Graffiti landcapes laundrylines busted-down cars backyard swimming pools. Trainshadow jumps and wriggles over desert mesaland and high ocean cliffs, wine valleys and forests and mountains deep in snow. A couple hours sleep under a table in the lounge car and a pause to change trains in L.A., Chinatown dim sum eaten on a parkbench. In muggy San Luis Obispo oranges and limes grow on trees. Check into the hostel and sleep for 12 hours, then get back on the train. In Seattle the train turns into a bus and then I cross the border and I’m home, home again, home from the home I left behind.

It is 3,500 km from Santa Fe to Vancouver. By train it feels like the long way that it is. It feels like honest travel, every mile felt in the bones and well deserved.

<<here’s another little train movie: Albuquerque Amtrak Blues. i’d like to spend my life on a train>>