Running down the muddy road
A hundred miles from hope
Dangling from a banyan tree
I see a length of rope
Behind me is a tiger
And a killer with a knife
One wants me for supper
And the other wants my life
I got no choice but to grab
The rope and start to climb
The situation here is such
The choice was never mine
Hand by hand I pull my body
From the mucky ground
Up into the sunshine
Where the birds are flying round
I just keep on climbing ’cause
There’s nothing else to do
My hands are getting tired
But my spirit pulls me through
Don’t know if the tree is high
Or if the clouds are low
Pretty soon I’m looking down
A hundred miles below
The earth is spinning blue and green
Beneath my dizzy eyes
But I leave caution to the faint
And reason to the wise
I see another climber and
I think it could be you
Climbing up a length of rope
Where stars come shining through
Was it hope of freedom
Or panic born of fear
Sent you climbing for your life
Up in the stratosphere?
I got no fear of falling
And I got no fear to fly
I believe my soul will live
Although my body die
Maybe I am right in that
And maybe I am wrong
I just keep on climbing
And sometimes I make a song
This is not the way I chose
The way has chosen me
Dangling to the muddy road
Beneath the banyan tree
Words by Robert Hunter
Music by Mickey Hart and Bob Weir
A tree native to South and Southeast Asia, with branches that send shoots out that grow downward, eventually rooting in the soil to form secondary trunks. It grows higher than one hundred feet, and as it forms secondary trunks, it becomes impossible, often, to tell which was the original trunk. A single tree eventually resembles a forest, with circumferences up to hundreds of yards.
First performance by The Dead: August 4, 2004, at the Ford Pavilion in Scranton, Pennsylvania.