Yukon Air Crash

By Phil Ochs

It was way up in the north country,
in a land that few men ever know,
through the driving wind and the driving snow,
watch the travelers go,
one man one women in one little plane,
were California bound,
when a tree reached up,
and the tree pulled them down,
and the wind was the only sound

Chorus:
It's the law of the Yukon,
only the strong shall thrive,
only the weak shall parish away,
and only the fit shall survive.


And the wind was a howling through the trees,
it was '42 below,
and they sat, and they shivered,
and they wonderd why,
and their fears began to grow,
and the clear white snow was all around,
their master and their slave,
for the snow was their water,
and the snow was their food,
and the snow was their wating grave

(Chorus)

And it's 49 days in the freezing cold,
when each hour became a day,
49 days that tore at their souls,
when their lives were drifting away,
and 7 long weeks that came to pass,
when finally they were found,
but part of their souls remain in that cold,
with the snow that lies on the ground

(Chorus)

Notes:

Contributed by Luke Grossman.

Phil says "Here's the Yukon Plane Crash, about the couple that stayed alive in Alaska for 7 weeks. The chorus is based on a poem by Robert Service"