Sappy Tracks

Memory lane's always just down the street for me.

The normal paths the mind wanders are, for me anyway, filled with the pits and deadfalls of the past. I have little control over the triggers that send me into way back when, for better or for worse. All too often, it's for worse; if you've ever seen me suddenly shudder and grimace, it's almost certainly the unexpected return of an univited visitor from a less than impressive point in the past.

Fortunately, the rabbit-holes of the mind don't always send me to unhappy places. And one happy place, triggered by the strangest things, are memories of trains.

I love being on a train. Trains stand for motion, for direction, for certainty and speed. Better yet, most anything you do on a train is what you ought to be doing. You can be as productive as need be, but there's nothing lost in simply staring out the window, because the view from the train is unlike any other. Trains take care of the busy work, the stopping and going. They cut through cities and mountains, tearing along heedless of impatient cars halted at crossings, cheered on by waving children and barking dogs. The infinite turns of driving, the red lights and the crosswalks, appeals to the map, fillups at the gas station: the train dispenses with all that administration of life, the paperwork of being.

I've spent many happy hours staring at the pastoral ideal France has quilted across its countryside in many kinds of trains. Pulling into Orleans after a day of touring chateaux along the Loire, the aging train slumps into the quay seeming as tired as your feet (from hiking the miles between the royal residences and the tracks). The train to Chartes is busy and efficient, a not unfriendly contrast to the bumpy carriage ride under the shadow of the cathedral. The TGV fancies itself a demi-plane, smoothly hurtling across the miles without even the hint of a clickety-clack to remind you it runs on rails and not just the will of the starch conductor.

The journey is certainly not more important than the destination, unless your destination is the journey. Training across Hungary without another thought in my mind, I caught a blurry snapshot of a single home, perched on a hill, no others around as far as the eye could see. Eleven hours on the train and that house was the most poignant thing I saw out the windows, though many other sights were much more spectacular. Similarly, across Spain, from Madrid to Santiago de Compostella and from there to San Sebastian: the journey ended the moment I stepped on the train, for I had arrived, content to see the world outside the glass evolve hour after hour, the words of Jose Maria Gironella coming in snatches.

I could go on, and will soon, no doubt, but it's funny what occasioned this whole reminisce. Someone had Jack Johnson playing, and for a minute or so, I heard his song, Breakdown. Good eclectic though I may strive to be, I won't deny enjoying the tune, in no small part because it instantly took me to a train in the Swiss Alps, smokily puffing along the many hours from Interlaken to a town near the Chateau de Chillon. The windows of the train come down just right to rest your elbows on the ledge and your chin on your hands. Only a pair of German women and I are in the whole car, taking turns to alert the each other of sights of particular interest. Outside the peaks wear white fez's of snow, though it's a brilliant and warm day, while the scattered farmhouses are lined with the rouge of flowerboxes in bloom.

It's a moment you don't want to end, but, funnily enough, I never wished that train would breakdown.