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Adobe and dust, a place so quiet. One grandfather cottonwood, leaves rustling, listens with us for the next train. Drought has dried this land beyond any living person's memory. Now, a cooling wind gathers power. The sky over the old mountains darkens. As the train pulls out from the antique station, a single fork of lightning frames itself in the small rear window. The silvered tracks put distance rapidly behind us. Opening out now before us, sunlight on the High Desert. We turn to see starched white cumulous clouds, absent for months float by, flat bottoms casting healing shadows over the parched land. In Albuquerque, we stop for new passengers. It's days after the 4th of July; families have been visiting. Roasted green chilies, their fragrance so earthy are brought onboard. A mother and her  teenagers sit down beside me. She smiles, we talk. This brother and sister are so good to each other. Dinner in the dining car is an old-fashioned treat. Big windows and white cotton table cloths. I find myself seated family style, with a father and son. Some bicycle race has given them rare time together. As night comes on, the conductor makes a sleeping time call. The lights are dimmed. In the early hours, walking aisle after aisle and car to car I see humanity asleep in all its quirky loveliness. Tanned toddlers, sprawled almost upside down. Hair mussed up, wearing bows meant for grandparents. Graying heads, long accustomed to leaning into one another, rest peacefully. One young man, a poet with a crown of dreads stands alone with his thoughts, looking   out at the stars.   Jostled awake now, I see the The Big Dipper perfectly placed as a child would draw it, twinkling in my smudged window. A haze of soft pink light signals this new day. All of us, coming home. Human angels, each here for one another.
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Aug 29, 2015
Aug 29, 2015 at 8:16 PM UTC
FrancescaRegan
Lamy to L.A.
Adobe and dust, a place so quiet. One grandfather cottonwood, leaves rustling, listens with us for the next train. Drought has dried this land beyond any living person's memory. Now, a cooling wind gathers power. The sky over the old mountains darkens. As the train pulls out from the antique station, a single fork of lightning frames itself in the small rear window. The silvered tracks put distance rapidly behind us. Opening out now before us, sunlight on the High Desert. We turn to see starched white cumulous clouds, absent for months float by, flat bottoms casting healing shadows over the parched land. In Albuquerque, we stop for new passengers. It's days after the 4th of July; families have been visiting. Roasted green chilies, their fragrance so earthy are brought onboard. A mother and her  teenagers sit down beside me. She smiles, we talk. This brother and sister are so good to each other. Dinner in the dining car is an old-fashioned treat. Big windows and white cotton table cloths. I find myself seated family style, with a father and son. Some bicycle race has given them rare time together. As night comes on, the conductor makes a sleeping time call. The lights are dimmed. In the early hours, walking aisle after aisle and car to car I see humanity asleep in all its quirky loveliness. Tanned toddlers, sprawled almost upside down. Hair mussed up, wearing bows meant for grandparents. Graying heads, long accustomed to leaning into one another, rest peacefully. One young man, a poet with a crown of dreads stands alone with his thoughts, looking   out at the stars.   Jostled awake now, I see the The Big Dipper perfectly placed as a child would draw it, twinkling in my smudged window. A haze of soft pink light signals this new day. All of us, coming home. Human angels, each here for one another.
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