Riding the Rails

This past spring I was able to travel to Los Angeles to see family. I chose to get there in one of my very favorite modes of travel - by train. I grew up with trains; my grandfather spent his entire working life at Union Station in Washington, D.C. I loved traveling by trains as a child up and down the East Coast, as a young adult traveling out west to Wyoming, traveling by train in the UK and Europe, and now returning to train travel as an (older) adult.

Since I was traveling cross country, I chose a roomette for most of the round trip. It gave me the option of privacy when I wished and was just the perfect size for a solo traveler. Since my first leg of my journey would be 2 1/2 days without internet access, I came prepared. Kindle loaded with books, a few movie options, my watercolors, my journal - I was ready for activity!

What I found, instead, was a sense of peace and calm. I was astonished with how content I was to simply sit at my window and look out at the sky and the astonishingly beautiful scenery passing by. One of the joys of traveling by train is that they often travel by places where there are no roads.

During my trip out and back home, I saw farms, mountains, desert, seascapes, cities, towns and vast open spaces. Nights were deep, dark and quiet. I was lulled to sleep by the train’s movement and awoke to dawn quietly starting my day.

There were no distractions, other than those I self-imposed, to keep me from being present in the moment, on the train, watching the world go by. It was the pause that I didn’t know I needed, and I am grateful.