Rita Cantu: Music

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When I was a ranger in the Guadalupe National Park of west Texas, I often set up for evening programs at a campground in the shadow of Guadalupe Peak. That peak had been a beacon for weary travellers heading west, for centuries. It is also a sacred area to the Mescalaro Apache. Every evening I was out there giving a program, I felt the presence of Those Who Came Before. It was a powerful feeling to be "sharing the stage" with such a procession of people who had brought their own vision, yearnings, values, hopes and dreams to that special place. This song honors those spirits, and the spirit in all of us that drives us to search for new places and ways of being.

Ghosts of Yesterday
© 1989 Rita Cantu

Do you hear the lonesome sound of the wind in the mountains
as it whispers with the voices of the past?
You can see the shadows move, for they’re out there a walkin’,
and they’re riding on that coach down through the pass.

CHORUS:
And you know, they’re all here on the stage now, waitin’ for their curtain call,
and they’re whispering their wisdom to the actors of today.
If you listen carefully, you’ll hear their voices in the wind,
and see the faces of the ghosts of yesterday.

See the proud Mescalero, swift-riding Apache,
in the shadow of the mountains they are dancing, unafraid.
By the cool, desert springs they have camped for the winter,
but the cavalry is bringing in new ways.

CHORUS

Hear the bugle of the mail coach, its horses in a lather
from their 20-mile gallop down the Overland Trail.
The passengers are weary, but they’re eager to move westward
to this wild, frontier land, where nothing fails.

CHORUS

Soon the ranchers graze their herds in the mountains and the valleys,
and they build adobe houses here, beneath these desert skies.
And the children of their children are standing here among us,
looking closely in the shadows for a face they recognize.

CHORUS

Now the action moves too fast as we roll into the present
on a blacktop road the cars soon leave behind.
And the vision of the peak that once seemed to last forever
is just an image in the rear view mirror of your mind.

CHORUS:
And you know, they’re all here on the stage now, waitin’ for their curtain call,
and they’re whispering their wisdom to the actors of today.
If you listen carefully, you’ll hear their voices in the wind,
and see the faces of the ghosts of yesterday.

And they’re ridin’, one by one down through the pass …
And they’re ridin’, hand in hand, back to the past.