"where the deer and the antelope roam" can you remember this song sung by Gene Autry? The day before yesterday while Mom and I drove east out into the countryside this song from my grade school days kept running through my head - and to both our sorrow I finally broke into song. "where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day ...." 
This high plane (5000+ feet) outside of Prescott and just west of the foothills of Mingus mountain, even with the trees stripped of leaves and the grasses bleached white from the cold dry air, is beyond beautiful. The sky is a clear bright blue that now I can remember running free under as a child. The sky is a big blue inverted bowl stretching from where you stand to the horizen - it is the feeling of freedom, oneness with the land.
Below is the complete poem on which the song was based.
This high plane (5000+ feet) outside of Prescott and just west of the foothills of Mingus mountain, even with the trees stripped of leaves and the grasses bleached white from the cold dry air, is beyond beautiful. The sky is a clear bright blue that now I can remember running free under as a child. The sky is a big blue inverted bowl stretching from where you stand to the horizen - it is the feeling of freedom, oneness with the land.
"TraditionalWritten By: Brewster Higley
Music By: Daniel Kelley
Copyright Unknown
Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
How often at night when the heavens are bright
With the light from the glittering stars
Have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of ours
Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
Where the air is so pure, the zephyrs so free
The breezes so balmy and light
That I would not exchange my home on the range
For all of the cities so bright
Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
Oh, I love those wild flow'rs in this dear land of ours
The curlew, I love to hear scream
And I love the white rocks and the antelope flocks
That graze on the mountaintops green
Home, home on the rangeWhere the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day"
This is what holds me to the States, making me feel small and 'compressed' when in Rio. Rio with its smog filled skies, and streets running through tall buildings, fracturing the sky into small pieces and leaving one starved to feel a part of anything.
GingerV
2 comments:
You lucky woman!!
Lovely area of Arizona. If I ever go back to the States, it will be hee are somewhere in the 4 corners region.
Rio to Prescott...what a change!
the four corners - the place of origen of 'the people' the navajo indian. If you look on a geological map this was one area not flooded - a high area when all of central USA was a shallow sea. read some of the 'stories of the People', that in the last 25-50 years have finally been writen down and published - suprisingly very simular to the stories in the bible.
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