Words and music © 2025 by Tom Maynard Tom Maynard: Vocal, guitars
Joe Clapp: Bass
Karen Sauer: Piano
Back in 2017, I spent a few months walking from Harper’s Ferry, WV to Crawford Notch, NH along the Appalachian Trail, a total of 820 miles. My intention was to become as “at home” in the woods as I was in my living room. I came off the trail with that goal unrealized, but the experience drove home for me the certainty that there are wild and untamed places that really should remain that way: free from human interference. Our egos can’t help but try to find ways to “improve” these spaces; they would be the better off if we could but leave them alone.
Verse 1:
Morning mist breathes from night’s shadows
Dawn’s brush paints in pastel hues
A solitary wren’s call echos
Wet-on-wet pale wash suffused
Mountains swim on mirror’s surface
Pond and pine scent fill the air
Alpen glow foretells day’s promise
What could be even half as fair?
Verse 2:
Would such deep and intense beauty
These tactile textures, sensual, sure
Exist without the eye to see them?
The ear to hear? A spirit pure?
Without the will to let it go
The sense to just leave well alone
There might not be this wild tableau
And Nature’s kingdom overthrown
Bridge:
There is no need to make it better
There’s nothing here to buy or sell
A pond needs only light to glitter
A mountain stands its ground, as well
Verse 3:
So we’ll let the mist meander
And leave the pond to spark and shine
And leave the mountain, in its splendor
To sincerely bide its time
For Beauty is intrinsic to them
Woven in the web of all
And our urge to improve them
Is more about how our needs call
Tom Maynard 