The Geographic North Pole Songtext / Lyric

The summer of 1974

was brutally hot in New York

and I kept thinking about how nice and icy it must be at the North Pole.

And then I though, “Wait a second, why not go?"

You know, like in cartoons

where they hang going to the North Pole on their door knobs and they just take off.



So I spent a couple of weeks preparing for the trip,

getting a hatchet, a huge backpack, maps, knives,

sleeping bags, lures and a three month supply of Banic,

a versatile high-protein paste

that can be made into flat bread, biscuits or cereal.



Now I had decided to hitch hike

and one day I just walked out onto Houstin Street,

weighing down seventy pounds of gear,

and stuck out my thumb.



— Going North? I asked the driver as I struggled into a station wagon.






After I got out of New York,

most of the rides were trucks until I reached the Hudson Bay

and began to hitch in small mail planes.

The pilots were usually guys who'd gone to Canada

to avoid the draft

or else embittered Vietnam vets

who never wanted to go home again.



Either way they always wanted to show off a few of their stunts.

We'd go swooping low along the rivers doing loop do loops and baby hueys.

And they'd drop me off at an airstrip.

“There'll be another plane by here couple of weeks; see ya; good luck.



I never did make it all the way to the geographic pole;

it turned out to be a restricted area

and no one was allowed to fly in or even over it.

I did get within a few miles of the magnetic pole though.

So it wasn't really that disappointing.

I entertained myself in the evenings,

cooking or smoking,

and watching the blazing light

of the huge Canadian sunsets

as they turned the lake into fire.



Later I lay on by back,

looking up at the Northern lights

and imagining there'd been a nuclear holocaust

and that I was the only human being left in all of North America

and what would I do then.



And then, when these lights went out,

I stretched out on the ground,

watching the stars as they turned around

and their enormous silent wheels.



I finally decided to turn back because of my hatchet.

I'd been chopping some wood and the hatchet flew out of my hand on the upswing.

And I did what you should never do when this happens:

I looked up to see where it had gone

and it came down — fffooo — just missing my head

and I thought,

“My God! I could be working around here with a hatchet embedded in my skull

and I'm ten miles from the airstrip.

And nobody in the whole world knows where I am."



Daddy Daddy, it was just like you said

Now that the living outnumber the dead

Where I come from it's a long thin thread

Across an ocean. Down a river of red

Now that the living outnumber the dead

Speak my language