It must have shook those redwood timbers
I can hear my granddad say
When it echoed down the valley
On that clear October day
I was working as a gandy dancer
Two miles down the grade from Tunnel 13
Oh, and how my heart was racing
When we heard that engine blow
As we hurried up the crossties
Little did we know
In the dark of the tunnel, like night to the day
With the smell of gunpowder, in the shadow they lay
Like four warm stones in a mountain of time
From that unscheduled stop on the Siskiyou Line
We carried them down...
First time granddad told that story
Was the first I saw his tears
A man so full of laughter
It just flooded through the years
He said the way to keep your joy
Is to take your grief straight on
There were four gravestones from that mountain of time
And that unscheduled stop on the Siskiyou Line
We stood in the pews and we sang the refrain
'Cause there's something in song that speaks to pain
In Humboldt County, there's a redwood grove
That has stood for centuries
And in the shade of that sentient cathedral
He told this tale to me
Somewhere in that architecture
He must have heard the echo of Tunnel 13
It's just one song from a mountain of time
It was only one stop on the Siskiyou Line
Deep down in the grain, where history sings
How many stories, in two thousand rings?
We carry them down
I can hear my granddad say
When it echoed down the valley
On that clear October day
I was working as a gandy dancer
Two miles down the grade from Tunnel 13
Oh, and how my heart was racing
When we heard that engine blow
As we hurried up the crossties
Little did we know
In the dark of the tunnel, like night to the day
With the smell of gunpowder, in the shadow they lay
Like four warm stones in a mountain of time
From that unscheduled stop on the Siskiyou Line
We carried them down...
First time granddad told that story
Was the first I saw his tears
A man so full of laughter
It just flooded through the years
He said the way to keep your joy
Is to take your grief straight on
There were four gravestones from that mountain of time
And that unscheduled stop on the Siskiyou Line
We stood in the pews and we sang the refrain
'Cause there's something in song that speaks to pain
In Humboldt County, there's a redwood grove
That has stood for centuries
And in the shade of that sentient cathedral
He told this tale to me
Somewhere in that architecture
He must have heard the echo of Tunnel 13
It's just one song from a mountain of time
It was only one stop on the Siskiyou Line
Deep down in the grain, where history sings
How many stories, in two thousand rings?
We carry them down