Trains, the Sea & Infinity

Train whistles are as common as squirrels where I now live. They welcome dawn, sound through each morning and afternoon, and punctuate the cold night with the echoes of their passing. They are like a plane's contrails, striping the air with the sound of journey, of restlessness, of partial waking in the night to listen to the rocking clack of wheels spinning across the rails. They move slowly through this city like time, sounding their warning through the spinning wheel of each day.

When I was young, my parents surprised my siblings and me with a trip to the beach on the train, boarding in Fullerton and traveling down to San Clemente. We left fingerprints and nose marks on the windows at first, watching the blur of eucalyptus groves and dry hills give way to a narrow stretch of sand and water that spread out into the corners of my imagination. On the way home I threw my sunburned body into the cushioned seat, not worrying about the dried sand that coated my feet. The train rocked me like the ocean, a steady back-forth that pulled me heavily toward sleep. The train moved from being a novelty to being a rhythm in my afternoon, as I half-watched the landscape blur into early evening.

Trains in Europe and the US tell different stories. One is the story of people traveling back-to-front; reading books, taking naps, texting a friend. It is how most travel, avoiding the crowded byways, saving time by working as someone else moves them. It is people walking through the terminal to the car park or waiting in an arched doorway for a late bus. Another is mostly the story of freight moving east to west, north to south. It is the story of hobos hiding in the corner of open boxcars, moving on, looking for work. The immensity of this country is overwhelming and while the utility of such transportation anymore is sadly doubtful, it leaves me with a longing ache.

I have long held a fantasy of hopping on a train and seeing where it would take me. The closest I came was my sophomore year in college. While out for a run near campus, I came to an intersection that was blocked by a stopped freight train. I jogged in place as I waited, then I stretched, then jogged again. The train stayed stopped. Traffic lights changed, then changed again. It was evening, and the headlights of waiting cars formed a trailing cross at the intersection. I was getting cold, so I decided to stop waiting and climb between cars and jump down. There was adrenaline in my fingers as I pulled myself up the tall steps, forgetting how things always look smaller when they're not in hand. I wanted to hurry, so the train didn't start and leave me to jump while it was moving. It didn't, and yet I scrambled. The ground looked near enough, so I extended my arms and leaped. And dropped. My nonchalant effort toward running through my landing was foiled as I lost my balance and fell to the pavement, directly in the center of the headlights of waiting cars. I picked myself up, gave a little wave, and continued to run. There was some honking and applause that followed me up the hill towards my dorm.

Living in the middle of the country, I miss the ocean. Standing with my jeans cuffed, feeling the waves pull at my ankles, watching diamonds spill across the surface to a gently-moving horizon. The smell of brine and seaweed that weighs the air, tasting the stickiness of salt on my lips, watching small schools of fish and the occasional porpoise dart through the waves. The ocean is a tangible reminder of infinity, as I paddle a surfboard to the crest of a wave and try to harness its momentum, or as I run a handful of sand through my palm.

The pulsing sound of waves, or the repeating call of a train's whistle sparks the awareness that I am anything but infinite, and at 31, I am sometimes caught in the tide of all the good things I have tasted, and all I still long to taste. The romance of a boxcar ride has become offset by the reality of cold metal walls and dirt-stained floors. Perhaps sometimes goodness is found in the longing, or in waiting for what is good, or in the memory of its tasting. For now I sit with a pen and notebook, ocean-less. But I can stand inside the deep night sky, hear the wind blow through stretches of prairie grass, walk through the painted leaves of a deciduous fall, listen to the again-receding train passing through the night. I can acknowledge that I am brushing against new facets of infinity.