Jul

The Journey as Destination: 48 Hour Train Trek Across America

Posted by mermaid Published in Entries

dining-car

“What better way to start 2008, than flying forward, in motion, across America?” I tell the tattoo artist. He pauses—the first time I’ve seen him do so today—and then, “To Arizona to Los Angeles from there you could end up in Australia who knows but just keep going that’s the key…” he talks in one run-on sentence as if the world allots no time for commas.

I met Jeff when boarding The Sunset Limited on New Year’s Eve—America’s first transcontinental train, as advertised by the old yellowing poster in the station. The line runs from New Orleans to Los Angeles, with small stops along the way to drop off passengers, pick up new ones, and take on supplies. I was alone, traveling for the sheer sake of motion—to feel the land tumble beneath me in hope that it might also tumble my life back together. I had spent a good part of the past year in a series of small, but fierce, existential crises, going from college graduation to teaching surfing to tutoring the SAT to a public relations job and then, finally, unemployment. I thought going, just going, where the destination was the journey, might set me straight, might shake me back into order.

bridge

“Did you hear that?” Jeff grabs my shoulder and starts shaking me. “The conductor says we’re making a quick stop in Lafayette that’s like ten minutes from where my ex girlfriend lives oh my god I didn’t know they stopped there I’m going to call her and tell her to bring me cigarettes…” Jeff was alone also, having broken up with aforementioned ex-girlfriend one hour earlier. He was moving to Arizona to study Native American art for his tattoo repertoire. She was staying in Louisiana with her two children from another marriage. As much as they loved one another, neither was in a place to make allowances.

Jeff frantically starts dialing his cell and leaving crazed messages with lots of “I love yous” as I look out the windows of the Sunset Limited’s observation car, a part of the train made entirely of glass. Large plush lounge chairs face the floor-to-ceiling windows so you can sit and watch the land unravel before your eyes like a wild, bright, movie. We are still in Louisiana, just thirty minutes into our journey; the winter sun makes the cypress trees and swamps and levees stand out marvelously.

“Okay she’s going to meet me there!” he cries. “Wow I never thought I was going to see her again this is sweet.” We roll on and finally make the stop. He leaps out of the train and she instantly comes running towards him from the parking lot. They pause— a gateless fence stands between them, the only accessible entrance way lying at the far end of the platform. The conductor blows his whistle—two minutes to departure. He grabs her hand through the fence, pushes his mouth through the black metal bars, and they kiss. In an instant they become a tangle of fingers, hands, and lips, all reaching desperately through the bars, trying to make as much contact as possible before we’re gone.

desert

When Jeff comes back in the train he is all smiles, two red dents streaking his forehead from the force of the fence against his face. “That was cool!” And in the next moment we’re off, through the rest of Louisiana and on into Texas, the last hours of the year effortlessly rolling by. Through valleys, rivers, and streams we fly; past abandoned desert airports, across small towns where the cattle are skinny and trash lines the tracks, I rise from my seat and press my face to the glass and think Is this really America? Is this how we live? And on and on, snaking through burnt mountains that rise so high that I am sure they have scratched the clouds in the sky.

Finally I arrive in Los Angeles on January 2nd, disoriented by the sudden solidness of earth. There is something so dazzling about seeing the world through a teetering train, horizon lines you thought flat suddenly flailing about the sky. When I step off the platform after 48 hours of non-stop window viewing, the mountains and ocean loom heavy around me, they feel so weighted, so plain, so boring.

Uncertainty—that same force that sent me reeling in 2007, I was craving now, in 2008. Even though it is unnerving, uncertainty is also tender and right and true, and I saw this now, from the beautiful motion of the train, the gorgeous knot of love between Jeff and his girlfriend.

As I make my way to the baggage claim, I am hopeful that the new year will unfurl exactly how I want it to: in a dazzling, beautiful, mess.