Red Dirt Road

 

Ridin’ on a red dirt road as true

As true as a line of longitude

Riding the regular swells of land

The car is like a boat at sea

 

A hundred years east from home
I’m on the prairie on my own

 

Ridin’ on a red dirt road

I am ridin’ on a red dirt road

Ridin’ on a red dirt road

I am ridin’ on a red dirt road

‘Cross eastern Montana

 

A warm westerly blows over the prairie

I hear it howl in the dry grass like surf

The ocean is hardly more solitary

Hardly more solitary than this empty country

 

A hundred years east from home
I’m on the prairie on my own

 

Ridin’ on a red dirt road

I am ridin’ on a red dirt road

Ridin’ on a red dirt road

I am ridin’ on a red dirt road

‘Cross eastern Montana

 

The surface of the land chopped as a rough sea

Sandstone outcrops, hollow combers of bleached clay

Tthe land is fissured with waterless creek beds

Ashwhite, littered with boulders
Brown cows nibbling at their shadows on the open range

 

A hundred years east from home
I’m on the prairie on my own

 

Ridin’ on a red dirt road

I am ridin’ on a red dirt road

Ridin’ on a red dirt road

I am ridin’ on a red dirt road

‘Cross eastern Montana

‘Cross eastern Montana

‘Cross eastern Montana

‘Cross eastern Montana

 

Words from the book "Bad Land" by Jonathan Raban used with kind permission of the author.