Comfort Zone

Yesterday I finished the Empire Builder, completing the remaining distance of the trip from Minneapolis to Chicago in the morning and afternoon. Through the Cascades and Glacier National Park, back in late March, it was unconscionable to close my eyes or spend too much time writing and miss the last vestiges of boreal. I awaited new scenery beyond Union Station in Chicago.

Somehow, a different “Midwest” awaited me when we began to clack through Indiana and Ohio. I’m unapologetic that I missed most of this region overnight as filler in-between Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland.

Washington, DC lied ahead of me. After a fairly easy trip from Chicago to Union Station, transfers from the Capitol Limited to the Red Line to the Green line went smoothly and now I’ve arrived to start a political position. A lack of writing and lots of separation between sensibility and ideas made me restless, so I took off for the midterm election season.

Before doing so, I had a lame-duck week to spend in Duluth in transition. It can be an interesting segue in life of counting down to a moment yet retaining much of the daily routine before the time comes to actually move. The pages had been filled, so to speak, with my observations on residential construction and coffee shop work.

I made sure I enjoyed a cask stout at the Brewhouse where I was puzzled at the natural progression of age and status. I purchased the train tickets, figured out some money. Mowed the lawn. Walked in the woods. Ran errands to the mall, and watched the other humans watch me look out of place. Watched some tennis. Enjoyed a meal with the family. Oiled up the boots. Picked vegetables, baked bread.

On the train, though, with fall flying at me and leaves beginning to fall, I accept that being out of a comfort zone is at times comfortable in itself. More to come.

Travel: American West

There were some, those being identified goals, for the trip back, coinciding with the beauty of slow travel to a destination, this time with 120 volts of power in each seat. Without laptop death, I’m able to finish coding the manuscript and edit a thirty page distinction paper.

The other two goals on the list: rest, scenery.

A month has gone by, 22 seems alright so far, preference given to even numbers for some reason and waking up absolutely refreshed in Glacier National Park. The train is coming to a stop soon; I’m lost in the sunshine, a novelty - the familiar mountains of the Rockies in the distance and Montana that hasn’t changed in making people like myself happy. The plentiful blue sky, as well, azure, brown shrubs, the High Plains and I have found peace with my dear brother and the coulees.

Hundreds, maybe a thousand or so, take this route everyday, passing through Shelby, MT where the wheat crop is just beginning. What do other travelers of this trip take note of? Their companions? A relationship with God? This trip is seasonal, maybe once-every ten years, but the fourwheelers, brown rolling hills and valleys hiding some of the trailer homes will be there in the fall and the people will be awaiting the trains to clear the tracks to carry on with their lives.

It’s the American West in spring for me – a wonderful first – yet it looks about the same brown I saw passing through this summer.

Those who know, seasoned train travelers, they must be taking note of changes and different characters they’ve met this trip on the Empire Builder. For me, the sensation of trains when you come to a stop -- but cannot tell without looking down at the ground for verification -- if you’re still moving or not. The train has been the slow reentry back to the States, probably best, as was the primer to the cultural civility of Canadian VIA rail, priming me for Vancouver.

The first visible roosters are spotted amongst the land’s indentations, filled in with snow. Windblown into ditches, and into Malta, MT we come. On the north side it appears that it is just a big golf course we’ve been seeing- the sand dunes as pockets of snow – to my right, south, the magnificent edge of the Badlands.

Thoughts, not observations, are building today as I work on finishing my typing. The last note of the journey reminds me to watch the sunset on the prairie.

Canada 2010: Travel: British Columbia

It has finally come to pass that people are starting to converse, starting in Jasper.

Word makes its way around the train quickly that I am an American volunteering at the Olympics.

As the train reboards (note the elk), I’m approached by one of the two people who were speaking Spanish earlier in the afternoon in the observation car. He asks me about my visa situation and trying to work at the Olympics as well – we make plans to talk after the train has boarded.

Traveling with Nathalie, his Colombian girlfriend, the two have come from New York City via Toronto. He just graduated from NYU – he had been giving tours on bike of the city to tourists. She works in human rights advocacy – studying the impacts the drug trade has on women refugees in neighboring countries to her own Colombia.

It is also my first experience with Australians who aren’t just “Australians,” – it was time to start working on my geography, after all. One is from Perth, two are from Brisbane.

J.R and Ray, I finally record their names – the conductors aboard the #1, The Canadian.

The first freight train in a while, there seems to be a relationship between the amount of freight trains and the conversation level people in the economy class have. Talking with other people is nice – a young batch got on in Jasper, most are Australians traveling from Australia to Vancouver to Banff, then to Jasper, then back to Vancouver, then to South America; the Aussies travel in funny ways.

I come up with a tentative title for my novel (The Lab: Inside America’s Knowledge Production Factories) on the train as I finished coding it today and I am extremely pleased…We’re headed towards Kamloops, BC.

When we arrive for a short break, lights shimmer on the hillside, it is beautiful, I’m reminded of Duluth for the first time. Moving on, it turned dark and mysterious as we’re heading into the BC interior – no idea where we’re at, truly.

I think finally, now, I don’t know really, the whole thing of the train is finally realizing itself for me.

To meet these people; I become such fast friends with them.

Louis and Nathalie, I share some salami and whatever meager things I have in my carry-on with them; they pour me a gourd of herba mate at nine pm, telling me not to expect to sleep anytime soon, I experience mild euphoria, finding a brief window of heightened focus of the texture of my hand but then it is gone.

We’re sitting in the lounge, below the observation car. It is a party; we’re all train friends now. Sharing music, food, experience, plans, stories, philosophy until bedtime.