On my kitchen table there is CD that is not just a CD. It is a ticket to ride, by train, boat, or anything else that travels along the surface of the earth. It can take you almost anywhere, as long as you are in no rush, and provided you don't have to fly. It's white and deceptively blank-looking, with ADVENTURES 2009-2010 scrawled on it. It records the trips my husband and I have taken since last fall...many of which we will remember even in our old age.This past Christmas, after hoofing it to midnight mass in Jackson Square, we took a train from New Orleans to D.C. to see my mom's side of the family.We hadn't seen them since her funeral two years ago. The romance of the rails was everything we hoped it'd be and more...but I especially appreciated the time to think, decompress, and prepare to see the people I love most. As we left the levees of Lake Ponchartrain I kept Willie Nelson's famous song, "The City of New Orleans" on my brain. As we made our way north to where the snow swished across the tracks connecting small- town America, the towns and stations we passed looked like so many ceramic collectible scenes, warm-lit, nestled in their winterscapes.
Months later, when we celebrated our anniversary in Mexico, we went by ship, and I appreciated this slower, almost premodern mode of travel for the same reason. I have a hard time leaving work at work, and being stranded on board a ship or on a train is perfect for making me leave it all behind. During that trip, I finally got to see the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, and my skin crawled with how alive the place still felt. The temple pyramid of the Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl rang with echos as we stood before it and clapped--echos that sounded like the call of the Quetzal bird and the flurry of feathers. It was no longer a wistful, grainy image in a textbook, as it had been all my life. I was reminded of deferred dreams of teaching language and literature in Spanish and English, both on hold for awhile while I'm in combat boots.
In many ways traveling by these older modes of travel took me back to a time when steel and steam were at the cutting edge of progress, when everything that now seems slow and cumbersome by comparison was shiny and swift. I went back in time in other ways: back to my mom's childhood, back to the birthplace of America...
