Wild Horse Plains, Montana

I wake to see Brian leaning against the door between carriages. Getting in the way of the through-traffic appears his well practiced ice breaker, but it seems there's been no-one through for a while and he's loitering at my feet. The girl who slept in the chair beside me was gone; her stop-off must have been in the night.

Eventually I ask him if he is traveling for work (it's the grey suit, I'm curious). This is a mistake. I knew it was a mistake, but I asked anyway.

"No, I travel for love. For love of my mother - for my little brother."

He's lost me.

But Brian feels no need to explain and I resist the temptation to question. Fortunately he navigates the stilted ends of conversations seamlessly unto new topics, as a disc jockey might fade out Madonna's Holiday into Beethoven's Sonata in B Flat Major - the musical transition may well work, but the listener is less likely to ponder Beethoven's pianist virtuosity than question how the hell did we get here? Indeed, this is where I find myself, rendered rather speechless, and Brian digresses further and further beyond me...

"I know lots of good stories. Stories of the supernatural. There are plenty of gifted people out there. I know of shapeshifters. I know of a Polish woman from Warsaw - I speak a bit of Polish by the way - who can read minds and who can move objects with her mind..."

"I'm just a humble servant", pausing to offer me bottled water from his pocket, "from Oregon."

He continues to move quickly in tangents, and I take notes, smile courteously and avoid eye contact.

"I see angels and spirits. Do you see angels and spirits? I believe in angels", and when he laughs his laugh I recall my first impressions and find it suddenly less gentle on the ear one-on-one than it had resounding fuller in the distance.

"I've seen an Egyptian god, I've seen her. I was crying when I met her."

"I don't drink anything. I drink wine, sacred blood, I drink that."

I have said nothing for some time and, unprompted, Brian eventually walks away.

* * * * *

I get lost in ''mountain time'' and my not wearing a watch seems more of a statement here. We travel an hour and then lose it traveling west into the mountains. A train that defies time. I look out the window in the lounge car, privy to the railway side of rambling houses, tinny yards of metal, car shells and satellite dishes, and wonder if time has eluded Montana too.

Wolf Point, Montana. A 5 minute smoke break at 11:30ish. I watch a horsy woman with wiry hair and a moustache pack her pipe in readiness. To stretch my legs and breath in the cool air is a gift.

* * * * *

I perpetually think about food. When i hear the announcement ''fifteen minutes to Shelby" crackle through the intercom, I think Shelby "up state" slang for dinner.

* * * * *

Later I meet the pipe lady later in the carriage. She is plaiting horse hair in tight wrist braids sold as jewelry.

She said, "When I was younger than nine I knew that Montana was where I should be. I've been crazy about horses since before i was born."

"I came here, to the Wild Horse Plains, and I said to my family, 'we live in the wrong place.'"

Photographs

[From the top - Williston, North Dakota at dawn; the Empire Builder at Shelby; Smoko.]