I feel like riding the rails

I feel like taking a ride on a train this morning, like my family did when I was 10 years old.
It probably was the most exciting few days of my life, certainly of my childhood, though getting my first “very own” pony would have to top the list (not a hand-me-down pony from my sister but my very own).
Come to think of it, there were quite a few childhood highlights. But at this moment, in my self-imposed solitary confinement where it snowed last night and it was still dark at 8:30 this morning, the train was calling to me.
Insomnia is wiggling its unkind head again. In fact, not too many nights ago I remained awake and restless the entire night. And I found myself imagining I was on a train–tucked into a berth with my sister–and the image was comforting and oh so welcome.
Climbing up the two steps into the passenger car of a train was a bit like climbing through C.S. Lewis’ wardrobe into Narnia, where nothing was as it was and all manner of adventure was possible.
Our train departed Winnipeg at 11 p.m., destination Vancouver. Children boarded the train already dressed in their jammies, with favourite pillows and teddy bears tucked under their arms.
Everyone else went about getting into their nightwear and brushing teeth, and it struck me how society’s playing field was levelled when we were all wearing pajamas and avoiding eye contact on the walk from the washrooms to the berth.
My sister and I pulled shut the heavy curtain of our magical bed and began to giggle; the two of us tucked in like peas in a pod.
The train lurched at first, like it was straining against some force before breaking free–free from the ordinary–and a shudder moved from one car to the next down the track, like a shiver moving down the spine.
And then the train found its rhythm, the swaying back and forth and the gentle clickety-clack, the lullaby of the sound putting my sister and me almost immediately to sleep.
I can feel it now, like I was in my mother’s arms, my head against her chest, when I was brand new and perfect.
There is no train in Dawson City; no lonely whistle calling out through the cold crisp air, the sound softened by the fresh fall of snow. But there is an edition of “The Last Spike” in the cupboard here in Berton House, written by Pierre Berton in 1971 and garnering him the honour of the Governor General’s award for non-fiction that year.
The train always has compelled writers; pulled them in to create a world of mystery that already shrouds a train, like “Murder on the Orient Express” and many of Agatha Christie’s novels.
The train is a world all its own and though characters can leap from trains, and others can gallop on horseback beside a train before climbing aboard, there is little outside interference (if you discount helicopters lowering “Mission Impossible” characters on to the train or James Bond leaping from an overpass).
I felt safe on that train to Vancouver, swaying across the Prairies, stopping to look in wonder at Mt. Robson, and waking to climb into the observation car to take note of passing through the longest train tunnel in the Rockies (though all we could see was the pitch black in the absence of any external light).
I will take the train in my dreams tonight, waving at friends I miss, holding up my “perfect pen” from Jim, stopping off to hug my wee grandchildren, to press my nose into the neck of my daughters and breathe in their perfection, and then I shall fall fast asleep.
wendistewart@live.ca