Terrapin Station - Live at Hartford, CT, May 28, 1977

A terrapin is a North American sea turtle, as opposed to a tortoise (freshwater) or a true turtle (saltwater). The Webster's dictionary entry is "Any of various edible North American web-footed turtles living in fresh or brackish water" - this includes the diamond back turtle. There is a legend that the Earth rests on the back of a turtle or tortoise. The turtle now appears even as a symbol of the entire universe (e.g. in China).

Robert Hunter wrote the words, Jerry Garcia wrote the music. Unbeknownst to the other, the musicians were both inspired by a rare lightning storm that lit up the San Francisco Bay Area one evening. Dennis McNally, the Dead's publicist and biographer, told the story in a 2021 episode of the Songfacts Podcast. "Jerry lived in Marin, which is to the west. He had been in the East Bay and he's driving home on the Richmond San Rafael Bridge, and there's a wild storm out to his right on the Northern end of the bay - lightning and just a great, wonderful storm and suddenly he hears a tune in his head, and it's the basic riff of 'Terrapin.' He hears the whole tune in his head," he said. "'Terrapin' is, not just because they added a string orchestra in the record, really a small symphony and it's very complex, and he's like, 'This is something.' He jams on the gas and he gets home as fast as he can to turn on a tape recorder to start to get the essential facts of the tune down. He probably fiddled with it for a day, I'm not sure, and after a day or two, he went over to see Hunter. As it happened, Hunter lived on the shore of that Bay and had been sitting, watching the same storm and when he was watching the same storm, he was inspired to start writing. He started with an old English folk tune called 'The Lady of Carlisle' and wrote eight solid typewritten pages of lyrics. Jerry came over and said, 'Wow, I got a good tune,' and Hunter said, 'Yeah, I got some good lyrics.' And Jerry looks at him and he takes page 1, page 2 and half of page 8. So, he took the lyrics, virtually unchanged, and taught the band."

Hunter's new journal of September 24, 2001, contains this entry: "After dark fell, I sat alone on the roof, fifteen stories high, of a building in Soho commanding a panoramic and unobstructed view of the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan and the lights of the bridges. I had my guitar in hand and felt moved to sing "Terrapin Station" to the City. While I sang, rain began falling - I stood and edged around to the other side of the roof, still singing, to the corner of the roof facing the World Trade Center, some fifteen blocks away, where the sky is bright with floodlight illuminating the work of the excavation crew. A great plume of smoke continues to rise from the site of the devastation. As I sang, a powerful wind blew up very suddenly - wind so strong it threatened to rip my guitar out of my hands - reminding me of the storm in which I first composed the words I now sang. I wondered if I was involved in some kind of sacrilege, singing like this in the face of all that had gone down - the wind roaring increasingly louder and stronger, as though filled with spirits, as though trying to blow me over, make me stop. I kept singing until the end, repeating the "hold away despair," expressing all the sorrow I felt for the lost loved ones and for the healing of this magnificent and resilient City. I hope it helped. Helped me, anyway."