This article was originally published by Crosscut and is republished here by permission.
I don’t often get out of Seattle, but this summer I rode the train to the Twin Cities and back. I wish I could say it was a principled choice to curtail my carbon footprint, but it wasn’t. Air fares were pricey, Amtrak came to mind, and the more I pondered the idea, the more shipping myself ground freight in a Wi-Fi-free box sounded like a good way to force a minivacation on my workaholic brain. I was needed in Minneapolis for just two days, so most of the trip was train, nearly 40 hours in each direction.
The Empire Builder starts up along the water, chugging through Golden Gardens and Carkeek Park and up to Everett before veering inland. In Everett, a young woman boarded and sat down next to me. Her car had broken down again so she was riding back home to Wenatchee, where she had to work the next morning. Her boyfriend had bought her a four-pack of canned wine spritzers to lubricate the journey. She cracked one open and handed me another, and when she disembarked a few hours later she left the last one with me. The seats on Amtrak are spacious and they recline generously. It’s not so bad to sleep in coach.
After midnight, when the train stops in Spokane, they hitch up the sightseeing car, a sleeper and two more coaches full of passengers from the Portland branch of the route. It is somehow thrilling to wake up and find that what had previously been the back end of the train, a wall sealed off against the emptiness and darkness beyond, is now permeable, a portal through which one can discover more space, more people, more life. The little universe of the train expands overnight.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
