A few years back I wanted to see America, Amtrak was my vessel. Summer was the time, shoved $1500 in my wallet and in two-and-a-half weeks that lasted a lifetime, the window to America (and part of Canada) was seared into memory.
The train towards Seattle left in the afternoon, and the eager driven excitement I sat back to begin the journey to hopefully understand the country of my residence or maybe the world. The mountains of skyscrapers sank beneath the horizon to make way for the rolling hills of northern Illinois and Wisconsin. The train pulled up to the Twin Cities. This brought back the fruitful memories of the mosquito laden summer camp where kids could be kids and where things were innocent. Swimming in a lake and have leaches freak out the unsuspecting teenage girls. For a moment this was bliss.
Then the sun rose to reveal the northern plains, no pun intended the view was rather plain. A slight curvature of the Earth was visible due the incredible flatness of the land. This lasted the whole day, so I ventured down to the smoking car, where the real stories are.
A man with a weatherworn face and deep eye sockets that looked as if they saw one to many sad things in their long life. He told us of a time where hockey was in its hay day and how he coached boys into men to fight hard get that win and where fighting and playing on the ice was fun and innocent. Then the Great War took his men from him, he had “many kids I called son lost,” as he put it, not a dry eye in the room. Then the Iraq War came to mind, is this a ‘great war’ we are in now?
As the trail went on the giants of the west appeared with grandeur and humility, how Meriwether Lewis and William Clark could push on with these craggy mountain in their way? A good friend once said, “I bet they were first like, ‘screw this lets go back and make up a story.'” But then again they did and left home and innocence for the unknown, so the could pave the way for their countrymen’s manifest of a new America.
Then Vancouver, British Columbia was the first stop. Finally, no more train (three days on the train was exhausting). But those strawberry covered cheesecakes are divine. Vancouver is where I almost was left to die in the wild, took a wrong turn and got lost in the forest. Thankfully though the tree the city could be seen.
Moving onto Seattle to see my Grandfather for the second to last time and then the City of Angels called for me. The first mistake when getting there was to stay in East L.A., I never felt so creeped out, at least in the forest there is food and ways to escape bears, here, on the other hand, bullets are kind of hard to dodge. Then the next day was finding a hostel in Hollywood, yes there is a hostel in Hollywood and it wasn’t fake. Then seeing the results of technology by hiking the Hollywood Hills and seeing the ugly old and green-brown blanket of smog hanging grotesquely over the city.
After that, Albuquerque was next. This is where you learn to always bring a backpack with cold weather clothes with you in the Southwest. Think Chicago is bad; try wearing a t-shirt and shorts in 90-degree weather then it plummets to 60 degrees.
Now it was time to go home, there’s a lot more stories but that would be a 300-paged book.
Seeing America this way truly makes you cherish it a little more than reading Lewis and Clark’s journals on their intrepid expedition. This is what people should do and do it by train so you can hear the souls of the land and stay in hostels, they help you experience the place you’re staying in so you can talk to people after you’ve done something rather that just staying alone and popping on the Weather Channel…but I digress.