Like a lover’s voice fires the mountainside

by the Night Writer

Mitch notes that it was 25 years ago today when Big Country’s album “The Crossing” was released in the States. The big Top 40 hit from that album was the song “In a Big Country” …

In a big country, dreams stay with you,
Like a lover’s voice, fires the mountainside…
Stay alive..

Four years prior to that album coming out I had spent a semester in England, taking some classes and traveling the country as much as I could. The first time I heard “In a Big Country” (and every time since then) I thought of a conversation I had with a fellow American student after we’d been there for a couple of months. We both realized that one of the biggest things we missed was “the horizon” and the sense of how much land was beyond it. Even in the English country-side the horizon always seemed too close and you couldn’t quite shake the feeling of being squeezed. As much as we missed good hamburgers and American sports, we found ourselves having longing thoughts of the Kansas interstate.

I don’t think much about Kansas anymore, but the lines of the song have always stuck with me.

So take that look out of here it doesn’t fit you
Because it’s happened doesn’t mean you’ve been discarded
Pull up your head off the floor — come up screaming
Cry out for everything you ever might have wanted

As dark and obscure as they are, there’s a certain “suck it up, wait it out” optimism underlying them. I’ve lived long enough now to have experienced several economic and political cycles, as well as times of feeling isolated and other times overwhelmed, and I think I’ve learned to hold onto the constants — faith, the relationships you can count on, and the promise of another horizon and what may lay beyond.