Traveling Out of Place: Notes and Reflections from My Journey to Places I've Never Been (Part 1)

Martha and I just returned from a nearly two-week excursion of train travel and visiting two West Coast cities. I had thought of posting something to my blog every day we were traveling, but that proved to be impractical. For most of the trip, we had no Wi-fi, and for much of it, not even cell service. When we were in places with full Internet access, we were busy soaking in the sights and sounds around us and pretty much crashed at the end of the day. I did, however, keep a log of our trip (including some reflections along the way), and now I’m going to post it in its entirety in six parts over six days. This will be a little confusing since the dates of publication will not line up with the dates the entries were written, but I hope you’ll derive some vicarious enjoyment from them. - JML

August 11, 8:30 a.m. in northern Indiana

Traveling by car along superhighways is boring. These huge arteries, largely insensitive to the landscape, strategically avoid getting too close to anything interesting. Signs let you know about “attractions” that are somewhere out of sight, but mostly they direct you toward motels, gas stations, and chain restaurants that look the same no matter what part of the country you are crossing.

Airplane travel is fast, but the novelty of seeing the landscape from up high is only available to half or less of the passengers and is seriously compromised by cramped seating, sinus pressure, and occasional turbulence. The view from six miles up can certainly be beautiful, but it is mostly monotonous and, of course, lacking the richness of detail.

America looks more real through the window of a train car. No gaudy billboards, no plastic retail strips or cheesy tourist traps. The tracks pass by sprawling farms, largely abandoned hamlets, and tall church spires in the distance marking rural crossroads. The large picture windows afford close-up views of vibrant downtowns in small cities and villages that remain unseen from the freeways. Passengers sidle up close to working and abandoned factories, gritty working-class neighborhoods with 70s-era sedans parked along curbs, backyards littered with toys or manicured with gardens sloping away from houses that appear to have been expanded multiple times, with far more attention to function than form. Older neighborhoods with stately but not overstated homes and newer subdivisions with well-kept front lawns also come into view.

Of course, you could see all this from a car if you stayed on two-lane roads, but on a train, somebody else is doing the work. You don’t have to stop at red lights, pull over for gas, wonder where you’re going to eat, wait at railroad crossings(!), or keep your eyes on the road. How about a bus? You’re not driving, so you’re free to watch the scenery, but buses follow roads. Trains – and only trains – follow tracks, which means they sometimes parallel roadways, but often make their own paths where no other form of transportation goes, affording perspectives of urban and rural landscapes and natural beauty unattainable any other way.

Last night, Martha and I boarded Amtrak, which we are riding for thousands of miles. At night, we sleep while the train continues rolling along. During the day, we’re sitting in comfortable seats, free to read, doze off, or watch the changing landscape. We take our meals in a spacious dining car. It takes a while to get where we’re going, but on a train, the journey is in a very real sense the destination. So none of our trip is simply a means to an end. All of it adds to our experience.

Whenever I have become impatient, my life has been about what’s next, where I’m headed, what I’m aiming to accomplish, which means that I’m not fully engaged. Life is always best lived as an unfolding journey. Goals and destinations give us needed direction, but if they drain the present of any meaning, they become taskmasters rather than servants.

Life is also diminished by the faulty assumption that I am in control of it. When I allow myself the freedom to look out the window, trusting God to get me where I need to go, I notice more. I learn more. I live more.

 

2:00 p.m., in southeast Wisconsin

To be fair, my view of train travel skews toward the romantic partly because we’re not traveling coach. To celebrate 35 years of marriage, Martha and I decided to splurge by renting private sleeper cars for the entire length of our trip, which will eventually take us to Seattle, San Francisco, and through the heart of the Rocky Mountains. In an odd sort of way, we’re leaving our comfort zone to experience a level of luxury that our neo-Calvinist backgrounds do not easily allow. We get priority boarding, a different level of food service, and when we’re waiting at a terminal for a connecting train, we’re admitted to one of those lounges that I used to think were reserved for the beautiful people.

Union Station in Chicago is a bustling, disorganized maze of crowded hallways that don’t seem to lead anywhere other than overpriced stores and fast-food joints. Once we de-boarded in Chicago, we wandered from one map to another, utterly bewildered. When we found what we believed was the waiting area for our next train, we grabbed a couple of hard-plastic seats in the middle of a mass of people of all shapes, sizes, colors, and tongues, including lots of young families with children in different phases of excitement and exhaustion. The room was hot and rank with the sweat of anxiety and anticipation. We were right at home.

I asked Martha if she would mind watching my bags while I went to the “Great Hall,” the center of the old station famed for its high ceilings and grand architecture. I had seen it off to the left a couple of times during our wandering, but had noticed a huge white sheet and scaffolding that indicated renovation. When I returned, I was surprised to discover that the what I had spotted previously was only a wing off the main room, which, even lined with scaffolding, was impressive in its grandeur.

But I also made another discovery. The "Metropolitan Lounge" we were intended to visit while waiting to board our train was located here. It did not comport to my reading of any of the maps in the station, but it was unmistakably marked as the waiting area for “priority” (including sleeper car) Amtrak customers. So I hurried back to the den of squalor where Martha was waiting and informed her that I had found where we needed to be. Together, we gained entrance with our e-ticket to this posh, spacious two-story waiting area appointed with an abundance of over-sized leather couches. Guests were welcomed to enjoy complimentary food and beverages (which actually did not look as appealing to me as the fried fare we ordered in the dimly-lit, noisy, crowded underground of the station). The space was cool, quiet, and relaxing. We plopped ourselves down in an unoccupied couch, laughing at the status we had assumed. We had purchased a place among the elites – a mixture of wine-and-cheese liberals, old-money businessmen and their wives, the nouveau riche, and perhaps a few people like us who just decided it was time for an extravagant adventure.

I guess we “belong” in both those waiting areas and neither at the same time. (While on the train, we’re finding it helpful to balance time in our private space with visits to the observation car where a great variety of passengers are sharing the open space. We also are glad to have our meals in the dining car at the same table as people we don’t know.)

For most of our married life, our tastes and sensibilities have put is in company with people of wildly different cultures. The crowd attending a symphony concert is quite different from the set that frequent a greasy-spoon diner. We’re quite comfortable in both venues. We’ve lived in a community so rural it lacked a stoplight or any police presence, and we’ve purchased a home in an older suburb that is remarkably stable but not a place where the upwardly mobile ever stay. And since our nest became empty, we’ve found ourselves spending more time in the urban center. On the one hand, I’m an academic, finding stimulation in scholarly discussion of a range of issues with other academics. On the other, I’m an old-fashioned preacher shaped mostly by churches of down-to-earth, unpretentious people who just want to hear the gospel and learn how to live it. I am grateful that these congregations have included people of many levels of education, socio-economic status, and religious background. I don’t know whether its better or worse, but I guess I prefer churches that manage to speak effectively to people in both waiting rooms.

 

5:15 p.m., in central Wisconsin

We left Chicago aboard the Empire Builder, which travels up through Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Washington – all states that neither of us have ever visited or even passed through – before reaching the end of its line in Seattle. We’ll be on this train for 46 hours. We’re in a second-floor sleeper with plenty of amenities to make our trip more enjoyable. Oddly, though, this train (unlike the train that spirited us overnight from Syracuse to Chicago) is not equipped with Wi-Fi.

Our phones have data plans, but our plan is tiny (because we’re usually on-line where a Wi-Fi connection exists) so we are well-advised not to use our phones for Internet service in situations like this. Besides, the tracks sometimes pass through country so remote there is no service.

But I’m not sorry. It’s another invitation to “disconnect” – from everything. We left home last night, and already, I feel myself relaxing and breathing more easily. I haven’t had the first thought about any of the responsibilities I left behind. And I’m really not interested in the rapid-fire news that has been at my fingertips whenever I become idle. I’m not fighting a temptation. The Internet is just not available to me.

Instead, I’m free to ride a train to states I’ve never visited and see miles and miles of landscape I’ve never beheld in my whole life. And I’m doing it in the constant company of the love of my life, unencumbered by screen addiction. This is LIVING.

©2018 by J. Mark Lawson

Comments

[Elaine Southard]

This definitely sounds like a refreshing pause, glad you two can share this experience.

[Larry Boyer]

Can't wait to read the rest!!!

[Ellen Park]

The beginning of a wonderful experience!