An Ode to Jon

There has been a Red-shouldered Hawk hanging around my place for the past couple of weeks. And when I say hanging around, I mean literally perched on the porch railing of the deck. In and out, at all times of the day. It has been an amazing encounter.

All week I’ve wondered: Who are you? And what is it you want me to see?

Yesterday, sitting on the deck and writing my monthly blog, I was surrounded by hummingbirds—their iridescent green bodies flashing around me, their needle-thin beaks dipping into the flowers. How quickly their wings flutter. How swiftly they move. Once again, I was struck by the sheer beauty of the life that surrounds me.

Yesterday, my friend Jon died.

Jon was a fellow traveler, unafraid of beauty. Equally able to hold hardship and to talk about what is real. I loved him deeply for this very human quality.

He was also a master artisan, making some of the finest violins played by some of the finest musicians today.

Jon was on stage with his band, Wild Mountain Thyme, at the May Day Festival at the Seashore Trolley Museum in 1977 when, as a seventh grader, I attended my first outdoor music festival. That day sparked a lifelong passion for live acoustic string-band music.

Thirty-nine years later, with my fourth child in seventh grade, we went to meet Jon in his shop in downtown Portland. Simone was ready for a full-sized fiddle of her own. Her teacher, Winifred Horan, had given her the use of one while she got used to the feeling of playing a full-sized instrument. We had been asked to have Jon give the fiddle, which had been sitting in Win’s closet, a once-over. Fiddles should be played, she said.

Jon asked Simone about her interest in the fiddle. He talked with her seriously about her experience, her teachers, and her hopes for her own playing. He listened to her. And in that first hour we spent together, I learned a lot about who he was as a man.

Simone had studied Maine French fiddling with Erica Brown but was also interested in exploring Irish fiddle. Jon told her the styles were very different, but that if she wanted to, she could learn about the differences and decide for herself.

She was eleven.

Simone began popping into his studio to talk with him and hang out on his couch when she was out and about in the city. Generous with his time and his encouragement, Jon made Simone feel like a real musician.

When she was ready, about a year later, Jon refurbished an old fiddle he had picked up along his travels. He worked it up for Simone, and she plays that beautiful, dark-wood, bright-sounding fiddle still.

Over the years, Jon became my friend.

A former Peaks Islander and a lover of music and the sea, we never lacked for things to talk about. We had many deep conversations on the edges of jams and at festivals near and far. We talked about love and forgiveness and loss. We talked openly about the real and gritty matters of life, with the weight that comes from having known loss ourselves.

We talked about the sheer magic of this life, even amidst all the hardship. And about the importance of tenderness through it all.

His youngest son and my granddaughter are the same age. We had both lived through a lot. Both married and deeply in love with our spouses. Jon and I never struggled to find something to talk about.

When he’d fish off Peaks, he’d send me a text: R U around?

When I wanted to start the concert series, he helped me flesh out the idea, drawing on his experience as a Peaks Islander and his years hosting concerts in his studio in the Hays Building.

A true and good friend.

A very decent human being.

I will miss him so.

And perhaps that is what the hawk has been asking me to see: to pay attention. To notice the beauty while it is here. To stay awake to this astonishing, fleeting life—and to the people who make it richer simply by being part of it.