It was back in the late eighties, the Winter of '87. I was working as a Math and English teacher at Berkeley High School, and was very burned out and running on empty, having recently been forced to take a gun from a student - and I was pondering whether I even wanted to be a teacher anymore.

It was a freezing late Winter afternoon, the red sun setting in a welter of clouds over the Golden Gate.

I'd been buying groceries for my dinner at the Berkeley Cheese Board and at a little chicken shop there, and vegetables at that great produce market that used to be on the corner of Vine and Shattuck (maybe it still is).

A frigid breeze was blowing off the bay, and as I lugged my groceries up the hill and threw them in the car, I decided I just had to have a cup of coffee at Peets.

Just to keep going.

I went in to Peets, and ordered a cup of French Roast, but I was so wiped out and my hands were shaking so badly, that when I pulled my money out, the coins just fell clattering all over the counter.

Suddenly a voice to my left said to me:

"Friend, you really need to take it easy."

I turned and there was a bearded man standing there, his face all rosy and aglow and with the most beautiful smile on his face, a smile that just filled me with warmth and peace and happiness.

I stammered, "Thank you!", and turned for just a second to grab my cup of coffee, but when I turned back to talk to the man, he was gone.

There weren't many people in Peets at that moment, so a quick glance confirmed that he wasn't in the shop.

I ducked out the door (Peets is right on the street corner at Vine and Walnut), and looked in both directions down both sidewalks, and they were empty except for papers blowing in that biting winter ocean wind. He was nowhere to be seen.

And then it hit me.

I had been talking to an angel.

This song seems to resonate with the appearance and identity of that mysterious being who stepped in to a turning point in my life, a Rilkean angel telling me that I must change my life.

But did I change my life?

27 years later I am still haunted, still burned out more often than not, still a creature of stress and mystery and still fueled and running on empty with caffeine. A lonely single Dad raising a lonely only daughter.

But you know, sometimes there are songs that go beyond feelings. There are songs that voyage out beyond thought. These songs put us in touch with our own lostness which is also our own divinity. They are rare, indeed, and they work their way into our hearts like the black and white ghosts of old angels.

Such is "The Wind Blows Wild," which Wolf composed and recorded partially in a hospital room during her final days. It's about life, love and death and was written by Kate Wolf as she, herself, was dying.

Kate died in 1986, at age 44, after a long battle with leukemia.

She is buried at a small church cemetery in Goodyears Bar, California.
My daughter Gabrielle and I went there, in the deep snow, in the Winter of 2004, not long after my Mom died. Kate was there, sleeping under the snow like the Yuba River that flowed by Goodyears Bar was sleeping under the ice.

I encourage you all to go out and buy this album, and all of Kate's albums.
I have no commercial interest in this song. If you want to own it, purchase it online or in a CD store. All of her albums are great. This is from her last, and is the title song.

Buying it will support the perpetuation of great music everywhere, and Kate will be smiling from that quiet grave West of Weaverville in that little place on the Yuba River called Goodyears Bar. It should be deep in snow again right now. But Kate's great heart will be beating there for you, as it will always beat for me, as it beats on her albums - for we all share one Heart, and no snow or ice or fear or oppression will keep our one Heart from beating out a tune of Love and Fellowship into Forever.






Buy "The Wind Blows Wild" on Amazon [ Ссылка ]

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