Carry on, my Zephyr

“Railways are irresistible bazaars, stalking along perfectly level no matter what the landscape, improving your mood with speed….if a train is large and comfortable you don’t even need a destination.” Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar

***

I boarded Amtrak’s California Zephyr in Emeryville, California a week before Christmas with a mixture of excitement, anxiety, and guilt. Thirty-five hours of train travel to spirit me home for the holidays.

Thomas the Tank Engine initiated me into the world of trains. As a boy, I spent endless days constructing wooden train tracks in the basement with my brother. Leaning over the toddler-sized particle board table, we constructed elaborate systems of turntables, sidings, and circular tracks, shunting little wooden cars together with tiny magnets. Trains equated to endless possibility and the ability to create worlds.

And, of course, there was the train to the terminals at the Denver airport. Every trip back East to visit family, we raced each other down the escalator following the maze of airport security to ensure a spot on the platform closest to the front of the train. When the doors slid open we rushed onto the seat at the front, swiveling on the ledge to face the front window, taking charge of the train in our imaginations. We urged the train to Terminal A and beyond, the pinwheels on the concrete walls whirred as we zoomed by. The twinkle lights danced, and we controlled it all. The sterility and impersonal nature of the following plane ride never matched those precious seconds driving the train.

The Polar Express, The Little Engine that Could…trains played a magical part of my childhood. As an adult, this fondness for trains remains.[1] There is a quaint linearity of train travel, a pre-ordained certainty of where the track leads. Travel in two dimensions. Cars are pedestrian forms of daily travel, the pack mule of getting around. Planes are siloed tubes providing impersonal teleportation from A to B accompanied by a fun-sized bag of pub mix (sans peanuts, of course).

Walking into the Emeryville station, I smiled wistfully under my mask as I remembered other train travels in my life. The magic of the Narrow Gauge to Silverton, the grandeur of the Denali Star. The crinkles at the corners of my eyes faded as I entered the station lobby. Worry and guilt rushed to the fore. Dozens of people lounged in chairs staring at their phones. I wasn’t about to break out the tape measure, but six feet seemed a bit generous for the distance between most folks. Most travelers wore masks but the hungry and communication starved shed the mask for a breakfast sandwich or phone call.

I scurried through the station to loiter on the platform.

Bouncing on my toes, I focused on the journey to come. Anxiety and guilt tugged at the back of my mind. Over 300,000 Americans perished thus far from the pandemic. The San Francisco government issued a shelter-in-place order. Dr. Fauci, the demigod of epidemiology, urged the country not to travel over the holidays. And there I stood on a platform, comforted in my own rationalization of a negative test, a private room on the train, and my own self-proclamations of caution.

I knew that, no matter how small the chance of conveying the virus, this trip was an inherently selfish act. And there I was reminiscing about Thomas the Tank Engine and looking forward to reading travel essays.

Momentarily distracting me from my guilt, the California 6 Zephyr rolled into the station on schedule. The dull metallic sheen of the coach and sleeping cars blending into the concrete station and grey skyline. The train looked tired, a bit past its prime. Or maybe I just noticed the wear more, trying to tie appearance to a quaint mode of travel.

Either way, as the train slowed to a stop, I tried to contain my excitement and maintain six feet of separation from others while making my way to the sleeping cars.

Reggie, the attendant checking folks into the sleepers, greeted me with an elbow bump and a mask flashing “Happy Holidays” in alternating light up letters. Glancing at my reservation, he accused me jocularly, “shouldn’t you be in Seattle?”

Fumbling for an obligatory witty response to another Russell Wilson quip, I chuckled. “Taking some time off for holidays.”

The corners of his eyes wrinkled, “Car 30, room 11. Here let me help you.” He snatched up my suitcase and spirited it up the stairs, beckoning me to follow.

Roomette number 11 in car 30 was up the steps and to the left, just beyond the luggage rack and catacorner to the stairs that led up to the second floor. Reggie dropped my bag, gestured to the room and promised to be back as he hustled back to the door to greet my fellow travelers.

Roomette meant a small, boxy cabin, with a satisfyingly solid sliding glass door and latch. The blue cloth cushions reminded me of airplane upholstery. The folding tray table as well. I would find the bathroom brought the same quality — little levers for hot and cold, the suction of the toilet, the dim lighting. I had the distinct feeling that the space felt outdated when it was new, a couple of decades ago.

But for a day and a half trip by myself, the space was perfect. My own travel cocoon that avoided eighteen of driving over the Sierra Nevadas and Rockies in winter and the bustle of airport terminals. Plus, with 35 hours, my backlog of Economists would finally dwindle under steady, consistent attention.

“All aboard” from the conductor at 9:11 AM. Tent encampments lined the fences along the tracks as the Zephyr picked up steam out of the station and trudged towards Sacramento.[2] A man leaned over an upturned bicycle, tinkering with the chain amongst a pile of possessions spilling out of an overturned shopping cart.

Reggie swung by the compartment and gave me the rundown. Meal orders would be taken ahead of mealtime. I could eat in the dining car — up the stairs and turn right — or in my room. The bathroom was down the hall. I was to press this button if I needed anything. I nodded along, thanked him and slid the door closed behind him.

It was time to go to work on Theroux’s book. A small smirk flashed across my face as I considered the symmetry of reading a book on train travel while traveling on a train myself. How many other fellow travelers had congratulated themselves for such pedantic symmetry? Well, if everything is derivative, it might as well be cute as well.

I cracked open The Great Railway Bazaar and drifted into a parallel time, place, and mode of transportation. The certainty and linearity of our travel.

The loudspeaker crackled. Martin from the cafe car introduced himself: “as we head into Martinez, come on down the cafe car for a visit, cuz I am EASY on the eyes.” Even the jokes on a train suited my sense of humor.

The train fell into a rhythm and I was traveling from London to Paris to Tehran to the Khyber Pass. The rail corridor sprawl in California fell away and Asia sprouted up around me. The symmetry and dissymmetry of Theroux’s book and my mode of transportation, the transfer from the page to the world outside created a linkage and estrangement from my surroundings.

Two heavy equipment rental yards rushed by within 20 minutes of each other, The booms of a half dozen cherry pickers frozen in industrial salute. Who needs that many cherry pickers?

I saw the answer when we rolled into Davis. A fluorescent work vest hung on a tree in the foreground, with scaffolding hugging the side of an apartment building in the background. A Skytrak cherry picker’s arm extended upward.. A scene from Educated rushed to mind, and I stared, hoping the worker in the basket didn’t involuntarily exit his perch.

***

The conductor chimed in: Sacramento is a “smoke stretch stop.” An image of a man standing with his hands on his hips and tilting to one side, cigarette bouncing in the corner of his mouth popped to mind. I realized I couldn’t recall the last time I saw someone smoke a cigarette. Sheltering in place aside, my life in San Francisco kept me away from smokers. President Obama’s accounts of his smoke breaks on the White House residency balcony in his memoirs was my last point of comparison. Did Obama ever stretch while smoking?

Beige, water-logged fields lined the track into Sacramento. I couldn’t work out if it had rained to flood the fields or if it was done intentionally by man. It hadn’t rained recently in the Bay Area, but that didn’t make me the authority on NorCal weather.

A sign for “Ailing Ironworks” flashed into view. I did a double-take. Alling Ironworks. A Freudian misread? My own conceit as the train traveled past sprawling communities different from the urban locales I spend my life in.

***

The train soldiered East, starting the ascent up and over the Sierra Nevadas. Passing Colfax, the train discovered traces of winter as snow appeared alongside the track. The stillness of winter surrounded the train as we floated around curves. Moments of absolute silence accompanied a silky sensation of travel, if only for a glimmer. We skated over Donner Pass.

The mournful repetition of the train’s whistle helped facilitate the oscillation between Theroux’s world and the world outside my window. As the hours passed, Reggie was the solid linkage from my own compartment, from Theroux’s world to the rest of the train. And that tether was purely transactional by necessity. Reggie appeared either to drop off food or announce the upcoming stations and occasional smoke stretch break.

When we pulled into Reno that evening, I observed Reggie step off the train holding a large clear garbage bag full of toys. He greeted a young woman and her toddler. Reggie bent down to eye level with the girl. I could only imagine the conversation observing from behind the window of my cocoon and with Reggie and the girl both wearing masks. The girl excitedly tried to lift the bag of gifts, but her arms couldn’t quite muster the strength to hoist the haul that Reggie presented her. So she left it on the platform as her mom snapped a quick picture of her standing next to Reggie before he stepped back onto the train.

During a smoke stretch stop in Grand Junction the next day I learned from Reggie that the little girl was his granddaughter. That little exchange was their Christmas ritual.

***

Salt Lake City was a whistle and a slight rocking at 3 AM, waking me up from an otherwise restful slumber. The blue-clothed seats had collapsed almost too readily into a twin bed. A thin mattress, waif-like sheets, and sturdy blanket completed the sleeping ensemble. Besides the one overnight stop, I slept well, not arising until 6:45 AM to watch the sun chase flurries of drift snow across the plains of eastern Utah. Bleary-eyed, I egged the train on in silence, waiting for a “Welcome to Colorado” sign to emerge alongside the track.

I’m not sure that sign ever emerged, but the beauty of the winter morning captivated me. The scene was comforting, a reminder of what I loved about my home state.

***

Glenwood Springs came and went with a passing remark about the hot springs from the conductor, forcing me to wonder if there was a script that he (and his fellow colleagues) followed for each stop? Or could he ad-lib his way through stops and announcements? Martin in the cafe car certainly seemed to indicate it was easy to toss in whatever flair might sell a few more sandwiches or an extra nightcap.

The train’s gentle rocking carried it steadily eastward. Winter Park and Fraser marked the last stop before we descended the Front Range and moved steadily into Denver’s orbit.

Union Station emerged and suddenly I was on the platform, suitcase at my side looking back at the Zephyr wondering where the 35 hours had gone?

***

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen” — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

This Lenin quotation was omnipresent in 2020. Punditry from all across the spectrum, on any topic, trotted it out as the mantra of the year. Opinion pieces, podcasts, Twitter. Pick a medium, this sentence was featured ad nauseam.

But standing on the platform, drinking in the winter air and glancing back at the Zephyr, I couldn’t help but feel the quotation (as well as the applied punditry) masked the disassociation that accompanied the compression and expansion of time.

It was mid-December. It felt like March. In a year of upheaval, when decades happened in weeks, a full year passed and it felt like it was in the same week. “Normal” years did not feel that way. For all the quoted wisdom that commentators attributed to the founder of the Soviet Union, there was a complete lack of recognition of the distinct compression of time and place that “weeks where decades happen” could bring.

The quotation (obviously) bothered me. And with the measured practice honed back in 9th grade English class, I stood on the platform in Denver and couldn’t help but make the comparison between the trip I just took to the trainwreck of a year that had just happened.[3]

Time stood still through the curves of the Sierra Nevadas or along the plains of Southwestern Colorado. I marveled at the view. But most of the trip compressed into an unremarkable similitude that my relationship with could only be described as detachment. I sat alone in a glass case, staring out the window at communities I would never interact with, misreading the signs for industrial parks and marveling at heavy equipment rental yards.

I was isolated in my urban ignorance. The concept of “fly-over” states had turned into “rail-through” communities. The beauty and connection that Theroux described throughout Asia contrasted with my own dissociation with towns in my own country.

And this disassociation (and accompanying guilt) was 2020 for me. My own home melted into living quarters, office, gym, bar, concert hall, and movie theater. Family, friends, coworkers, casual acquaintances all melted behind a screen and faded away. Hours, days, weeks, months blended together. Yet I was healthy, employed, and safe. Cocooned from the real “change” that 2020 represented, I could only point to minor inconveniences.

But I still experienced a severe dissociation and compression of time that accompanied profound change.

Lenin’s statement was true in the aggregate. The historical perspective. I was sure that looking back at 2020 would illuminate the year as an inflection point. Yet, standing on a train platform in Denver, it sure didn’t seem like a single point. It wasn’t that decades had melted into weeks. It was that decades had melted into weeks and then that week repeated itself for a year.

***

Two weeks later, I boarded the California Zephyr 5 train in Union Station on New Year’s Eve to backtrack across Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Northern California. My roomette was on the second floor. Reggie was nowhere to be found. The sense of adventure waned.

I sped through Stephen Ambrose’s Nothing Like it in the World, a chronicle of the race to build the transcontinental railroad. Besides a new appreciation for the Union Pacific engines (the yellow beasts sporting American flags badged with “Building America’’ on each side) and the effort it took to carve the route over the Sierra Nevadas, my return journey experience was much the same.

We arrived early in Emeryville on New Years. Stepping off the train, I looked back at my travel cocoon. As I turned away from the train, heading towards another sort of cocoon (a 10-day quarantine), I was astonished by the slowness and yet the speed of the trip. Time’s malleability only increased on the way back. 2020 may have passed, but the accordion continued to play.

So it goes. Carry on, my zephyr.

***

[1] As long as you don’t lump in the visceral hatred for the Washington D.C. metro on a Monday morning in August (the inevitable delays, smothering heat, the crowds, the collective mass transit depression, spurred by the herding of bodies underground to arrive, unceremoniously, perpetually late and flustered to our respective places of employment).

[2] I don’t want to derail the post, but even the idioms we use harken back to trains. “Pick up steam” feels like one of those.

[3] “Life is a Waterbottle” is one of the worst pieces of poetry authored by a sentient being. In my defense, I can only imagine that I was incredibly thirsty when I wrote it.