I live in Toronto and work up north in the summer. I go back-and-forth a few times each season so I, too, am familiar with the area, with it's dynamite walls and it's lack of street lighting.
An interesting fact about these dynamite walls: every year people keep building small Inukshuk statues on top of them across large stretches of the highway. I have no idea why though (perhaps marking traveled territory). If any one knows why poeple keep doing this I'd really like to know.
Anyways, back to the song. I think the songs about about how we're all so focussed on our jobs and getting places in life (both, figuratively and literally) that we don't really take the time to look at nature.
The driver in the song is in the presence of mountains but all (s)he's concerned with is driving on the road. Hayden suggests the closest we ever get to visiting National Parks is looking at their road signs.
I think he's saying that these days so much emphasis is but on our jobs/progress in defining who we are that anything which distracts us from this task (e.g. smelling the flowers) is a wast of time. In reality this isn't really true, but many of us will cling to the idea just so it feels like we're making real progress ("it doesn't matter what any of us is looking for, we'll never find it because it's not even there").
It reminds me a lot of the Grandaddy song, "The Group Who Couldn't Say" which is about a group of white-collars who take a trip to the forest and find themselves.
I live in Toronto and work up north in the summer. I go back-and-forth a few times each season so I, too, am familiar with the area, with it's dynamite walls and it's lack of street lighting.
An interesting fact about these dynamite walls: every year people keep building small Inukshuk statues on top of them across large stretches of the highway. I have no idea why though (perhaps marking traveled territory). If any one knows why poeple keep doing this I'd really like to know.
Anyways, back to the song. I think the songs about about how we're all so focussed on our jobs and getting places in life (both, figuratively and literally) that we don't really take the time to look at nature.
The driver in the song is in the presence of mountains but all (s)he's concerned with is driving on the road. Hayden suggests the closest we ever get to visiting National Parks is looking at their road signs.
I think he's saying that these days so much emphasis is but on our jobs/progress in defining who we are that anything which distracts us from this task (e.g. smelling the flowers) is a wast of time. In reality this isn't really true, but many of us will cling to the idea just so it feels like we're making real progress ("it doesn't matter what any of us is looking for, we'll never find it because it's not even there").
It reminds me a lot of the Grandaddy song, "The Group Who Couldn't Say" which is about a group of white-collars who take a trip to the forest and find themselves.