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Writing an introduction to explain Peter is something I would have liked to avoid. Peter defies description. It is analogous to telling someone a funny story only to have them stare at you with blank incomprehension. You wind up saying Simply, "You had to be there."

Peter lives on a 12-acre parcel of land adjoining the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. A parcel of land that had somehow been "overlooked" by realtors and city officials until he showed up 20 years ago to buy it. He built a spacious three-story, 24-room house on his mountaintop with his own hands, often taking a piece of wood and cutting it to the exact length without ever measuring it (much to the discomfiture of those friends who accompanied and assisted him).

It is his friends, many of whom have moved to Tennessee to be near him, who will tell you why he is called "The Magic Man." Miracles and psychokinetic effects seem to trail him like an invisible circus. His friends tell of countless healing, candles that puff out and re-light themselves, a violin that plucks its own strings, and of wine that pours from his hand. I myself observed half-full wine glasses tipping over by themselves at dinner to punctuate our conversation. We laughed as though it was the funniest thing in the world while Ann, his companion , gave him a mock scolding for staining the tablecloth. These could be dismissed as musician's tricks, perhaps, but there are myriad "coincidences" as well, like the "overlooked" parcel of land, or the swarm of honeybees he wanted that arrived the day after he said he would be getting some bees as a "present from spirit" for the help he had given to someone who had been sick. His friends have gathered these stories together in a book entitled "The Magic Man."

I found that the gentler miracles lingered the longest after my visit: the light and love I was showered with, the curious deer, the ever-present bears that ambled out of the forest for a peanut snack on the deck, and the sight of a tiny bear cub climbing the tree nearest to Peter's bedroom - the tree his protective mother decided offered the greatest safety in a forest known for poachers.

Then there was Peter himself. He seems to embody all the heroes of myth and legend. He will remind one person of Buddha, another of Christ, and others of Krishna, Lao-Tzu, or the biblical Simon Peter. To me he was a combination of Castaneda's Don Juan and one of Tolkien's High Elves - alternately poking my self-importance and then entertaining me in the fire-lit hall of the mountain king. I despaired of getting any straight answers from him about himself. He would rather teach me about myself. One time I had to tell him to stop or "I'd explode." He laughed and said, "That's the idea!"

As I questioned him about his past, it seemed as thought he had to strain to remember, as though forcing his mind to step out of the present moment was a forgotten habit, a way of being that had been attached to an ego he had long ago discarded.

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