N3:

Most of us have lain in bed at night and felt the lonesome whistle's blow evoking in us many things: dreams of journeys to take; a desire to free ourselves from the ties that bind us to one place; even sadness for the choices we've made or were made for us. And we've been on a train, perhaps also at night, watching a town slide by, as we dream of being safely snug in bed enjoying hearth and home, and admit the fears that accompany our journey.

These experiences are part of the power of the railroad to weave time and space for us. The railroad draws together infinity and particularity, the now and the future, and in so doing speaks to a deep part of what it means to be human. This is part of its appeal to us fans, more than our normal conversations about new car types, paint schemes, and alterations to air filters.

When we find ourselves as isolated individuals, the railroad provides a connection to a larger story.

That the band of steel rails drew together a nation is a cliche, but it can be experienced. Stand by the track in some isolated spot, in the middle of nowhere, miles and days from any train, as isolated as you can be. Yet, what would be pure isolation a thousand feet away, becomes, by the track, part of some non-euclidian universe where the distant is present. The unbroken steel band touches desert and forest, city, farm, and wilderness; touching it, you touch the whole of the country.

And when the train does come, us having retreated to a safe distance, it is as if all the world came to that one spot: the locomotive an ambassador of its makers, the train bearing gifts from the corners of the nation to the rest of the nation. We wave to the crew, and that crew, probably unknown to us and never to be encountered again becomes, by a wave offered and returned, connected to us, a sign that we are not alone.

But the railroad also serves to connect our wide dreams to concrete reality.

Night had fallen over Kenya's rift valley. A full moon cast silvery light over the lonely landscape as the night train to Nairobi climbed up the rift escarpment. I looked out the window at the vastness of the African rift and thought of how far I was from home, and how many lives had intersected to come to this point. The railroad had been put there by the British, afraid of the Germans, to protect Egypt. It had been built by Africans and people uprooted from India, with technology from Europe. On it I had traveled from urban Nairobi to the edge of Uganda's chaos. The time apart of a journey, and simply being on the move while those around you stay rooted in one spot, nudges the mind into reflections on the sweep of things: big thoughts, big ideas.

A mile or so from the tracks a solitary lantern's point of light stood guard over an isolated hut. Out of the barest, minimum necessities, the sleeping family formed a life. Were they happy? How did the big dreams of the empire builders moving the geo-political chess pieces help or hurt this family?

A few minutes later our train eased to a stop at a tiny station. There, at one in the morning, the African crew performed the rituals needed to service the train and keep safe the sleeping passengers. Watching such ordinary things from the extraordinary perspectives of a journey, transformed them in ways both poetic and sad. The greetings called, the practiced quick movements and the gentle noises of a train at rest, became notes in an intricate score. But the poorly paid, highly dedicated African crew cheerfully did this work at risk from wildlife while sacrificing the ordinary rhythms of family life.

If a train journey puts you in the mood to dream, what you see out your window makes the dream deal with reality. From our window we're more likely to see the poor, the ordinary, and the places that have paid the price for dreams born and bred in opulent meeting rooms, without windows to transmit the view we see from the train.

The train mixes the infinite and the particular in a way other forms of transport approximate but somehow do not match. Certainly gazing from an airplane window gives a unique view of a small town, putting us in mind of all the lives, struggles and plans we can see in one glance, yet we cannot stand close to an airplane at rest, or stand safely a few feet away as it goes past. Nor can you touch the exact piece of air its wings ride on. Certainly a harbor evokes journeys and the world's far corners brought near, but much of an ocean voyage is out of sight of land. And certainly being on the road evokes freedom and adventure, but the roadside is a polluted, noisy, bleak place as well. No one meditates at the side of an interstate.

We don't, we can't, talk about this all the time or with everyone, so we talk about many other things, of couplers, grades, and abandoned tracks. We should do that. But, remember that it is more that draws us trackside then such mundane things. To be human is to be torn in two, having a mind that dreams in a body rooted in one spot, a person who must plan for tomorrow but has only today. No wonder we're so prone to hide, either falling into a narrow parochialism or leaving the ground in wild dreams. The railroad helps us keep our balance.

970 words