So We Name It Music Temple

Grateful Dead: Dark Star...12/11/72

Grateful Dead: Dark Star~~Morning Dew...Long Beach, CA. 12/15/72

Sing in me, Muse,
and through me
tell the story
of that man
skilled in all ways
of contending,
the wanderer,
harried for years on end,
after he plundered
the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.
He saw the townlands
and learned the minds
of many distant men,
and weathered many
bitter nights and days
in his deep heart at sea,
while he fought only
to save his life,
to bring his shipmates home.
--Homer
The Odyssey

12/26/79...(2nd set and encores)


We drop down two miles this morning, and go into camp again.
There is a low willow-covered strip of land along the walls on the east.
Across this we walk, to explore an alcove which we see from the river.
On entering, we find a little grove of box-elder and cottonwood trees;
and, turning to the right, we find ourselves in a vast chamber,
carved out of the rock. At the upper end
there is a clear, deep pool of water, bordered with verdure.
Standing by the side of this, we can see the grove at the entrance.
The chamber is more than two hundred feet high, five hundred feet long,
and two hundred feet wide. Through the ceiling, and on through the rocks
for a thousand feet above, there is a narrow winding skylight;
and this is all carved out by a little stream, which only runs
during the few showers that fall now and then in this arid country.
The waters from the bare rocks of the canyon,
gathering rapidly into a small channel, have eroded a deep side canyon,
through which they run, until they fall into the smaller end of this chamber.
The rock at the ceiling is hard, the rock below, very soft and friable;
and having cut through the upper harder portion down into the lower and softer, the stream has washed out these friable sandstones;
and thus the chamber has been excavated.

Here we bring our camp.
When Old Shady
sings us a song at night,
we are pleased to find
that this hollow
in the rock is filled
with sweet sounds.
It was doubtless made
for an academy of music
by its storm-born architect;
so we name it Music Temple.

--John Wesley Powell
journal entry for August 1, 1869

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARC AND JERRY GARCIA