Good Night, and Good Luck

Davi, from the dining car, has joined me in the lounge where I have been talking with Caleb, an aspiring musician amongst other talents no doubt, and traveler on his way to Portland. Our lounge chairs rest easy facing the huge car windows and passing landscape and conversation flows easily across profound subjects without concern about time; from society expectations of age and responsibility to the US Constitution 2nd Amendment - the right to bear arms, "Arms because it's cool to have a gun," Caleb remarks (he's not an advocate) and we help Davi with her hand luggage at her station which feels to arrive abruptly as if to interrupt our chain of thought.

I have traded what remains of my cheese for a black and white canister of film (I cannot forgive myself for packing my film into my check-in luggage), and take one lone photograph of the famously receding glaciers of the Glacier National Park before the battery on my camera expires.

Caleb and I watch the glaciers in silence until their dusty white edges fade, first grey, and then beyond focus into the dusk of the evening.

George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck is playing in the lounge car and it's late when I bid good night to Caleb and retire to my own car and chair.

* * * * *

In the morning I walk to the back of the car and am rather bemused to find that someone has, under the stealth of night, unhitched the lounge car and remaining carriages somewhere east and just shy of Seattle. I suspect foul play and conjure images of obscure black and white silent movie material, highway robbery and a daring rooftop chase scene.

The train evidently has split in two - my half to Seattle, while Caleb and his carriages have left for Portland.

I stand a while at the rear window, watch the steady path of the tracks gently curving away and smile at the poetry of it all.

Photographs

[Glacier National Park, Montana at dusk]