My obsession with trains gets fed...

As I've said in the past, I have a thing for trains. Our family's cabin (my grandparents' intended retirement home - prior to my grandpa dying of cancer in his 60's) was on a moderate-sized, shallow prairie lake on the CN Rail mainline. Trains passed by the lake like clockwork. Trains passed a crossing right next to the tracks, and had to sound their horns every time they passed our piddly little lake. The gap in the trees as the trains rumbled past on the tracks allowed for the plaintive call of the horn to echo across our anonymous lake. It added a sort of structure to my idyllic childhood days spent poking under fallen logs, jumping over the creek and chasing wood frogs. It also added spice to our nights when I was particularly young as my cousin, in his fledgling years of learning to speak and walk prior to being able to chase around like us "older" kids (two and a half years makes a difference!), feared the train, miserably. He was a second beacon, often going off in fearful screams during the wee hours of the night to the distant, barely audible train horn while we were all cozily nestled in the cabin, fast asleep.

The media has been doing a good job of feeding my love of trains. Okay, scratch that. THE MEDIA doesn't really give a shit about trains. CBC Radio loves trains. My Sunday radio programmes love trains. Michael Enright (a nerdy-elite sounding, slightly short and paunchy Colonel Sanders look-alike) has a Sunday radio show, aptly called The Sunday Edition, and today's episode is conveniently taken from his cross-Canada (Halifax, NS to Prince Rupert, BC) ride on the various VIA Rail passenger trains that dissect our nation. You can probably find the episode or highlights thereof on the CBC podcast page, ooo, or here on his blog from the train trip. Even while he talks about things only peripherally related to the rail (Nova Scotia's resistance to Canadian Confederation for one), the background noises are clearly those of a rumbling train. Stuart McLean's Vinyl Cafe (available for podcast here) has also broadcast episode(s) from the train. His is a radio variety show, with musicians who perform, including the lovely-voiced Reid Jamieson, who played this fantastic and slightly haunting song: Rail. The Vinyl Cafe, too, had the rumbling, and squeaking sound of the train in the background, throughout. So, radio delves into discussions about the train. I love how one seemingly obsolete medium is talking about another seemingly obsolete medium.

Obviously I'm not the only one who's drawn into the lure of train lore. There are yet others like Olivier Barrot and Alain Bouldouyre, Frenchmen apparently lured by the mystique of Canadian winter and the Gilles Vigneault line "Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver!" (My country is not a country, it's winter!) Most tourists I know of (save a brave Brazillian who learned English in Grande Prairie and some Aussies seeking to experience a "White Christmas") don't aim to travel to Canada during winter. Those two Frenchmen set out for a train ride in December and came out of it with this book: TransCanadian Sketchbook. It is a book steeped in idyllic watercolours of the streamlined stainless steel 1960's VIA Rail passenger cars and the Canadian landscape. They rode from Toronto to Vancouver on THE CANADIAN, the great dotted line connecting the Great Lakes with the Canadian Shield, the Prairies with the Rockies and, ultimately everything to the Pacific Ocean.

I finally made good on my love of Canadian trains. I've ridden the EuRail trains, slept on the EuroStar hyper-expensive but luxurious over-nighters (between Zurich and Berlin, there was lots of shunting trains around random rail stations), but had only a very vague memory of riding the VIA passenger train from Edmonton to Jasper as a four-year-old (I ran up and down the aisles and chased another little, rambunctious kid). That taste was not enough, how many four-year-old (but still remembered) experiences are? So, I bought myself a ticket on a momentously fortunate instance of post-employee strike nation-wide ticket sales. How could I say "no" to a 60% discount on a train ticket? In the end, it was cheaper than flying from Edmonton to Vancouver, AND I got to see the mountains from a very different angle than driving down the highway. I perched in the dome car for hours on end, knitting, staring out the windows, watching the snow, and the fog envelop mountain vistas. I fell asleep to the gentle rocking of the train car. I met some incredibly strange people, some fantastic people, and was even (really poorly) set-up with an RCMP officer. Oh, it made me laugh! And I took photos. The goal wasn't to get to Vancouver, it was to experience the train ride, and I certainly feel like I did. Hopefully these photos can attest to that.


Leaving the Edmonton area in November sunrise


Approaching the Eastern Slopes via Hinton


The retro-luxury of the 1960's designed dome car seating


Wind storm in the distance (Roche Miette is on the right)


Paused in Jasper for an hour, with fresh snow!


Hugging a mountain slope, leaving Jasper (Jasper tramway perched in the clouds on the right)


Vancouver's Station: Pacific Central


And... coming home, with a brief stop in Jasper for more photos


One of the beauties of a trip like this is that it changes your perspective, about people, about Canada, and about what you see as you travel down the rail line. It also reinforces some very strongly-held beliefs about our nation, much like the fantastic Arrogant Worms song, Rocks and Trees:

My country's bigger than most,
And if asked I boast.
Cause i'm really proud,
So I shout it loud.
Though our numbers are few,
We will welcome you.
Although we don't have history,
Gold medal winning teams,
Heroes or prisoners, world famous volcanoes,
Still what we've got's glorious.

Cause we've got rocks and trees, and trees and rocks,
and rocks and trees, and trees and rocks,
and rocks and trees, and trees and rocks,
and rocks and trees, and trees and rocks,
and water.

Just watch it, it's so much better live!

on trains and memories

I still haven't rectified the lack of March photos...

But I've been busy. And I've been catching myself thinking about things from long ago. Maybe it's the fact that I'm now staring my future in the face and I can't figure out what to do, maybe it's just that I can hear the train at night while in my room, trying to go to sleep.

I miss the train. Trains and water bodies...


Okay, so granted, that's not the correct water body, but it's still a train. Our family cabin, on a tiny speck of a lake between Edmonton and Edson, was on the CN Rail main line. ... which means there's constant train traffic. Or, well, not CONSTANT, but... you get the picture, there were a lot of trains. I loved the train. I loved hearing the horn sound, and the echoed rush of cars and wheels over steel tracks. I loved the way the sound was amplified as it rung out across the lake. And every time I hear a train, I think of that.

Thankfully I don't think of my poor cousin, who, at the age of two, couldn't hack it with the trains. Sure, everything was fine during the day, we were playing, and there's so much fun to be had in the sand piles and grassy lawn of the Lake that your average toddler hardly bats an eye at the sound of the train horn. BUT at 2am, it's a different story, there's nothing saving you from that awful "twain" and oh did we all begrudge him his fear. There's nothing quite like being woken up by a 2-year-old with an irrational fear of trains EVERY TIME the train went by (and it went by more than once an hour some nights. Eventually we would be able to convince him that the train wasn't going to hit our cabin since we weren't on the track, but it took a lot of talk sometimes, and a lot of tears and anguished screams too (which kept us all up).

But, as I said, thankfully that's not what I remember. What I remember when I think of trains is the absolute stillness of everything. That twilit calm that settles over prairie water bodies. The cackle of grebes and the distant clunking of what I always assumed was a coffee urn over a fire (I never did find out what the sound was)... That and the clunk of our wood stove. I think of those memories when I think of trains. And I miss them so much, and want to wrap them around me like the greatest of all blankets. But I can't, they float in my head like so much flotsam on the shore of the lake. And I want to chase after them, scoop them out, with each sounding of the train horn, but, like the horn call itself, every memory is fleeting, living but for a moment in my mind, before it is flushed back amidst the other scurf washing up on shore. And I drift off to sleep in a mixture of indistinct memories and thoughts of what's going to happen in the coming months.

no. 11: meanderings

I'm not truly sure how my mind works these days. I got a blog because I was tired of the blog formats at other places such as MySpace, and actually liked the idea of the internet anonymity. Granted, as always I am bound to be found by someone who knows me eventually... But regardless, not my point tonight. My point tonight is that I got a blog, and suddenly I don't feel like 'talking.' Or, perhaps it's not that I don't feel like talking, I just never get anywhere coherent these days. My mind wanders like someone lost in a vast, meandering Zoo... like the time I went to the Zoo in Berlin (first day in Germany) because I KNEW I wouldn't have to talk to anyone at the zoo. ha! see what I mean, I'm not trying to talk about the zoo, but there I go talking about the zoo... Vast meandering zoos are great because you can walk a path and stop at just about any point, only to find yourself with five options for new paths to take. That is approximately what my mind is like these days.

This meandering thought process has led to the start and near completion of a lovely turquoise calorimetry for a darling friend of mine, the starting of what will be a very time consuming (but hopefully gorgeous) lace nightie from the free lingerie patterns in the Spring 2007 Interweave Knits, and most of one mitten. All of this, mind you, has been started since I've decided I ought to buckle down and do some serious work on my thesis. My thesis of "beautiful data" according to my supervisors. My thesis that WILL NOT write itself, no matter how much I try and convince it to...

And, all in the same breath - it is, after all, only the 17th of January - I am trying to convince myself that 2008 will be a good year full of productivity and change. Productivity, I hope, in the thesis writing department, although knitting productivity is also good, just not of primary importance; and change hopefully in the thesis department... primarily in the form of "I will finish my thesis and graduate this year." This year is going to be a mountain of change. Whether or not the roaring noise in my head and all the surrounding headaches amount to anything more than some nasty migraines, the rest of my life is going to change momentously this year. I moved last summer, and my lease will be up in another 5 1/2 months. I doubt I will be staying on here, in this cute, "very me" house (according to my friends). While I love living in this neighbourhood, I don't particularly love living with my roommate, and the house is leaving much to be desired, most particularly modern windows that actually insulate. I'm not sure I'm prepared for the step of finding more roommates to live with, or living with a friend, but I know I need change, and perhaps I'll be able to find a small walk-up or something amenable to my income that doesn't involve me being the only person to shovel the sidewalks or mow the lawn. But moving aside, other changes are inevitable. One cannot be a student forever - at least not in this day and age - and my MSc is rather palpably drawing to a close, if only I could get my butt in gear and write! And thus, with that, (6 months ought to seal the deal on both house and thesis, I hope!), I am... off to the races? I don't know. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Like the Berlin Zoo, I have the rather distinct feeling that I shall just come to a stop on my path and find myself with five different paths to choose from as I decide to walk onwards.

So, I don't know. Perhaps I'll end up visiting the Hippos for a spell, if only because it's a warm place to stand, and the large, lumbering beasts are kind of interesting to watch. Or maybe I'll head off in search of strange breeds of livestock at the back of the Zoo compound only to find myself face to face with all the animals I am so accustomed to seeing - being from Canada, I suppose what's familiar to me might not be to a German zoo-goer - that nothing is new or exciting except the surprise of finding such a familiar face in such a different location. Or maybe I'll be drawn in by a gaggle of bird cages, their unique calls and flashy feathers enticing me, only to find, hidden just behind them, the most exciting of all, the vast and wondrous elephant exhibit, replete with dexterous trunks and glorious trumpeting calls. Or maybe I'll just set myself down on a bench overwhelmed with choices and fear that I'm not going to make the right one... wishing I'd picked up the visitor guide map at the entrance like everyone else, instead of trying to decipher signposts written in another language.

My mind, and my life, it would seem, are like a vast, meandering old zoo. And now, all I can think of are the beautiful carpets of brown leaves that laid across the paths at the Berlin zoo when I visited in November, 2005. A chilly time to visit an outdoor attraction, I know, but I was never one for convention, and it sure beats trying to hustle through the crowd of summer tourists in uncomfortably hot and sticky temperatures.

no. 5: Italy on my mind

okay, I've discovered one of the many reasons why this autumn has been so agonisingly difficult for me, particularly as it related to productivity. Why, you ask? Because I keep reminiscing about the past and finding myself longing to be elsewhere. More specifically, longing to be in Italy once again.

The autumn of 2005, I ventured off for some travel and a little cultural enlightenment. Admittedly I didn't go far. Now I don't mean distance-wise, clearly I ventured a fair way's in that regard (nearly half-way around the world in fact), but I opted not to go too far out of my cultural comfort zone, choosing the more, uh, predictable world of Western Europe. Had I been truly adventurous like many a friend of mine, I would have gone for the backpacking through India, or the volunteering with development or environmental agencies in South-East Asia and South America. Alas, I was much more tame. I like to take baby steps, and not just leap out of my comfort zone. I know French, and so I started in France, and moved south to Spain before swinging a night train to Italy on what I felt was a (if partially small) leap of faith to WWOOF on an organic farm in the heart of Tuscany, near Pienza (the 'perfect city').


morning fog, and the view from the olive grove

the luscious hillside across from il Romita, the oil-press, where we brought our fresh collection of olives at the end of every day.

the rolling, cypress-littered hillsides of Toscana, Pienza is out of frame to the right.

I stayed at the farm - Podere il Casale - for four weeks, almost an entire month, and grew to love both the land we worked in, and the people I met. I started to feel as though I was adopting them as my family. It was a marvelous experience, and one I'd gladly repeat. In fact, one I've been craving this autumn.


the courtyard at il Casale, replete with ripening squash and the occasional peafowl.

the green-roofed long-house I slept in while working on the farm. It was a dream!


I miss just about everything about it. From the people, who were, on the whole, absolutely delightful; to the jaw-dropping landscape around me; to the food, the delicious food of which I am reminded almost constantly. (because nothing I have here compares to what I ate there). Of course, how could anything about an idyllic trip to the Italian countryside parallel to my land-locked and northern home? One has to allow for some (or many) discrepancies, but I'd hoped, after two years since my return to the land of ice and snow (ha! it's been so warm and dry... it's hardly believable), the memories would have faded a little and I'd not feel such a voracious need to return to the rolling hills and fresh green flavour of moments-ago pressed olive oil. I miss it so...


an olive tree ready to be liberated of its fruit

morning pause at the olives

collection in high-swing

our day's collection of olives, ready to be pressed


I even miss hanging from the olive trees, soaking my feet in the early morning dew, and shaking out the 'paracadute' weighted down with freshly picked fruit. We spent glorious hours in the sunshine, perched on ladders or draped from branches, combing the olives out of craggy, ancient trees. During this time, I learned Swiss folk songs (sadly, I've mostly forgotten them now, though), told tales of my field research assistant adventures, related to people on the subject of "what am I going to do now that I've graduated from university?" and laughed at silly jokes that made absolutely no sense once translated. Oh, additionally, I attempted to describe the phenomenon known as maple syrup to some perplexed Swiss and Italians. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life, not only because I was doing something so out of the ordinary, but for the people I met from all over the world - well not ALL over, but a fairly different collection from what I'm used to - and attempting to converse in French, English, Italian and a smidgeon of Swiss German. Mind boggling... but an absolute delight.

It makes me wonder, sometimes, why it was that I opted for graduate school, when deep down, there's a part of me that just simply wants to do something. To be actively doing something with my hands, with every fibre of my being, such that I am not sitting at a desk, in front of a computer, sorting through reams of numbers. And, in truth, I know, I'm not just doing that, but those reams of numbers are what legitimize my summers of counting trees in the forest. Yet counting trees in the forest is not nearly as ideal a contribution as I'd hoped for. I'd rather learn how to milk a goat - one of the friends I met on the farm had milked goats way up in the Swiss Alps during the summer, apparently Alpen cheese is a highly-prized delicacy, and boy is it a wonder to behold! - than sit at my computer day after day, pushing numbers.

But, like it or not, I do not currently have the funds, as pursuing this semi-albatross is a rather consumptive process for me. Perhaps one day (hopefully soon) I will find myself at the doorstep of that farm again, ready and eager to contribute to their harvest. Maybe next year.