Aurora Borealis

(альбом: Wilderness - 1976)

One night last summer we were camped at ten thousand feet up where the air is clear, high in the Rockies of Lost Lake, Colorado
And as the fire burned low and only a few glowing embers remained, we laid on our backs all warm in our sleeping bags and looked up at the stars

And as I felt myself falling into the vastness of the Universe, I thought about things, and places, and times

I thought about the time my grandma told me what to say when I saw the evening star
You know, Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight
I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight

The air is crystal-clear up here; that's why you can see a million stars

I remember a time a bunch of us were in a canyon of the Green River in Wyoming, it was a night like this
And we had our rafts pulled up on the bank an' turned over so we could sleep on 'em
And one of the guys from New York said, "Hey! Look at the smog in the sky! Smog clear out here in the sticks!"
And somebody said, "Hey, Joe, that's not smog; that's the Milky Way"

Joe had never seen the Milky Way

And we saw the Northern Lights once, in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana
They're like flames from some prehistoric campfire, leaping and dancing in the sky and changing colors
Red to gold, and blue to violet... Aurora Borealis. It's like the equinox, the changing of the seasons
Summer to fall, young to old, then to now. And then tomorrow...

And then everyone was asleep, except me
And as I saw the morning star come up over the mountains, I realized that life is just a collection of memories
And memories are like starlight: they go on forever