Tribute to Michael Lee Hicks
By Jon Anderson
There are some people who move through this world with such openness, curiosity, and joy that you don’t just remember them — you feel them. Michael Lee Hicks was one of those rare souls.
He lived life the way he hiked: fully present, wide-eyed, and unafraid of taking the next step into mystery. His spirit was always oriented toward the outdoors, toward the wind on a ridge line, the crash and calm of a waterfall, the sun emerging after long clouds. He loved the natural world not as scenery, but as a teacher. the woods were a temple. A trail was a prayer. And every sunrise was an invitation to listen — really listen — to life.
Michael's journey was a spiritual one, but never in a self-important way. He didn’t preach. He explored. He questioned. He cracked jokes in the middle of deep conversations. He made philosophy feel like banter, and banter feel like truth. He carried joy with him the way others carry worry — lightly, generously, spilling out everywhere.
He believed deeply in healing, in wholeness, and in the inherent goodness of people. One of the lessons he wrote about — one he truly lived — was the idea that the only way to help another heal is to see them as already perfect and whole. And the only way to do that is to see the same wholeness in yourself. That was Michael: seeing the highest in people, even when they couldn’t see it yet.
The quotes he loved—from Osho, Ram Dass, mystics, thinkers, cosmic humorists—were windows into his mind. He danced between the profound and the playful, the spiritual and the philosophical. He could wrestle with the meaning of ego one moment and laugh at the absurdity of it all the next. He brought lightness to the heaviest topics, and depth to the simplest moments.
His friends remembered him the same way: unique, endlessly positive, brilliantly original. “His mind never stopped,” one wrote. “He saw things from angles you’d never considered.” Another remembered dancing in the kitchen with an idea and wanting instantly to share it with him — because Michael was the kind of person inspiration naturally flowed toward. He made people laugh. He made them think. He made them better.
“To accept your illusionary existence is to accept love”
Michael passed in a way that felt strangely fitting for someone so connected to nature: out at Weir Creek hot springs, a place where he felt most alive. And while his loss brought shock and heartbreak, many found comfort in imagining him stepping from one trail to the next, the boundary between worlds dissolving into the same Oneness he often spoke about.
He touched lives in Idaho and the west coast all the way back to his hometown in Alabama. He was a brother, a friend, a coworker, a grounding force, and, as one person wrote, “always the wolf.” His southern drawl, his kind smile, his easy way of lifting spirits — these are treasures that don’t fade.
His obituary spoke of a man who cherished his family, who loved music (banjo especially), who worked and played with equal devotion, and who always carried a sense of wonder. But anyone who knew him would say he was even more than that — a free being, as Ram Dass might put it. A man who listened to life. A man who created joy. A man who healed by simply showing up as himself.
Michael Lee Hicks lived as if everything was sacred, because to him, it was. And though he has moved on from this plane, the ripples he made — through kindness, curiosity, laughter, and love — will keep moving outward for a long time.
Fly free, brother.
Thank you for the light you carried.
Thank you for the light you left behind.
A winter memorial is planned by Cheryl and Charlon at 12pm on Saturday December 27th, at Michael's home, a Wee Place In The Woods on Hoodoo Mountain. A spring celebration of life will be planned by Renee as well for anyone who cannot attend the winter memorial. Contact Renee for more details: renee.honrada@gmail.com
