on board

Description

I like train journeys. They give us an opportunity to really appreciate how the destination is reached in time and space, rather than just the abrupt change wrought by a jet landing in a new location. A lot of things can be during the hours on board: eating, sleeping, walking, and ... writing: The AMTRAK train was looming closer and closer. Alas. Feeling my excitement rising, I readjusted my backpack and fished out the crumpled ticket in my pocket. I boarded the train, and, after being directed to the right section by an AMTRAK employee, took my seat beside the window in the back corner of the coach-class car. I surveyed the cabin, curious about my companions for the next 8 hours. An announcement was made over the train’s loudspeaker to inform the passengers that departure time would be in fifteen minutes. So I did the first thing I always do the minute I’m settled on trains and planes: pulling out the table and resting my notebook and a pen on it. “334PM: Boarded train. Vamos!”, I scribbled on the the page under “2nd May 2013”. Then, feeling a warm fatigue creeping in, I closed my eyes, the engines reverberating to life as the train took me further and further away from Buffalo. It first looped around a small bend, straightened out, and chugged on through abandoned factories and small dusty shacks. I leaned my head against the window and derived a little comfort in the white-noise hum of the train coasting along the tracks. While pausing to stare through my window, where the the tips of the rolling trees met the crimson red of the sky, I thought about how the faces of my colleagues at my old company were already blurring in mind; it seemed aeons ago that I had quit my job, a distant memory of Styrofoam coffee cups, meaningless meetings with superfluous piecharts. My weekends had become the sad story of the same people doing the same things, rehashing the same stories, and chasing the same old thrills. The monotony of it was too suffocating, and I was glad to be on the move again. As I gazed blankly at the flat and undifferentiated sights out the window, different people got on and off the cabin; the colors of the sky changing a shade of red as night falls, and slowly, the train became a glowing cocoon, shooting across the endless American plains like a lit up rocket. Sometimes, like rare reunions of old-time friends , a train going in other direction would suddenly appear alongside my window, and I got a blurry mosaic of moonlit metal gliding past me. Then the tail of the other train whipped past the head of my train, and our togetherness was over, as we rode alone on the tracks again.