Discovering his father was a mountain mystic

Can we ever really completely know and understand another human being? Their deepest thoughts, difficult burdens, and the desires and disappointments of their heart and soul may remain hidden from us. Even the simplest things may be misinterpreted or misunderstood.

Their own view of spirituality presents another deep layer that can sometimes be inaccessible. When someone belongs to a secret order, what can we do to discover the reality of who they are?

If it is a parent-child relationship, this compounds the difficulty. Jim Brune knew that his father Alphonse (Dick) Brune was a quiet, self-taught man. He was thinker, and deeply spiritual. But it was not until after his death that the family was notified by letter that the father had attained a high level in the Rosicrucian Order. “Dad never bragged about it,” writes his son Jim. Nor did he really discuss it at all, which set Jim on a quest to discover the fundamentals of the Order, looking for clues about what might have influenced his father’s perspectives and behaviors.

Son Jim Brune is now in his 80s, but has been compelled to search out the mysteries that have presented themselves. Alpine County Mountain Mystic is a book about his father, exploring the facts of his upbringing and piecing it together with memories of how his father lived.

While Jim’s own oral history, A Simple Balance gives details about his own unusual childhood in the remote and challenging terrain of Alpine County, this new volume goes into far more depth about the spiritual and philosophical environment that surrounded the man who raised him, as evidenced by what he did, and how he did it.

Father Dick Brune was born in Missouri in 1889 and had only a fifth grade education, dropping out of school at age 11 to work on the railroad to help support his family. By age 14, he was employed as a miner and trapper in Montana. A mine owner was unable to pay Dick’s wages, so signed over a quit-claim deed to him for Alpine County’s Leviathan Mine in 1922. The story of how he made the journey to this distant and wild place is remarkable. It is here that he would spent the rest of his days, even while facing incredible hardships.

In the middle of the Depression, Dick made a lucky sale on this Leviathan mining claim, using the money to propose marriage to the beautiful Majorie Whitmore, whose family lived just up the road in what is still called “Chalmer’s Mansion.” On their honeymoon they visited exotic and mystical places like China, India, and the Egyptian pyramids.

They had two sons, and when son Jim was just 6 years old, his mother was in a horrific car accident. His father spent all the rest of the  money he had trying to save her. When she passed, Dick raised Jim and his brother in relative poverty in a small cabin down the canyon from Leviathan. He put together different ways of making a living, including being elected as an Alpine County Supervisor in District One, with a population then of only 10 residents.

Today, Leviathan is a Super-Fund Cleanup Site, and it, along with the other mines along the Monitor-Highway 4 corridor have played a huge part in Alpine County history. Dick worked many of these mines, shaping the history of the region.

The occurrences of his father’s time on earth paint only an outward portrait. Jim’s Mountain Mystic book examines Dick Brune’s unique existence in these rugged mountains as a multi-dimensional query. If we presume there are no coincidences, the stories presented shine a light on many complex enigmas. Jim discovered the things that happened to his father did not seem to define him as much as his interior spiritual attitude.

Jim wrote this volume searching for the true essence of who his father was. It is a tapestry weaving together his own recollections and experiences of being raised by this “extreme character in terms of philosophy and beliefs”.

Many of us can empathize to this examination of our families histories and their significance in understanding not only our parents true contributions, but also our own place in the world in relation to them. Jim’s book is a tribute to the man who brought him up, but also an inspiration to anyone willing to ask those hard questions about the people we love, broaden our understanding, and connect through the past to what is actually true.

Jim found this quote in one of the Rosicrucian Monthly Bulletins that his Dad likely read: “Unquestionably, each one of us has a mission in life, a channel through which we must express the natural gifts of the Cosmic.” Dick’s Brune’s legacy to his sons, though unspoken at the time, was to manifest their natural gifts with an inquiring, open mind, just as he himself did.

Son and author Jim Brune jumped in with both feet, wielding a strong curiosity to find out the genuine nature of the man that was his father. Both Mountain Mystic and A Simple Balance are available at the Markleeville General Store.