Lost Rail

Approximate Milepost:  1491 Many years ago, I knew a child who gazed out the windows of an old Chevy Suburban at the passing landscapes of the West, straining to see tracks and trains.  Big bridges and trestles, old brick buildings, little towns, and massive coal drags heading east with Cascade Green monsters pulling at them. Then I knew a young man, and a different Suburban.  He pointed it west, slept in its back in parks beside the Missouri River in Montana, and traversed the old trails of Hiawathas.  There were the abandoned brick buildings, high bridges, little towns forgotten.  A gravel path that extended across the Big Sky country, grain elevators standing in fields, and moments that were a gift. One day there were no more Suburbans, no more mountains crossed, and a lot of memories.  Then I knew a man who wasn't so young anymore.   So I close my eyes and think about this and I know that we're not here very long.

With the day gone and sun setting, blue shadows start to filter across the mainline in its climb to the top of the Rockies.  It is a relentless climb up a mountain grade that to this day has never changed its standard.  The view from the climb is best captured in the images themselves - a view that looks across the wide expanses left behind and the hurt of a pass sheltered from rain but never from the hard memories.   Approximate milepost 1489.7