OFF THE RAILS
Union Station, Chicago
January 1, 2:15 PM
Minutes before I boarded my sleeper car on the Amtrak Empire Builder, the strap broke and my favorite cloth bag fell to the cement platform, smashing one of the wine bottles I was lugging. The big one. Most people would think three—including the 1.5-liter behemoth—a tad excessive for a 48-hour ride to Seattle. Well, I’m not most people. Besides, I was coming from a New Year’s wedding, and when it comes to hangovers, I come out on the side of weaning versus cold turkey.
I watched the blood-red pool ooze from my tote, quickly growing murder sized across the gangway, into the tracks, under the train. I had no idea what to do. Passengers gave me a wide berth, struggling with luggage, looking at tickets, checking the numbers for their designated cars.
I squeezed the sack the best I could without impaling myself, and when I thought it was done hemorrhaging, put it on top of the roller and tried to find my sleeper. For the first ten feet or so, there seemed no evidence of the vino. Shortly, however, my suitcase left a double line of hemoglobin stripes as if I’d wheeled through a Crime Scene Investigation.
I hoped it would dry before I had to board the train.
2:18 PM
“Ticket, sir?” The jaunty porter—nametag: John—cocked his head as I pulled out my wine-soaked paperwork. “Need any help?” he asked, his jolly tone fading to suspicion.
My hangover headache worsened, my cheeks flushed, and flushed some more when a passenger—one who apparently hadn’t seen the wine debacle—expressed concern: “Oh no, your suitcase is dripping! Did you cut yourself?” And another, somewhat less concerned: “Maybe he has a body in there. That’d be some Murder on the Orient Express type shit right there!”
“What? No. Oh, fuck,” I said, poorly feigning innocence in an effort to ignore the punster. “One of the bottles of wine must have broken when I set the bag down!”
“Well, you can’t go on like that.” John again. “Let me see what I can do.”
He left me standing there, reeking of booze, embarrassed as hell, but returned shortly with two pristine, fluffy white towels and helped me tug the rest of my booty from the wreckage to assess the damage. He dried off my luggage, then pulled the remaining bottles, the wine key, and the bag of Red Vines.
“Thank God you thought to bring vodka,” he chuckled, brandishing my pint of Smirnoff.
“Not a great start to a long trip.” I handed him a stained twenty, winced, and slunk to my cabin.
MILE ONE
Chicago, Illinois
2:20 PM
Hyper-conscious of the handsome young man across the hall, of whom I could see only gray socked feet, I shut the steel door and sat in the closet-sized room, staring out into the snowless winter landscape. I never could relate to the suburbs. And the Midwest after the holidays depressed me most. There were no people out and hardly any sidewalks for them to traverse if they did brave the frigid air. The Chicago Loop had bustled despite the cold, and felt alive and brilliant in contrast.
I was on the Empire Builder 1) to get from Chicago, where my partner Eric and I had attended the wedding , to Seattle, where I’d stop briefly to visit friends and family before heading for a two-month workshop with the Urban Permaculture Institute in San Francisco (UPISF); and 2) to begin a year-long adventure traveling the country to interview people and write about regenerative land use and lifestyle changes without sacrifice. I imagined myself some sort of landscape architect monk crusading from garden to garden as tough they were monasteries, and I a gatherer and dispenser of knowledge.
The first objective would take care of itself, though right now, I envied the rest of my friends who’d wisely stayed an extra day in the lovely Chicago Allerton to nurse their hangovers. The second? I was losing my determination before I’d even begun. I had one rough draft of a book under my belt. Why start another? Who would read it? The inhabitants of this matrix of lawns, trees, asphalt? Of pavement stippled with houses, cars, strip malls, the occasional recreational vehicle? Not likely. How about the millennial permies who chest thump and strut around preaching downsizing and living in shared tiny houses, operating shared economies, working from shared office spaces, driving shared cars, bartering shared products? They think they invented this shit, why listen to me? (And permie, please! New Yorkers were doing it before you were an urge in your daddy’s balls. They’ve been living like this for generations, in fact. So occupy those words, you stylish facial and body hair wearing, “vore” suffix using, retro-clothes donning, Johnny-come-latelies!)
Right now, the drive to do all this—my self-induced monastic adventure, my journey inward, even my eco-friendly New York lifestyle—just made me feel silly. Was Eric right? Was I simply trying to justify taking so much time off to ride the rails by taking “yet another stupid workshop”? And why couldn’t I form an interesting thought much less a sentence? “When are you actually going to be a goddam permaculturalist, or whatever, anyway?” Eric had said before flying back to New York to do the work I was avoiding.
Living a simple, ascetic life. Right. How could I spend all this money and abandon my paying gig?
2:25 PM
A rap on my door, and in popped Porter John to describe our journey. He dripped with excess cruise ship director, Julie McCoy enthusiasm. We’d follow the footsteps of early pioneers, he said, traveling along major portions of the Lewis and Clark trail. The mighty Empire Builder would take us on an exciting adventure through majestic wilderness.
I knew from my own cross-referencing of map to schedule, literally half of the two thousand mile trip was through flat, largely agricultural, and therefore boring, Midwest, and the only majestic wilderness we would witness in the light of day would be crossing the Cascade Range in Washington State, something I’ve done too many times to count. Who planned this trip, anyway?
“You need a corkscrew for your wine, Ross?” John asked as he left, announcing loudly to my neighbors that I intended to drink.
2:27 PM
My mind leapt back to the station, and I tried to distract myself by sorting through the week ahead. The stop in Seattle was complicating my schedule. I’d wanted to go there to see my brothers, best friend, and their families. Through Facebook, the rest of my acquaintances in the area had heard I was coming, and the messages—Would be great to see you! Time for a pint, Rossi?—started coming in. In addition, I’d organized a reunion with family friends, the large Middleton Clan, 19 in all, outside of Olympia; a clandestine visit with my self-estranged niece, her girlfriend, and boyfriend; and a retreat with two of my four online writing buddies. I’d over-scheduled myself to the point where I wouldn’t even make it on time for the first day of class. Then I’d turn around that Sunday, fly back to New York to help Eric break down and throw out several hundred poinsettias in the UN Plaza residences, only to return two days later in time for the Wednesday evening workshop.
“What the fuck was I thinking?” I asked myself as I sipped wine from a paper cup alone in the dark. So much for reducing my carbon footprint by taking the train.
Hoot, hoot! All aboard the Permanerd Express.
MILE 200
WISCONSIN DELLS
6 PM
After four hours of looking from train maps to the boring-as-the-Illinois-landscape sentences on my laptop screen, I made my way to the dining car, feeling a bit guilty for my lack of productivity.
I’d reserved early seating out of boredom and because I overheard my sexy-socks cabin mate had. However, the host sat me at a table with a couple and a baby. The father had a cold and looked cadaverous. I had just gotten over the worst one of my life and couldn’t imagine the misery of being cooped up in this double-decker tin tube, coughing, sneezing, and hacking my way across the frozen country.
The husband and wife were from Oregon, where they attended graduate school in Environmental Sciences and Communications, respectively. They were returning from visiting family back East for the holidays.
“Why did you decide to take the train?” I asked them.
“It’s greener,” the husband replied, sputtering into the crook of his arm.
A well put-together woman, glittery jewelry and colorful scarves—a dance teacher named Michelle Murphy, I would learn shortly—squeezed in next to me, explaining to the host that the gentleman he’d tried to seat her with was too fat to accommodate another guest, even one as trim as she. I briefly regretted not bringing my Kindle.
I ordered the half chicken, the couple the steaks, and Michelle, the healthy choice: couscous and lean beef filet, a mistake, it turned out. After watching her try for a few excruciating minutes to cut through the leather on her plate, I offered her half of my half-bird.
“Take it, really, I will never eat it all.” It was true; I rarely did.
She reluctantly agreed and we completed our meals between bouts of fussy baby and sniffling papa. I wondered if I should have brought my iPod, as well—that is, until, the wine at our table was polished off, and the wife invited Michelle and me back to their cabin for another glass.
“I opened the bottle earlier. I’m not going to finish it, and I won’t drink vinegar tomorrow.”
6:45 PM
The husband wasn’t up to entertaining visitors, so Michelle and I happily agreed to take the bottle, and settled into a booth in the lounge car to drink.
Over dinner, we’d covered my reasons for being on the train. Now Michelle asked if I was taking the Permaculture course alone.
“Originally, I signed up with my cousin’s gardener,” I said. “But she had to drop because she fell off an orchard ladder. Concussion.”
Another thing weighing me down: Kelsey Colson wasn’t just my cousin’s gardener; she’d become a good friend. Together, we’d schemed ways to help usher more sustainable design practices on some of my family’s vast and growing land holdings in the Bay area. The course was part of our joint effort, and now I was doing it alone.
“I call her my West Coast Garden Wife,” I continued. “I have an East Coast Garden Wife, too. Marga Snyder. The sharing arrangement is hell. I’m probably the only bicoastal gay polygamist and I’m not even Mormon!”
Michelle laughed, and whether on account of the wine or the fact that she’d appreciated my joke, I took the cue and plugged my yet unpublished book about saving community gardens in New York City. “Marga’s and my hijinks are epic, at least in our minds. And in the book.”
I held out my paper cup, and in an effort to shut myself up asked for another glass.
Michelle acquiesced and then regaled me with her own gardening story, of sorts, a scandalous tale about the parks department board in Canton, Illinois, the small town south of Chicago where she grew up. Diverse population, union organized workforce, strong middle class, all centered around a leafy square and surrounded by an extensive park system and public accessible private golf course treed with old growth species.
“Waste, mismanagement, corruption.” She loosened her colorful scarf. “When International Harvest failed, everything fell apart.”
“That sounds like an episode of Parks and Recreation,” I said. Michelle’s cut eyes told me she didn’t know the television series. “From TV. You’ve never seen it? Really, you must. It’s hilarious. There’s even an episode about a community garden!”
MILE 418
ST. PAUL-MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA
10 PM
Retiring to my room, I turned out the light and watched the rolling Wisconsin nightscape meld by. Warm lights in faraway farmhouses made me melancholy as we approached the Mississippi River crossing from Lacrosse into Minnesota. We would arrive in the Twin Cities a quarter after ten, shortly before eleven o’clock beds down.
I hadn’t been back for two decades, since finishing grad school. Like always, the thought of my experience here brought mixed emotions. I’d enjoyed my studies, my friends and colleagues, and those years certainly shaped me professionally. But I’d never really fit in, and somehow felt lesser than the other students, as though my work didn’t quite live up to expectations. Plus, it was fucking freezing.
I’d emailed a grad school friend, Fred, telling him I’d be through. I hadn’t heard back. I didn’t really expect him to meet the Empire at Midway Station for a fifteen-minute call. Still, part of me hoped he’d respond enthusiastically.
Regret washed over my addled mind. I wasn’t sure I wanted to compare life notes with Fred anyway. He’d taken the truer career path, was a legitimate landscape architect with a subtitle of landscape ecologist at a premier engineering firm. I designed gardens for rich people, no subtitle. Which of us would make our mutual mentor Joan Nassauer most proud?
The tracks snaked along the river coming into Red Wing, Minnesota. The forested hills contrasted my image of the state. It was hauntingly beautiful in the dark, a beauty I’d never allowed myself to see. Why had I been so provincial? Why did I have to leave a place and return to see its beauty?
Never mind, I told myself. My present plan was to slough off what was left of my hangover. I drank myself to sleep, quietly weeping in the dark.
MILE 490
MINOT, NORTH DAKOTA
8:30 AM
The Empire came back to life in Minot. I mentally mapped my day as I carefully navigated the swaying corridors and tried not to stare too hard at the stubble Gray Socks was sporting. God, he was even more attractive than I’d first thought.
We would spend the day traversing the vast prairies of North Dakota and Eastern Montana, reaching the Rocky Mountains by nightfall. According to my estimations, we would be in Sandpoint, Idaho, home of the Middleton clan, around midnight.
Acres of gray-fallowed sunflower fields pancaked out as far as I could see. I knew the crop because I’d been here once before. Jim Aisenbrey, a friend whose father was a train engineer, had been raised in this town. He’d invited me once to join him at his roommate’s family farm for Thanksgiving. On the way, the car had broken down, so her father met us in the nameless town where we were stranded. Once fixed, Jim volunteered me to accompany the father home. I was pissed. Here I was about to embark on a lengthy journey with some hayseed stranger with nothing to talk about. And he was probably a Republican. I was wrong. Not only was the family farm one of the largest sunflower concerns in the area, but the father was also a world-renowned expert in the crop. He delighted me for hours with the many benefits of the native plant. During the height of communism, he’d even traveled to Russia to collaborate with the Soviets in developing fuel from the stocks.
Bolstered by the memory, I entered the dining car. This time, I was seated aside a blonde woman with a sensible ponytail and Fidel Castro-like hat. Cada Johnson from Cottage Grove, Oregon, a regular Amtraker, was also a t-shirt artist who sold her wares at fairs around the Pacific Northwest. Across from us sat Joanna, recently retired and moving to Spokane. We discussed the health merits of veganism and vegetarianism versus Paleolithic diets, landing on the side of the latter. I threw out some curiously specific statistics I’d learned reading The Green Food Revolution: 14% of all Americans live in food insecure homes; 90% of food travels 1500 miles to get to the table yet three acres can feed 10,000 people. I ended my mini-lecture by mentioning my two published articles relating to permaculture, which I’m sure was organic and germane and not shameless self-promotion.
“Interesting,” Cada responded. “I’m a closet permie. Oddly enough, Cottage Grove has two famous permaculture compounds, both named Aprovecho. They invented the rocket stove and have received millions in grants from the UN to build and distribute them.”
“I’ve read about those!” I enthused. “They’re revolutionary.”
The devises, I knew, were being used for cooking and heating for third world inhabitants using half the fuel and producing half the carbon of traditional wood stoves—the world’s largest green house gas producers.
“You should come to Oregon and visit them with me. You can stay at my place.”
“I may just take you up on that odd offer.”
I went on to admit to my latest literary caper and reason for my trip, then swept by the serendipity of it all, I let my guard all the way down. “And you should read my articles.”
“I will,” she chirped.
“I’ll send the links,” I said with gusto, and excused myself.
We agreed to meet at seven for dinner.
MILE 1168
WOLF POINT, MONTANA
11:41 AM
In a much better space, I sat down in my hull and began to write while I contemplated my history with train travel. Born to nomads, I inherited a love of odysseys, especially by rail. By my mom’s prodding, I spent three months bouncing from one European city to another after graduating from high school. My parents had moved to Lund, Sweden, with my younger brother. My older brothers were in college, and I was headed to Northern Arizona University in the fall. Mom convinced me to save up for a Eurail Pass to wander the continent.
Though she’d urged me to be independent in the past, allowing me to take Greyhounds across Washington and Idaho to visit friends I’d left behind when we moved to Arizona, I was intimidated about going it alone in foreign lands. I invited my closest friends to join me. All but one turned me down. Skid, the oldest of the Middletons, the family I would soon see, had tagged along with my mother and me once before, on a daytrip to Nogales, Mexico. The two of us had tried to smuggle a bottle of tequila across the border and got caught. Luckily, all the patrol agents did was pour it down the toilet. “Why do you have this ugly piñata?” Mom had asked about our shiv vessel when she caught up with us. Given that was Skid’s one and only adventure out of the U.S., I was surprised he agreed to go with me.
In Europe, we were on a budget and had to go coach. To save money on hotels, we took overnighters and slept on board, once waking up on a boat to Copenhagen. Now I was much too old to endure such hardship. The self-contained sleeper cabin on the Empire was simple and small—two seats that converted to a bunk, a picture window, and a sliver of a closet with a tiny cabinet. Still, it was better than reclining in a seat in coach.
Passing over a wooden truss, I recalled catching tadpoles under the rail bridge of Yelm Creek in my mother’s hometown in Washington State. Grandpa had sent us out to pick blackberries so Mom could bake pie. We sneaked to the murky waters below the bramble. A distant whistle came first, then closer, and closer, warning of a train’s inexorable passage. The Douglas fir timbers groaned and creaked as the engine rumbled above. Shadows gave way to snapshots of sunlight between cars, hypnotic eyes slowly, methodically blinking. Sun on my siblings’ faces flashed and disappeared. Huddled on the muddy bank, I looked up in fear and awe, worried a piece of hardware would loosen and lodge itself into one of our heads. Water skimmer bugs skittered from the imminent calamity. Power and danger vibrated my young bones, and coursed through my bloodstream, intoxicating me. Finally, as the caboose crossed, we jumped up and ran the embankment, cheering after the iron snake as it faded into the blue-green horizon. I had no idea where it was headed or what it hauled, but I was hooked. At dinner, I asked for a train set for Christmas.
Looking out my window now, I watched the vast brown, white, and gray expanses, low-slung buildings and sparse trees on brushy scree, give way to rolling hills dotted with cows, stippled with silos and gas tanks. Tanker cars poised to fuel the nation spiraled miles of coiled track. Lonely oil pumps nodded like mechanical dinosaurs in the distance. A phalanx of grain cars off to feed the world clambered by. Streams cut through hillocks lined with flaming gas pipes. A solitary farmer mended fences near a frozen pond flanked by grass and sunflower stubble and rolls of hay. Abandoned houses and farm buildings melted back into the earth. Trailers, campers, and pickup trucks. Rusted 50s cars in the fields. Native junipers, prostrate, checkering the hillside. A tall break of conifers protecting against the wind. Rocks piled next to barren trees with scrubby growth along the rail embankments. Grassy clumps and wet hollows with cattails. Snowy streams spotted with yellow ice clumps meandering into a white-topped lake. Rows of spent crops in straight lines ignoring the contours. A whitewashed fort with red turret roofs standing sentry. All very Dances with Wolves. Swept, it was a landscape defined in part by the wind. Distant buttes colored in distinct browns and grays punctuated the dun. Leaden disk clouds saucered overhead.
I was mesmerized.
MILE 1547
EAST GLACIER PARK, MONTANA
7 PM
The storybook WPA ski lodge and winter-scape greeted Cada and me as we sank into the booth. A handsome young student from Wisconsin joined us in discussing more permanerd stuff. Like all the men aboard, he had stubble darkening the bottom half of his face, and I mused over this masculine measure of time on the journey. I could entertain myself comparing the differing facial hair patterns as they came in. We were all beyond five o’clock shadows at this point. Definitely a turn on.
“I just read both your articles and thoroughly enjoyed them,” Cada announced. “I particularly love hearing people’s stories. And trees and anything that grows. You are most welcome to visit in February if you like. I have one word of warning for you though: humanure!”
In one of my articles, I’d joked about a workshop discussion on composting human waste.
Cada continued. “I am a wannabe permaculturalist. I own a perfect slice of six acres in Oregon with a south-facing slope and a year-round creek. I’ve homesteaded this place for the past fifteen years. I wish I could say that I have an amazing garden and permaculture site, but, alas, the house building part of homesteading has taken the wind out of me. Though a garden is in my future, the most eco-groovy thing I do right now is poop in a bucket, and, by God, I compost that shit! The Humanure Handbook is my bible, but you can put your mind at ease because I do not engage in any kind of debate over composting menstrual blood.” I saw the student wince at these words and look down at his plate in disgust.
“So if you want to stay with me, this is my way of saying, I do not have an indoor toilet or shower.”
“Well, I’m not seriously or morally opposed to the practices,” I replied sheepishly. “I just thought way too much of the one-day workshop was devoted to the topic. And I grew up with three brothers, so you know I love scatological humor.”
While I ate—the steak this time—Cada went on to tell me about Amtrak’s Writer’s Residency, a relatively new offering for creative professionals. It heartened me to think I had already taken such an endeavor on my own, and imagined my writing group, four of us in all, wending the nation, writing and critiquing each other. The young man’s face brightened notably by the change in subject. Cada went on to describe her other Amtrack adventures and the train culture she was a part of.
MILE 1813
SANDPOINT, IDAHO
11:49 PM
In my wildest fantasies about this trip, I didn’t imagine meeting a fellow permanerd. And Cada’s invitation was prescient. I’d already considered taking the train to Salem, Oregon, to pick up my now-edited first manuscript from Glenys, a member of my writing group. I could make the trip when the workshop ended in March, and from there, continue to Portland and fly home.
Cada’s half of the train was disengaging and traveling the Columbia River Gorge to Portland, so we’d said our goodbyes after dinner. Though I was nodding off now, I forced myself to stay awake until Sandpoint. It wasn’t a “smoking stop,” where you could leave the train, and it would be dark; but nostalgia for this town ran strong in me. I hadn’t been back since that first drive to Minnesota twenty years ago. The Middleton farm was sixteen winding, hilly miles from town on a peninsula jutting into Lake Pend Oreille, the largest natural fresh water body in the West. The Middletons grew or raised most of their food. Fresh, wholesome, and delicious long before words like organic or local or slow were brandished about. Their family absorbed my brothers and me as if we were their own. We boys spent countless carefree, dangerous days tramping the wooded mountains surrounding their home. The experience shaped me. Harold, second oldest of the siblings, was the only one still living in the town, but he was with his parents in Shelton, Washington, where I’d soon see them all.
I turned off the lights to maximize the effects of the moonlight glowing off the snowy wood and got misty as the train went through the unincorporated town of Sagel, whose main road led to the farm. Gold Hill loomed above the shimmering moonlit waters as we rambled across the bridge. We’d claimed the promontory for ourselves and climbed it like mountaineers to pick huckleberries and see bears. From what I witnessed in the dark, downtown hadn’t changed much, the same sleepy tourist enclave in a spectacular setting.
Vowing to return, I allowed myself to succumb to sleep.
MILE 2072
LEAVENWORTH, WASHINGTON
6:08 AM
I got up earlier than normal—forced myself in spite of my late night—to see at least some of the majesty promised by Amtrak. Leavenworth was as I remembered, a quaint touristy alpine village based on a Bavarian theme. But I was still so overcome with the beauty and wonder of what I’d seen anew, this pass in the Cascades underwhelmed. It was beautiful, of course, but there were no views of the range’s iconic volcanic peaks and it felt almost monotonous, I’d driven the pass so many times before.
I wanted simply to skip this portion of the trek and arrive at my destination.
I went to breakfast and prepared myself to meet my writing buddies. I was giddy beyond reason.
MILE 2205
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
10:25 AM
Cada had told me we were lucky. Amtrak through North Dakota was often delayed because oil tanker traffic took priority. But according to Porter John, we would be right on time. Good thing, too. If all went as planned, Glenys’s train from Salem would roll in shortly before us. She would be waiting for me.
I watched the peaceful waves lap the shore of Puget Sound. A surprising number of swimmers in wetsuits had taken to the frigid waters. We proceeded through Everett, a logging, fishing, military town, where I had distant relatives. Martin Hardware was still on the main drag.
Too distracted and excited to pay much attention, I thought only of my arrival at King Street Station. I’d met all of my virtual writing group in person. Our meetings always worked in to a conference or workshop or garden gig on one of my cousin’s properties. In fact, just a few months earlier, I’d attended a Garden Writers Conference in Pittsburgh—yes, there is such a thing—and tacked on a lovely evening with Adrienne. But somehow this time, this trip, was different. Something had changed in me in the passing of these chugging, floating, gliding miles; the gentle rumble of the undercarriage reverberated through my soul.
Kelsey put it best a few years ago. I’d been working with Willow Bill, a character who could fill another book, designing and building a hobbit house out of willow sticks for my cousin’s two boys.
“Where did you find him?” she asked.
I let out a nervous laugh. “He kind of found me.”
“I think I’m beginning to get it.” She smiled. “You collect people, Ross.”
Though I knew she was right at the time, until now, it hadn’t fully sunken in. All of them, those non-family family members I’ve been amassing through permaculture—my garden wives, Willow Bill, and now Cada—as well as my life-long friends and acquaintances, like the Middleton clan, my college and high school friends, and more recently, my writing group, my literary muses: these are my people, my lost tribe. They’ve all helped shape me and my views, and given my work meaning. Because grand as it is, the earth is simply not enough without its people.
And I was about to spend a glorious day and night with two of my favorites. I couldn’t wait to tell them about this length of my pilgrimage and the people I’d met.
The train pulled into the station. I handed John another twenty and headed in. My heart lifted anew when I saw Glenys’s big warm smile as she waved from the corner.
