Yann Tiersen - Thinking Like a Mountain lyrics

A deep chesty bawl echoes
From rimrock to rimrock
Rolls down the mountain
And fades into the far blackness of the night
It is an outburst of wild defiant sorrow
And of contempt for all the
Adversities of the world every living thing
(and perhaps many a dead one as well)
Pays heed to that call

To the deer it is a reminder
Of the way of all flesh
To the pine a forecast of midnight scuffles
And of blood upon the snow
To the coyote a promise of gleanings to come
To the cowman a threat of red ink at the bank
To the hunter a challenge
Of fang against bullet
Yet, behind these obvious and
Immediate hopes and fears
There lies a deeper meaning known
Only to the mountain it'self
Only the mountain has lived
Long enough to listen
Objectively to the howl of a wolf
Those unable to deciper the hidden meaning
Know nevertheless that it is there
For it is felt in all wolf country
And distinguishes that country from
All other land
It tingles in the spine of all
Who hear wolves by night
Or who scan their tracks by day

Even without sight or sound of wolf
It is implicit in a hundred small events
The midnight whinny of a pack horse
The rattle of rolling rocks
The bound of a fleeing deer
The way shadows lie under the spruces
Only the ineducable tyro can fail to sense
The presence or absence of wolves
Or the fact that mountains have
A secret opinion about them

My own convinction on this score dates from
The day I saw a wolf die
We were eating lunch on a high rimrock
At the foot of which
A turbulent river elbowed it's way
We saw what we thought was
A doe fording the torrent
Her breast awash in white water
When she climbed the bank toward us and shook
Out her tail we realised our error
It was a wolf

A half dozen others, evidently grown pups
Sprang from the willows
And all joined in a welcoming melee
Of wagging tails and playful maulings
What was literally a pile
Of wolves writhed and
Tumbled in the centre of an open flat
At the foot of our rimrock

In those days we had never heard of passing
Up a chance to kill a wolf
In a second we were pumping
Lead into the pack
But with more excitement than accuracy
How to aim a steep downhill
Shot is always confusing
When our rifles were empty
The old wolf was down
And a pup was dragging a
Leg into impassable slide-rocks
We reached the old wolf in time to watch
A fierce green fire dying in her eyes
I realised then, and have known ever since
That there was something new to
Me in those eyes something known only to her
And to the mountain

I was young then, and full of trigger-itch
I thought that because fewer
Wolves meant more deer
That no wolves would mean hunters' paradise
But after seeing the green fire die
I sensed that neither the wolf
Nor the mountain agreed with such a view

Since then I have lived to see
State after state extirpate it's wolves
I have watched the face of
Many a newly wolfless mountain
And seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with
A maze of new deer trails
I have seen every edible
Bush and seedling browsed
First to anaemic desuetude and then to death
I have seen every edible tree defoliated
To the height of a saddlehorn

Such a mountain looks as if someone had
Given God a new pruning shears
And forbidden Him all other exercise
In the end the starved bones of
The hoped for deer herd
Dead of it's own too much
Bleach with the bones of the dead sage
Or molder under the high-lined junipers

I now suspect that just as a deer herd
Lives in mortal fear of it's wolves
So does a mountain live in
Mortal fear of it's deer
And perhaps with better cause
For while a buck pulled down by wolves can
Be replaced in two or three years
A range pulled down by too many deer may
Fail of replacement in as many decades
So also with cows
The cowman who cleans his range
Of wolves does not
Realise that he is taking over the wolf's job
Of trimming the herd to fit the range
He has not learned to think like a mountain
Hence we have dustbbowls
And rivers washing the future into the sea

We all strive for safety
Prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness
The deer strives with his supple legs
The cowman with trap and poison
The statesman with pen, the most
Of us with machines, votes, and dollars
But it all comes to the same
Thing: peace in our time

A measure of success in this
Is all well enough
And perhaps is a requisite
To objective thinking
But too much safety seems to yield
Only danger in the long run
Perhaps this is behind Thoreau's dictum
In wildness is the salvation of the world
Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in
The howl of the wolf
Long known among mountains
But seldom perceived among men