot awoke about an hour later to Jan coughing and she was clearly very alarmed. I got up and she said 'Jan isn't breathing'. I tried to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation but the air wouldn't go into his lungs. We called the emergency number and they arrived very quickly but it was too late. He died about 1:30 AM on Valentine's Day 1971.
As I finished telling this story to Christy she was weeping and quiet for about a half a minute. Suddenly she sat up, put her hands over her face and said, almost screamed, “Oh my God, that's exactly the same time Jed was born”. Jed was her youngest son.
For a little while we were in shock. It took time before I could even accept that amazing coincidence as a reality not to mention processing it into some kind of meaning. How could this be real, today, in this place, how could I clearly see the lesson in this unbelievable scenario when it seemed impossible just to grasp the event? Words were not ready to work and thinking was hard to keep under control. Clarity arrived when I said to myself that the first thing was to be sure what it didn't mean. It was absolutely clear that Jed was not the reincarnation of Jan. This was not going to be a story that I tell to the occult oriented searchers in Topanga who probably would have tried to convince me that Jed was Jan reborn, or to my colleagues in the philharmonic who probably would have assumed I had suffered some kind of psychotic break. This was a story that would stay private property in my memory for a long time.
On the way back down the trail we past through the birch trees again and I looked for the R again and again we didn't find it. However, just off the trail we did find a recently carved J and we again we were amazed.
Upon returning to Topanga Christy's and my life paths began quietly to move in different directions, however, I'm sure neither of us will forget that day.
Just as surely as I realized Jed wasn't the reincarnate of Jan, I was equally sure that what happened that day shouldn't be classified just as an amazing coincidence and forgotten. I think I always knew that life on Earth comes and goes and when death occurs a new life arrives to take its place. The lesson is a simple one but I will always remain in awe that it presented itself to me in such a beautiful way.
Late September 1973
It was a long hot summer and I needed to get out of LA. June Lake seemed the logical place, not too far, not too expensive, restful and beautiful. I was not expecting or even hoping for another spiritual experience, I just wanted out of LA.
The trip up was no less beautiful than before and even with the responsibility of driving, by the time I arrived at June Lake I was noticeably more relaxed than I had been in LA with it's traffic and four Hollywood Bowl concerts a week. Certainly there is stress involved while playing a symphony orchestra concert, some times more than other times depending on repertoire, but for me the far bigger stress was the constant trips from Topanga to the Hollywood Bowl through the summer, about an hour of driving, including rehearsals and concerts it was usually seven trips a week. People told me I was crazy to live in Topanga and face that trip; they may have been right. But now I was in June Lake for several days of rest and I didn't have to even think about traffic stress in LA.
The weather was extraordinarily clear, especially from the point of view forced on me by the chronic Los Angeles summer smog. But here there was a crisp autumn coolness in the air and the vivid autumn colors were sharp and clear. I had brought my alphorn and I decided to go up the mountain early the next morning, to the meadow beyond the stream, and play. I set my watch for 4:30 and went to sleep.
The next morning, alphorn over my shoulder, I was walking down the road past the balanced boulders and by 5:00 was headed up the trail. As I arrived at the place of the layered, faceted springy pinecones it was starting to get light. Suddenly the wind started to blow and it started to get dark again. Within minutes the wind was blowing viciously and I heard the first “crack” of lightening. It was raining hard and there was no protected dry place to be found. I was a little concerned because the claps of thunder and the lightning were getting more frequent. It reminded in me a way of diving; when I would see a shark, even though I knew everything would probably be okay, I would try to stay calm. I also remembered that in the daytime in the light there was no place where I could stand in those woods and not be able to see at least one tree that had been hit by lightning. And in the fourties, while I was there with my family, lightning had killed a man who was fishing from a boat in the lake in the rain. My respect for both sharks and lightning was deep!
The storm stopped just as abruptly as it came and when the first rays of sunlight broke through; the colors glistened, every leaf, every pinecone and every pine needle was a razor sharp highlighted image. That plus the smell of the fresh rain, the pine trees, the leaves on the ground and the ozone in the air were a prelude to what would be another encounter with thought and circumstance in an enchanted forest.
It was strange that after such an intense storm there was no mud, all the water was absorbed into the deep fibrous fabric of the rich soil. As I walked over the generations of fallen pinecones I reached the place where there were acres of pumice stones, volcanic foam, the white floating rocks I filled my pockets with in 1943. I picked up a few and put them in my pocket just like 1943, then like in 1971 I was able to loose myself in random child like play; looking for living things under logs and behind loose bark, throwing stones at trees, swinging from branches and singing and yodeling. I'm very happy that the very remote chance of meeting someone didn't occur; it probably would have been very uncomfortable for whomever I met and for me!
The alphorn was getting heavy and I thought about finding a walking stick, instead I picked up a small stick and used it as my toy as I headed for the grove of birch trees to look for the R again.
Soon I forgot about the heaviness of the alphorn and became completely absorbed in being a child out to play. That stick was a wonderful toy; I used it as a bat to hit stones, as a spear to throw at pinecones in the trees and at one point, in an area where there were enormous numbers of huge toadstools, I remember using it to spear the toadstools, pull them out of the ground and sling them with the stick as far as possible.
When I arrived at the birch tree grove I stopped my random play and made another search for the R, I didn't find it but I did find the J from the previous year, a little older and crustier. I had by this time come the conclusion that the tree with the R was probably cut down when the clearing was made for the construction of the ski lift.
It was time to go on to the stream and take a short rest.
The water was wonderful, I left my small backpack and the alphorn and decided to follow the stream up to where it started, which actually wasn't very far, within a few hundred yards the stream widened and disappeared to it's source underground. Where the water surfaced there was a dense growth of green reeds. I used my stick to spread the reeds and look for any life. There was none, only fresh, clean, clear water.
It was time to play the alphorn. I went back down stream to get it, put it over my shoulder and within an hour I was at the meadow getting ready to play. I was standing at the same place where one year before I heard the words from my friend that her son was born the same time Jan had died. I used the stick I had been carrying to help make a level spot where I sat the bell of the alphorn, stuck the stick in the ground next to the bell and started to play. At first I played themes by Brahms, Mahler and Respighi but within a few minutes they evolved into pure improvisation. As one year before it is probably far kinder to myself to remember that improvisation rather than have a recording of it. In my memory it was musical greatness!
After more than an hour of playing I made the decision to keep hiking until I reached the top, wherever and however far it might be. It was around midday and at this early time there seemed no threat of darkness falling before I could get back. Further, I decided to leave my alphorn at the side of the meadow so that I wouldn't have to carry it. As I packed the alphorn and pulled the stick from the ground, I saw something so incredible and shocking that every aspect of my being refused to accept it. The stick I had been carrying had a spiral carved from the top down and at the end of the spiral were five notches.
Suddenly this was not the same hike I had started early that morning; my intellect and basic scientific background were assaulted and my reason was challenged to the breaking point. Quite simply, this just couldn't be. I held the stick and tried to examine it as rationally as possible; it was old gray wood but very hard, one side of it had started a very narrow split that went practically the whole length, it was about an inch in diameter at the top and slightly narrower tip which came to a point. And it had the spiral and the notches. It was most definitely the walking stick my father had made for me twenty-eight years before. It was there, I was holding it I could see it, the only acceptable conclusion possible was that I was in a weakened emotional state and that I was hallucinating. I held it from every angle and felt the carvings with my fingers and finally, in desperation to break the hallucination I felt the carvings with my tongue. It was real! There was no more I could do to prove or disprove what I could see and feel, and I wasn't quite sure which I wanted most. It would be easier if I could just conclude it was an hallucination but I could not, by every test I could think of I had to come to the conclusion that this was the walking stick my father had made for me in 1943.
The child's random play was over, I was walking up, seeking the top, as high as I could get and carrying this simple stick; I was trying to get past the amazement of the event and asking myself how could this be, and to be able to start thinking about what the message was and what lesson was to be learned. Now in September 2005 in Tokyo, Japan I find myself still working on it.
I was off the trail now and finding my way back to the meadow, where I had left my alphorn and backpack was a concern; I was above the timberline and had less references to find the direction back down. At the edge of the timberline I encountered a beautiful buck with a full growth of antlers standing about twenty meters away; we both stood frozen for at least a minute looking at each other. I was the first to move and he simultaneously bolted away into the woods. What power, I could hear his running disappear down the hillside. Was he frozen for that minute in an instinctive self-protection reaction or was there a moment where we two very different kinds of beasts communicated? In light of the events of that day and the past two autumns my mind was as open as it had ever been.
The view from the top seemed endless, there was in fact a higher place to go but to go there would require another two days, climbing and cold weather gear; perhaps another year, perhaps. Getting back down to the meadow was nothing more than a comfortable walk. I gathered my alphorn, my backpack and with the stick headed back to the stream.
Something needed to be said; what had happened in this place this year and the previous two years could not go without some kind of statement. I decided on a quiet, secret and very private ceremony. I carried everything to the top of the stream, broke the stick into two pieces, took the reeds growing from in the water and used them to tie together the two pieces of the stick into a cross and I stuck the cross in the stream at the place where the water first appeared from the ground. I said a few words, thought a few thoughts and played the alphorn for a few minutes; that was all I could do. I will only say that I was very thankful that destiny provided me with these miraculous experiences and to the lessons they offered.
Coming down from the mountain I finally found the tree with the R. Time had tried to fill those spaces carved by my father and they were in fact almost filled but the size and form of the R were right, it was definitely the tree and it was definitely the R. I was very happy and satisfied to have found it.
The next few days were spent in reflection; walks along the lake, day trips to the anomalies of nature that were so rich in that region, and especially a whole day spent at the old travertine mine basking in the hot mineral baths, exploring old tunnels and in my own way trying to sustain the spiritual atmosphere I experienced on the mountain. No conclusion was made as to what it all meant and even now I have come to no conclusion. But as I said at the beginning of this essay, it's not the answers that are the important thing; it's the searching and growing we experience as we acquire more knowledge and information in this life.
I look forward to many more years of searching.
- Roger Bobo, Late September, 2005, Tokyo