MUFFIN MOUNTAIN

I discovered a new take on This Land Is Your Land by Woody Guthrie. Last week I was speaking about how I wrote my novel Falling Through the Cracks at the Sonoita, Arizona Rotary Club. They begin their meeting with a pledge to the flag and then they sing a song. Pastor Chuck Carlson had adapted the rousing folksong to our land, the Patagonia-Sonoita-Elgin area. So we sang:

This land is your land, this land is my land
From Patagonia, to the Biscuit Mountain,
From Parker Canyon to the Empiritas,
This land is made for you and me.

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me a mountain skyline
I saw below me a golden valley.
This land was made for you and me.
[Chorus]

I’ve roamed and rambled, I’ve followed my footsteps
To the awesome vastness of our diamond grasslands
And all around me the wind keeps saying
This land was made for you and me.
[Chorus]

What fun! You could write an adaptation for the region where you live, too. That’s the essence of folk music.

And the Biscuit Mountain is a favorite landmark of mine, so I was glad others feel the same. Only I persist in calling it the “Muffin Mountain.” When artist Laura Bock, daughter of my friends Jane and Carl Bock, was a little girl, she called it the Muffin Mountain. It looks way more like a muffin than a biscuit (note the well-rounded top). Her father told her it was called Biscuit Mountain because cowboys were more likely to eat a biscuit than a muffin. That’s true, but I stand loyal to the truth of Laura, who is now a woman with children of her own. I wonder what she remembers of the Muffin Mountain.

This land is our land. We get to call it what we like and sing about it.

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