To Ride by Train Is Divine
As the train glides down its narrow tracks, just inches from the coast, the sunset, the ocean, the expanse of land and sea brim with a natural, diamond-like sheen. The ocean reflects glimmering light, as though the rays were sourced from just below its surface, percolating and dancing in vivid synchronization. The entirety of Big Sur and the California coast cannot be seen, but felt—the window of the train car is massive, and even the roof of the car is tiled in glass—look up, and you see the clear blue sky, while the faintest of clouds drift lazily in and out of your view.
I know how I sound—a bit romantic, a bit tender in the description of what could be almost any train ride, going to and from almost anywhere near water. But to romanticize the occasion, to find solace and poetry in the journey before me, is precisely the point.
The interior of the car, that is, the Amtrak Coastal Starlight, which runs North/South from Seattle all the way down to Los Angeles, is not romantic. It has the appeal of a very nice jail cell. The silver doors that connect each of the cars at both ends creak and crack when they move, and slam shut with the permanence of prison bars. Like prison bars, at some point, I am told, you do get used to the clang.
Also, everywhere in the car, there is metal—metal floors, metal seats, the predictable high-pitched squeal of metal slicing and scraping as the undercarriage trudges along its pathway. The bathrooms, too, are all metal, and the toilet is stainless steel—even in the bathroom, the anonymous, efficient style of the prison cell could double as the motif. Everything is old. Everything is cruddy, rickety, loud, and vibrating. But within this unavoidable ruckus, these hard edges, there is a noticeable calm.
It is just past sunset on the Coastal Starlight’s journey. The lights have been slightly dimmed in the car, and has per habit, I have no intention on returning to my assigned seat—some veterans of the Amtrak system like me prefer to spend the entire trip at the restaurant style booths of the viewing car. The viewing car is a communal area, with large open windows and where people come to sit and to gather, have a snack, and take in the beauty of the American landscape.
But if you were me, you plant yourself in the booth, with scattered papers and notepads all strewn about. Too, there are remnants of cocktails and snacks that I have hardly finished, empty cups, wrappers, etc. To indulge the prison motif once again, I would appear as an inmate who seemed to be here long before anyone else, and whose journey will continue long after you have arrived at your destination. And it’s probably true, as my journey began in Los Angeles, and will not end until Portland, Oregon—a 29-hour train ride. Fine by me, as I just so happen to have a lot on my mind. But on every journey I have ever taken by train, I find this to be the case.
For the length of any journey, there is that calm I mentioned. The train glides cooly through the air—speeds up a bit at times, it seems, slows down in more dense, crowded areas. The rattling of the cars is not as intrusive as it may seem at first; in fact, the constant hum and rattle can provide a cushion to dampen even the most jittery of nerves, the thoughts with the sharpest edges. This does not prevent rumination, but allows for it.
Most of the debacles of my life involve a sudden, intense exit. When the carpet is ripped out from beneath me, I usually find myself on a train. Outbound from San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles, and Folsom, I have racked up dozens of these journeys. And every trip, there is an exit and a return—a return to the self, to the quiet, to the ever-changing landscape that drifts by each window pane. Within every window pane, an exit, every window pane, an entry.
To take to the land and sea by train is not only a cause for celebration, but a reacquaintance with the self—a new self, an evolving self—a self that is shedding its skin right there in the viewing cart. In the chaos of our lives, and the general madness of these ever-passing years, we owe it to ourselves to seek out moments of solace, of rumination, for our own therapeutic need, our own respite from the day to day. Day to day—those days we refer to that are often so lost, they cease to distinguish themselves from one another.
Indistinguishable too, is each hour of the ride. The hours melt into one another; the morning into the afternoon, the evening into the night, etc. With this evolution, the destination closer, epiphanies, dialogues, regrets, tenderness, and even anger are churned and mashed and inspected over.
When the thoughts are heavy and too much, you become grateful for the view. When you reach an epiphany about your current plight or curiosity, it is followed by either laughter or sobbing—the kind of sobbing that one attempts to fight, with no use, when in public. These revelations are done within the beauty and magnificence of the American landscape. The land cradles you in this way, provides a space to absorb any steam, any bubbling frustration.
The modern train ride through America is not the industry it once was—but it is an important one, at least to me.
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
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