Love and Hate
Trains of thought can haunt the mind. These are thoughts and memories of places gone and people known. They carry with them acute awareness of time's endless assault upon the works of men, the lands, and perhaps especially ones own self - all captured in haunting trains of thought. What sets these trains to rolling? Sometimes it is a glimpse of a red sunset that starts their parade, or an accidental look to the West, or a seemingly inexhaustible heat on a long summer day with unlimited ceiling. Whatever the cause, they come ... and with them love and hate. Cresting the Rockies and the Great Divide the transcon starts the grade down to Butte. With the grade come the trestles, and what is today, bike trail. Along the way houses and driveways encroach and use the old mainline in ways that surveyors and track gangs never foresaw. Manifests and passenger trains, electrics and orange bay windows are now simply relics of different eras. Below, Butte herself offers a vista t