Refuge

Song story & origins

Introduction

I wrote Refuge in 2005, when I was serving as camp director in New Mexico. That summer I turned forty, and my wife and I were there with our daughters. Years earlier I had worked at the same camp as assistant director, a season in life that had been fertile for writing and playing music. Coming back as director brought everything full circle and stirred memories, but it also confronted me with how much life had changed. I wasn’t the same man I had been in the nineties, and my daughters weren’t the little girls I once carried on my back through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. They had grown, and I was aware of time moving forward. Refuge was born in the midst of that reflection.

Where the song came from

The song grew during the pre-camp weeks, when I had time to hike with my guitar and think about themes for the summer. When the sixteen counselors arrived for staff orientation, I shared Refuge with them as a way to shape our mindset. Parents were entrusting us with their children, sending their most precious loved ones into our care for a week or more. Our job as counselors and leaders was to be trustworthy people, safe people, people who could be a refuge. That thought guided the entire summer and carried into the song.

But even before sharing it with counselors, the song was directed toward my own family. My daughters were growing quickly, and I was aware that their childhood was already slipping past. I wanted to speak into their lives while I could, to remind them of things they would face and offer them words they could carry with them. The refrain, “Please let me be your refuge—the one you run to,” was a promise to them as much as a plea. I wanted them to know I could be counted on, that I was safe for them, even as life would surely press in with demands.

What the song is saying

One of the opening lines observes, “Sometimes all this world wants to teach you is how to keep score.” That reflection came from watching how quickly life turns competitive—school grades, team standings, leagues, rankings. I have never believed that competition is our most natural state. I think we are built for caring, for connecting, for finding common ground. Scorekeeping is a distraction from what really matters.

The song insists on curiosity and growth for their own sake. “There are hills you climb sometimes just because they’re there.” You don’t climb for a medal or for recognition; you climb because life is meant to be explored. The lyric compares that to the desert flower, which blooms beautifully from rare rains. Opportunities in life are like that—scarce, surprising, worth taking when they come.

The verses also offer counsel about friendship. Some friends last for life, others only for a season. I used to feel guilty about friendships that faded, as though I had failed in some way. Over time I came to see that it’s the nature of life for some friendships to be temporary. What matters is not the mileage but the faces. The gift is in who we walked alongside for a time, not in how long the road lasted.

Advice itself became part of the reflection. The line, “The best advice will always take you by surprise,” comes from the truth that counsel often comes unplanned, almost accidentally. Sometimes the thing that changes your course is not a speech or a plan but an offhand remark that sticks.

And then there is fear. Fear is natural, but it can be blinding. “It’s okay to be scared; just don’t let it close your eyes.” There is too much to see, too much beauty to notice, too many truths waiting for us. Fear can shut us down, but the song urges openness instead.

At the heart of it all is refuge. Everyone needs one. Everyone faces days when the world feels too heavy, when demands overwhelm. The song is both a pledge to my daughters and wife and also a message to those counselors. Campers would arrive carrying needs we could not predict, and our call was to be safe people, steady and kind, a refuge for them.

Music and arrangement

The original recording of Refuge appeared on Before the Great Divide in 2006. That version was entirely built on a six-string Fender acoustic guitar—the same guitar I later gave to my youngest daughter. I recorded three or four separate guitar tracks, layering rhythm, incidental lines, and lead figures. As a self-taught musician, I mostly play by ear. I do jot notes for myself—chords and reminders—but they are often cryptic. I remember writing “pinky hammer thing” in my notes for this song, and one of the counselors, looking over my shoulder, laughed at it. That was exactly the kind of guitar player I was: one who named things in my own shorthand.

Through the years I came to feel that the song “had legs.” I used it in a slideshow for my oldest daughter’s high school graduation, and it gained even more personal meaning. Later, when I was working on songs about home and the safety of home here in the canyon, I decided to record a fresh arrangement.

On the 2017 album Refuge, I kept the acoustic guitar at the center but added new textures. By then I was playing a lot of ukulele, so an eight-string tenor uke appears in the mix, double-tracked to give it shimmer. I also picked up the tempo just slightly, giving it a little more lift. In the instrumental break I brought in a four-string tenor banjo for color, but in a restrained way, so that it served the song without changing its character.

A live version later appeared on Live in the Black Hills, Vol. 2 in 2019, carrying the same heart with the immediacy of performance.

Why it stays with me

Refuge remains important because it is both a personal promise and a professional calling. To my daughters, wife, and close friends, it says: I want to be a safe place for you. To counselors and campers, it says: be steady, be trustworthy, be the kind of person someone can run to.

The song has carried me from the campfires of New Mexico to the studio at Dancin’ Moon to the stages of the Black Hills. It has been a reflection on parenting, a charge to young leaders, a comfort to me in moments of doubt, and a musical reminder of what matters most. We live in a world that will always try to teach us to keep score. Refuge reminds me to resist that lesson and instead to be the place where love, safety, and grace are found.

Source: New Music Memoir (1).docx

From the Being Human journal

I’m not a big fan of advice-giving, but this song’s about as far into that as I’ve ever gone. I wrote Refuge for my daughters, and it does give some advice. But more importantly, I’d hoped, it would let them know that they can always come to me for help, shelter or refuge. I’ve had parents and others who have been that for me, and we all need to know we do have a place we can run to if needed.

Source: Being Human: The Songs — Album & Journal (2020) · p. 27

Being Human · The Songs

Reflection & journaling

Theme: Offering Shelter

Choose a question or word or line(s) from the lyrics to guide your meditation or journaling as you listen.

1. Where have I found shelter?
2. Are there others who I offer shelter to?
3. What might it look like to “stand with” someone as a friend, without getting in their way?
4. Have I experienced that?

Source: Being Human: The Songs — Album & Journal (2020) · p. 27