Fri 26 December 2008
So long to this bone-bleached part of the world
PORTLAND, Oregon — My element in September, as I traveled to the East Coast, was water — or rain, more precisely, but also wind. Hurricane Gustav drenched me as I left Chicago; Hurricane Hanna soaked me to the core as I arrived in New York, walking through Queens. Hurricane Ike delayed my return for 12 hours as I sat in northwest Indiana, the tracks washed between South Bend and Gary.
This time it was water again, for sure, but in its frozen form, snow. The Inuit, you know, have 37 words for snow. I saw dry, powder snow fluttering like down in a pillow fight at the Minneapolis train station. Snow like Siberia, Dr. Zhivago snow, lacking all heat sun-shined snow in regions so cold it can no longer snow, crossing North Dakota, stopped in Rugby, the geographical center of North America.
Blowing, drifting snow, sitting beneath the windmills in a white birthday cake dessertscape of Eastern Washington. Dirty, slushy snow in Roseburg, Oregon. Wet, piling-up snow on the freeway from Salem to Portland, transforming our bus into a sleigh, eight cylinders of Greyhound diesel into eight tiny reindeer and our mustachioed bus driver, Curtis, into a kind of curmudgeonly Santa Claus, more Billy Bob Thornton than Miracle on 34th Street:
"I live in Portland.
Sedna the Inuit Witch-Goddess is blowing the harsh wind of her icy throat down from the Arctic through the Pacific, from Sarah Palin-country to the godless Volvoed Northwest, and Seattle and Portland are enduring the worst winter storm in 30 years. And I walked into it, half-willingly.
Oh, I may have hoped for the gentle rain I knew and loved, but that would not have been as dramatic for my return to PDX and my descent back into Roseburg (rising again to the hydroelectric emissions-free light rail of Northern Oregon three days later, give or take).
I'm not exactly sure why I came out here except I had the opportunity. I had to see an old friend in the depths of Oregon, an oracle, a recluse of sorts, I guess.
After detoxing from my fall quarter at Northwestern, I had nine days to fit in a mad, illogical trip across the continent and now I've set myself up to make my mother very sad if I miss Xmas for a fourth straight year. I am a bad son. I'm coming, ma, the train'll get out tonight, I promise!
All traffic is shuttered north and south, from Vancouver to Eugene, and probably further south. Nothing will leave Seattle tonight. But somehow, Amtrak thinks it can make it back up the Columbia River Gorge tonight, five hours delayed. I told the conductor, I'm game. Why not.
Every step of this journey has been delayed. I guess we left Chicago on time. That was not delayed. But I woke up Monday morning with the sun on the wrong side of the train, and that set the tone for the rest of the trip. It was 30 below zero in North Dakota and Montana as I passed through (that was the daily high) — so cold the rails cracked west of Williston, N.D., and tipped over 30 freight cars full of corn, spilling them all over the tracks and snow. I made a couple new friends on that leg of the journey, a couple from Cornwall, and Miss Lissy Savage, who playing in it for the first time ever as we stopped in the Twin Cities, said it felt like corn when you slide your feet across it.
From N.D., we were bused into the night of Big Sky Montana on motorcoaches with red velvet seats. Put back on the train in Havre, Mont., when we woke up Tuesday in Sandpoint, Idaho, we were told that we'd have another bus waiting for us in Spokane, Wash., the train would make it no further. The bus was six hours late leaving Portland for Roseburg on Thursday (which just gave me time to walk all along the waterfront of PDX, which was sunny and beautiful).
I was pushed off (not literally) the noon Greyhound from Roseburg yesterday, marooning me in southern Oregon for another five hours till the evening bus arrived. I sat next to a new arrival to snowy? Oregon on the bus, he saw my copy of the Buddha's Dhammapada, and we struck up a conversation that lasted four or five hours, all the way to Portland. When Curtis the Greyhound Sleigh Driver delivered us to PDX, eight inches of snow had already fallen, which pretty much stranded me in downtown, except he and his wife were so kind to let me crash at their place in Hillsboro, which I knew would be an easy Max ride back to the city this morning.
The city is surreal today, lots of people about, shopping in this bleak economy, transported by the light rail. Almost no cars anywhere, like some kind of liberal frozen wet dream. Beautiful.
The trip's not over. I've got 2500 miles of tracks before I arrive in Defiance, OH.
Oh, oh, oh-i-o, oh-i-o, oh-i-o
Truly sorry, I see clearly Calmly crashing, I pace faster than anyone Hinges rusting, they swing louder than anything Truly lonely this place is flatter than it seems I'm upset and I leave the doors wide open
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