I think it’s most apt to interpret “stranger to blue water” to mean “stranger to salt water”. I see it less about the type of water you’ve seen, than about being in coastal areas and the experiences you gain there. Lots of port cities don’t actually have “blue water”, but there you can encounter a lot of worldly people and knowledge that you wouldn’t in a mountain holler. (Great Lakes ports wouldn’t count as they don’t really lead anywhere more worldly or exotic than whatever port you left).
I might even go so far as to say “blue water” is necessarily farther than the coast, because in many places the water is brown, gray, or green as far as you can see from the shore. So in that sense, you haven’t really left home until you’ve boarded a boat (or plane) and gone some distance from shore, preferably to some other shore rather than touching blue water and going home.
I guess I interpret the song completely differently than everyone else.
Here’s the verse:
All my memories gather 'round her
Miner’s lady, stranger to blue water
Dark and dusty, painted on the sky
Misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye
I hear “blue water” as referring to clean water, in contrast to miners who only experience “dark and dusty” water. Or perhaps water like moonshine and teardrops.
I grew up in Ohio, and although my family took trips to the Great Lakes and mountains, we never visited the oceans. I didn’t see or touch the ocean until I was 29.
I just looked again, and it’s probably more accurate to say 15 feet. Our house is long and narrow, and the rooms facing the water are very close to the shore line (especially at high tide)
I’ve always interpreted ‘her’ as West Virginia; but I thought the miner’s lady was an actual person.
All my memories are of West Virginia. The miner’s wife who has never left the hollow, The hazy sky at sundown, The taste of moonshine. I weep to think of these things.
But your interpretation of the entire verse being a personification of the state makes perfect sense.
I grew up in Pennsylvania. We went to the shore (Maryland) every 2 years for family vacation - and the water there is always far more green than blue.
So, despite having seen the ocean frequently, I never saw BLUE water until I was about 30 and we visited Hawaii.
A few years back, we hosted college-age students from small towns in Quebec for 2-month stays. Two of them had never seen the ocean before (we remedied that). We met someone, when in Colorado decades ago, who had also never been to a coast.
All in all, unless you live relatively near an ocean, and you aren’t able / willing to make the journey, it’s not that hard to imagine.
I was born in Iowa and grew up in West Virginia. I wouldn’t say I was a complete stranger to blue water, since we did go to the beach a few times over the years, but other than a few rare visits I definitely wasn’t around ocean water much.
After college I moved to Baltimore (since WV’s economy was in the dumpster at the time and jobs were a-plenty in MD) so I lived pretty close to Chesapeake Bay for several years. Does the bay count as blue water? Maybe not since it’s a bay. And definitely not if we’re using the Navy definition.
When Mrs. Geek and I got married, instead of hiring a limo, we left by boat and went around the bay for a bit.
About 25 years ago we moved up in PA (near Gettysburg). Mrs. Geek and the Geeklings go to the beach every now and then, anywhere from Ocean City up to Rehoboth Beach, but I’m not much of a beach person so it has been probably a decade or so since I have seen the ocean.
The only time I have ever seen blue water according to the Navy definition is when I was in a boat crossing the English channel.
I’ve never lived more than 10 miles from the ocean (Pacific) and sometimes a lot closer than that. I’m not an inland kind of person.
I remember driving Sunset Blvd down to the ocean when I was in school. Sunset ran just north of the UCLA campus, so it was easy to just swoop and swerve down to the ocean. Once in high school, a friend and I ditched school and went to Malibu beach. We ran into a guy who was from Czechoslovakia (as it was then) shortly after the Velvet Revolution. He wanted to see the ocean, and he didn’t want to go home.
Coincidentally, Danoff and Nivert (neither of whom are from West Virginia) were in the Baltimore area when they came up with the idea for the song. From Wikipedia:
You’re not the only one. I also interpreted the phrase as referring to clean water, given its juxtaposition to the mining industry, which is not known for its devotion to ecological protection.
I grew up a couple of miles from the Irish sea in Cumbria; and I now live half an hour’s drive from the south coast of England. However…
For a while I lived (depending whether you go for tidal river, estuary, or open sea) about 65 miles from the sea. So what? Well, the furthest you can get from the sea in Britain is about 70 miles - so 65 is a pretty good effort.
I was under the impression that “blue water” referred to fresh water as opposed to oceans, but I see from other comments that this is wrong or at least far from universal.
Anyway, I guess my own experience is definitely strongly linked to the Great Lakes and not at all to oceans. Ocean coastal areas, incidentally, are unsurprisingly where a huge proportion of the world’s population lives. According to the UN, around 40% of the world population lives within 100 km of the ocean. I would have thought it would be even higher.
As for me, my only link to the ocean is that I was born in the area of the St. Lawrence Seaway, which famously links the Atlantic to the Great Lakes. I then seemed to have migrated upstream, and have lived my entire life within a short distance of one or another of the Great Lakes. Funny, I never really thought of my life in hydrological terms, but maybe I should get around more!
I was in historic Harpers Ferry, WV a few years ago, and a National Park Service ranger pointed out a riverside area where local lore had it that Denver had worked on the song. He immediately said he doubted it, though.
I’d never really dug into the lyrics to parse the direct from the metaphoric. The whole thing has always been a gauzy soft-focus paean to … something or other rural and pretty and simple. And somehow uniquely American Gothic.
