This song shocked me (in a good way) when I heard it playing in my local "Tuesday Morning" store. It's so...nakedly sensual? I didn't expect that from a song recorded so long ago (I should know better by now...). All I remember about Johnny Cash is that my dad played some of his songs on guitar when I was a preschooler; but after hearing this, I know I need to take a closer look at the Man in Black.
To me the singer is saying that the pleasures of solitude and communing with nature are fine and good, but in the end he's a man and he needs the raw erotic joy of making love to the woman he treasures even more. The imagery he builds up of the outdoors and his relationship to the wilderness is beautiful, touching, and full of wonder, but then the refrain hits like a blow to the gut, making the joys of Nature seem pale and thin, no substitute for the richer, thicker pleasures of joining in "flesh and blood."
It's a paeon to Nature, ultimately, to human beings as creatures OF Nature, showing that what we call our "base" instincts are no more (and no less) than the purest expression of wonder in Nature that we can know. It shoves the visceral intesity of erotic love in your face, while simultaneously raising it to the highest of sacraments. It's quite remarkable.
This song shocked me (in a good way) when I heard it playing in my local "Tuesday Morning" store. It's so...nakedly sensual? I didn't expect that from a song recorded so long ago (I should know better by now...). All I remember about Johnny Cash is that my dad played some of his songs on guitar when I was a preschooler; but after hearing this, I know I need to take a closer look at the Man in Black.
To me the singer is saying that the pleasures of solitude and communing with nature are fine and good, but in the end he's a man and he needs the raw erotic joy of making love to the woman he treasures even more. The imagery he builds up of the outdoors and his relationship to the wilderness is beautiful, touching, and full of wonder, but then the refrain hits like a blow to the gut, making the joys of Nature seem pale and thin, no substitute for the richer, thicker pleasures of joining in "flesh and blood."
It's a paeon to Nature, ultimately, to human beings as creatures OF Nature, showing that what we call our "base" instincts are no more (and no less) than the purest expression of wonder in Nature that we can know. It shoves the visceral intesity of erotic love in your face, while simultaneously raising it to the highest of sacraments. It's quite remarkable.