now we arrive at the next "chapter": this beautiful piece. the narrator seems to be from milk lake originally, but there is evidence to suggest that she left much earlier, (see: "good intentions paving company," in which she and her lover take a trip back to her "old country" and it completely freaks her out, for lack of better words). she has left her lover, and gone back to california. joanna's from nevada city, as we know, so she does have personal ties to the state. the narrator, however, probably decided to go someplace rural, and does not seem to be familiar with so many things as shown in this verse: "when i came into my land, i did not understand neither dry rot, nor the burn pile, nor the bark-beetle, nor the dry well, nor the black bear." in other songs she mentions all her "finery", etc. she's clearly not quite cut out for this life: she is not afraid of anything, "save the life that here awaits."
i think she fled to a new place not only because she and her lover (temporarily) ended things, but also because she had some things to deal and work through on her own. she wanted to face the issues in her past that made her hesitant to go back to her home. i believe that she does not end up really facing them, as a life in california is the only thing that scares her now.
in this part of the narrative, she turns to drinking in her sorrowful state. although she knows that her former lover was the one that chose to take separate paths, she wants him to come see her in california. in her heart, however, i believe that she knows he does not plan to, and she justifies this by saying that he "cannot come and see [her]." later, she realizes how much she still wants to love him, and she "wait[s] all night" for him to show, even though she knows that he will not.
now we arrive at the next "chapter": this beautiful piece. the narrator seems to be from milk lake originally, but there is evidence to suggest that she left much earlier, (see: "good intentions paving company," in which she and her lover take a trip back to her "old country" and it completely freaks her out, for lack of better words). she has left her lover, and gone back to california. joanna's from nevada city, as we know, so she does have personal ties to the state. the narrator, however, probably decided to go someplace rural, and does not seem to be familiar with so many things as shown in this verse: "when i came into my land, i did not understand neither dry rot, nor the burn pile, nor the bark-beetle, nor the dry well, nor the black bear." in other songs she mentions all her "finery", etc. she's clearly not quite cut out for this life: she is not afraid of anything, "save the life that here awaits."
i think she fled to a new place not only because she and her lover (temporarily) ended things, but also because she had some things to deal and work through on her own. she wanted to face the issues in her past that made her hesitant to go back to her home. i believe that she does not end up really facing them, as a life in california is the only thing that scares her now.
in this part of the narrative, she turns to drinking in her sorrowful state. although she knows that her former lover was the one that chose to take separate paths, she wants him to come see her in california. in her heart, however, i believe that she knows he does not plan to, and she justifies this by saying that he "cannot come and see [her]." later, she realizes how much she still wants to love him, and she "wait[s] all night" for him to show, even though she knows that he will not.