An August day in the hills of Spain, a pair of children emerged from a cave.
The strangest sight there alone they stood,
with skin of green and words no one had heard.
The girl was stronger, the boy was weak,
with her new mother she learned to speak.
And wove a tale of a dying sun, they had left darkness,
a dark world come undone.
They travelled so far. Believing they came from a star.
She fell through life, through time, through parallel lives.
The men of science, the men of fame, the men of letters tried to explain:
Was it parallel worlds or a twist of time to make her
think she'd fallen from the sky?
A whirlwind spun them all alone, took them from their twilight home.
Believing they came from a star.
[ Spoken intro from: Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey (byLillian Schlissel) ]
"While the young folks were having their good times
some of the mothers were giving birth to their babies.
Three babies were born in our company that summer.
My cousin, Emily, gave birth to a son in Utah,
forty miles north of the Great Salt Lake one morning.
But the next morning she traveled on
'til noon when a stop was made and another child was born,
this time Susan Mollmeyer.
And gave the baby the name Alice Nevada."
Follow the typical signs, the hand-painted lines, down prairieroads.
Pass the lone church spire.
Pass the talking wire from where to who knows?
There's no way to divide the beauty of the sky from the wildwestern plains.
Where a man could drift, in legendary myth, by roaming overspaces.
The land was free and the price was right.
Dakota on the wall is a white-robed woman, broad yet maidenly.
Such power in her hand as she hails the wagon man's family.
I see Indians that crawl through this mural that recalls ourhistory.
Who were the homestead wives?
Who were the gold rush brides?
Does anybody know?
Do their works survive their yellow fever lives in the pages theywrote?
The land was free, yet it cost their lives.
In miner's lust for gold, a family's house was bought and sold,piece by piece.
A widow staked her claim on a dollar and his name, sopainfully.
In letters mailed back home her Eastern sisters
they would moan as they would read accounts of
madness, childbirth, loneliness and grief.
