These are green hills now
This is air you can breathe
And the small miners’ homes
Are all painted up and sheathed
But when I was a child
You know that wasn’t so
There was coal dust up above us
And coal dust down below
And the dark miners’ faces
Were as common as a penny
Now fifty years later
You won’t find any
These are green hills now

It’s a drive thru now
Another roadside attraction
Where Anne Murray is an icon
And Snowbird is a legend
But when I was a child
It was all black and white
Where the cameras waited
In the dark of the night
And I recall their anxious voices
As the draegermen went down
To search for their loved ones
So deep underground
These are green hills now

These are green hills now
But I remember those days
When the big bump came
And replaced the old ways
When the mine shut down
From the danger and the sorrow
And they built us a prison
Where I’ll go to work tomorrow
There’s a prison up above
There’s a prison down below
Where deep waters find the tunnels
Only miners used to know
These are green hills now

These are green hills now
This is air you can breathe
And the small miners’ homes
Are all painted up and sheathed
There are pictures on the walls
There are stories to be told
Where these green hills run
Over dark seams of coal
Some things are written in blood
Some things are written in stone
Like the names of dead soldiers
These miners far below
These are green hills now