At My Best on Trains
By Donna McCrohan Rosenthal, East Sierra Branch
Gently swaying trains. Trains that penetrate the wilderness. Veritable theme-park rides through the infrastructure. Mountains, Rivers. Canyons. Forests. Prairies. Sprawling cities lit up at 3 a.m. Sleepy hamlets waking with the sunset. Nothing beats watching the world drift by through the window of the Southwest Chief, the Coast Starlight, the California Zephyr, or for that matter, the Orient Express. Trains.
I caught the bug in high school and in college. It never left me. Back then, no way could I afford roomettes. Now that I can, I find them perfect for solitude. I read best undistracted. I write best uninterrupted. Concentration feels effortless, not hard, and it naturally follows that my best ideas reside cozily in my laptop and not my housebound PC.
Sweet seclusion notwithstanding, I also thrive on the conversations I have with the people I meet in dining cars and parlor cars. I’ve met a wolf whisperer, a man whose family brought the first Torah to the New World and helped send ammunition to Boston just in time for a certain tea party, and the composer of “Santa Baby.” In the lounge, between connections, we kicked around the plot for a musical revue.
It works both ways. My fellow travelers fascinate me, and I have a shot at mesmerizing them. If I wax witty and eloquent, fabulous. If I make some hideous gaffe, nobody cares. I’ll never see these folks again. It’s not like saying something stupid to a stranger at the supermarket, and six months later you discover she was your editor’s wife. Or your behavior convinces some woman that you ought to seek out a rest facility, and she turns out to be your doctor’s mother. If things don’t go well, I can excuse myself and disappear out of their lives forever.
As much as I look forward to reaching my destination, and as much as I long to get home at the close of a trip, when sitting on a train, I never want the journey to end.
I should add that this does not apply to subways. They convey me to my destination and this I appreciate, but they rarely soothe me in the process.
Fans of long-distance U.S. rail will readily admit that it has changed, both for better and worse. But we haven’t. I know I never did. By and large, I remain at my best on trains.