One morning last week, I found myself driving Route 2 along the winding Miller’s River. The sun was a pale disc peeking through wisps of gauze. Mist rose over the rolling water, soaring above October’s oranges and reds.
Despite my destination — Boston — it seemed as if I were westbound, crossing the Appalachians, headed for a better country, a country I used to know. Moved by the scenery, I flipped my iPod to my favorite American song. You know it. Above the din of our lives, you can hear it.
“O Shenandoah,
I long to see you
Away, you rollin’ river…”
Forget all the would-be anthems written before or since. This land may be my land, but lately it hasn’t felt like it. Amber waves of grain must be out there somewhere, but this fall, dirges have doused my soul. I haven’t felt at home on the range in years. And as for the dawn’s early light, who among us has seen it lately? But this song…
“O Shenandoah
I’ll not deceive you
Away, I’m bound away…”
On that morning, for that moment, the song spanned the centuries. And as if bound across the wide Missouri, I drove deeper into a country I knew again.
“O Shenandoah
I love your daughter
Away, you rollin’ river…”
Route 2 took me along the river, diving into shadowed gorges, climbing above quilts of birch and maple that said “autumn” better than any calendar or crisp morning. The chorus swelled and the song ended, only to be played again with the flip of a finger.
“For her I’d cross
The rolling waters
Away…”
I’ve always loved the song, always teared up. What I love most about “Shenandoah” is that no one knows who wrote it. We don’t know where in America it was written, nor can we even be certain who or what this Shenandoah is.
Shenandoah is a gorgeous river valley in Virginia, but the “wide Missouri” does not flow there. Shenandoah was a Native-American chief, but the song makes no mention of natives. The song is “Traditional,” its aching beauty proving that tradition knows us — knows our longing and loneliness, knows our dreams, knows how dreams can shift into a minor key.
And because no one knows who wrote it, “Shenandoah” owes its power to everyone who sang, or sings it.
Route 2 bound me away from the Miller’s River and on toward Boston. Fellow Americans zipped past at deadly speeds. Some were listening to the news. Others had their own internal music, but none heard the same song, let alone a song so lyrical, so lovely, so American as “Shenandoah.”
I listened to the song perhaps 20 times, playing and re-playing all the versions on my iPod — by Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, the violin version from Ken Burns’ “Civil War.” I couldn’t stop listening. And long before I reached Boston, “Shenandoah” had become not a song but a salvation, a balm for all that ails us these days.
As a nation, we share “Shenandoah,” and many other songs, traditions, histories. But we have stopped listening to them and to each other. We prefer the shouting, the scandals, and lately, the slime. Just when we should be singing, we are gossiping, insulting, accusing.
It should not take a fall morning or a haunting chorus to suggest better avenues, a better people, and what our best president called “the better angels of our nature.”
For the next few weeks, a strange, disjointed song will be stuck in our heads. But when it finally plays out, we could do no better than to listen to our old songs, songs whose author is unknown, which means we all write them again, each time we sing or listen. You know these songs. Above the din, you can hear them.
“O Shenandoah
I long to hear you
Away, you rollin’ river…”
Bruce Watson can be reached at breadandroses22@yahoo.com.