Speaker 1: I retired before I meant to the rhythm of a
Speaker 1: train line gets in your blood, same as salt and
Speaker 1: old habits. After thirty seven years riding the pinefalk to
Speaker 1: Heather's crossing stretch, rumble, screech, whistle, sway. I used to
Speaker 1: tell myself i'd work my last run when the line
Speaker 1: itself wore thin into the pines. But the arthritis in
Speaker 1: my hands wrote a quicker timetable. So now I live
Speaker 1: in a cottage with peeling yellow trim, just where the
Speaker 1: river bends tracks humming through the night. Most mornings, the
Speaker 1: light's slow to come, a damp Pacific mist drifting through
Speaker 1: fur branches, and a feeling that the world's still thinking
Speaker 1: it over before committing to a shape. I like that.
Speaker 1: Some say you've got to learn to love indeterminacy in retirement.
Speaker 1: Me I just missed the familiar discipline of checking my
Speaker 1: watch against the station's big wall clock, timing arrivals and
Speaker 1: departures down to the minute, listening for the subtle difference
Speaker 1: in a good engine ears throttle hand. These days, I
Speaker 1: keep my old Elgin pocket watch in a drawer beside
Speaker 1: the bed, though sometimes I'll slip it in a vest
Speaker 1: pocket accidentally. When I go out into town. There are
Speaker 1: routines you leave behind and some you carry with you.
Speaker 1: You can guess which sort I favor. Last November, my
Speaker 1: knees feeling mostly reliable and the air sharp with the
Speaker 1: promise of rain, I decided to buy myself a round
Speaker 1: trip ride, just for nostalgia's sake, I told Alice, who'd
Speaker 1: taken over as conductor when I left. Alice's laugh is
Speaker 1: a little too quick, and her uniform always has patches
Speaker 1: in fresh places, but she brings a certain lightness to
Speaker 1: the work. Come to see if I'm running a tighter
Speaker 1: ship than you did, Walt, she asked, half smirking as
Speaker 1: she clipped my ticket. You're getting there, I allowed, and
Speaker 1: she winked. Don't fall asleep in my car unless you
Speaker 1: want to wake up in a different century. The train's
Speaker 1: route is short, as these things go from Pinefork six
Speaker 1: thousand Souls, a tangle of vintage store fronts and mossy yards,
Speaker 1: up through a horseshoe of forest, then skirting a handful
Speaker 1: of towns before easing into Heather's Crossing, where the river
Speaker 1: goes broad and silty and the lumber money peters out
Speaker 1: three hours, give or take a minute or two for
Speaker 1: weather or a lingering late comer. I could recite the
Speaker 1: sequence of stops in my sleep. Sometimes I think I did.
Speaker 1: Tradition holds you shouldn't ride your own line as a
Speaker 1: passenger the first year you retire, But I'd waited my
Speaker 1: due time and made the excuse that if any one
Speaker 1: noticed me fussing, I was just checking up on alice.
Speaker 1: That morning, the car had a trace of wood smoke
Speaker 1: and stale popcorn, the seats springier than I recalled. A
Speaker 1: confused gold retriever hopped clumsily between compartments, getting a scolding
Speaker 1: pat from Old Joe, a fisherman whose beard always sprouted
Speaker 1: November like clockwork. Sarah, a commuter who teaches math at
Speaker 1: the high school, had a stack of grading on her lap.
Speaker 1: I settled in notebook discreetly tucked beside me. Old conductor's
Speaker 1: badge cupped in my palm for luck. The train trundled
Speaker 1: out into drizzle, slow at first, then gathering confidence. Past
Speaker 1: the edge of town. I watched the trees roll by
Speaker 1: familiar shapes, curves, a creosote whiff that said yard work
Speaker 1: from the siding. I meant to lose myself in the
Speaker 1: memory of it. But half way through, just past the
Speaker 1: old logging spur, a small itch surfaced, a sense that
Speaker 1: the trip felt well, thick somehow, as if there were
Speaker 1: a weight in the motion. I palmed my watch, careful
Speaker 1: to keep it hidden. Two hours and we'd only passed
Speaker 1: the half way station, Lars's outpost boards pealing the same
Speaker 1: stash of wild apples on the platform. Alice wasn't flagging
Speaker 1: any delays, but something wasn't adding up. After another forty minutes,
Speaker 1: the scenery remained unchanged, still furs, still the wide sweep
Speaker 1: of that nameless pond, and yet by rights we should
Speaker 1: have crossed two more stops. Finally, the train hosted into
Speaker 1: Heather's crossing with a sharpness that said the engineer was
Speaker 1: making up time. I checked the clocks, almost four hours.
Speaker 1: Clocks always ran a hair slow here town custom, but
Speaker 1: not this slow. I glanced around for alarm. None, No
Speaker 1: one seemed even mildly put out. Alice jotted something on
Speaker 1: a clipboard, not noticing. Sarah stretched her arms, yawning theatrically.
Speaker 1: Joe complained about fishing luck, not the schedule. I stood
Speaker 1: in the vestibule, watching drizzlebead the window and felt a
Speaker 1: tiny electric jolt chase up my spine had I dozed
Speaker 1: off and missed a swath of track. Looking back at
Speaker 1: my scratch pad, stop scenery, stop station name, I couldn't
Speaker 1: find a disruption. I stepped off into the wet and
Speaker 1: let the door hiss shut behind me. The rails hummed
Speaker 1: as the train prepared for the return trip, and the
Speaker 1: platform clock ticked toward noon. By rights, we should have
Speaker 1: arrived at eleven. But by rights, a lot of things
Speaker 1: ought to be different. That's how it began, not with
Speaker 1: a mystery, not with a flash of insight, but with
Speaker 1: a quiet, nagging need to understand why a journey I
Speaker 1: thought I knew inside out could stretch by an hour,
Speaker 1: with every outward sign unchanged. I thought about that extra
Speaker 1: hour all the way home. I replayed each moment. No
Speaker 1: sudden stops, no announcements, no delays loading cargo or pausing
Speaker 1: for people. The rain never grew heavier, The river had
Speaker 1: swelled and slid past as usual, No high water, nothing impassable.
Speaker 1: When I tried to shake off the feeling, a stubborn
Speaker 1: logic insisted. With no gap in the movement, Where did
Speaker 1: that time go my routine became a little unsettled. I
Speaker 1: found myself thinking of the ride over morning coffee, poking
Speaker 1: at it with the edge of my mind. You'd be
Speaker 1: surprised how much of a conductor's life is about time,
Speaker 1: obsessing over it, courting it, cussing at it under your breath.
Speaker 1: Mostly you think there's nothing to it except good track
Speaker 1: and a steady hand. But sitting at my kitchen table,
Speaker 1: listening to the far off groan of the rails, I
Speaker 1: wondered if that was ever really true. The tracks out
Speaker 1: my window shimmered with the drizzle, a silent promise of order.
Speaker 1: When I'd first moved here decades ago, married and hopeful,
Speaker 1: I memorized the whole line, a surveyor's urge, kicking in
Speaker 1: every time I walked the trail with a notepad. These woods,
Speaker 1: these sudden gullies and ravines, the mad tangle of BlackBerry
Speaker 1: above the siding, all reel, all fixed, or so I
Speaker 1: de thought I'd retired early, but I hadn't left it behind.
Speaker 1: Every Monday I'd ambled down to the yard and trade
Speaker 1: news with Lars, the barrel chested station master with a
Speaker 1: weak spot for walnut fudge. When Alice took over my
Speaker 1: old post, we kept up our banter. She'd tease me
Speaker 1: about my fussy notes and the way I'd correct her
Speaker 1: on whistle signals. Why don't you just ride Walt remind
Speaker 1: your knees how much they liked to ache. I'd do
Speaker 1: it sometimes as an excuse to linger near old co workers,
Speaker 1: or to chat with Sarah, who could turn a train
Speaker 1: delay into a math lesson for rowdy tenth graders. And
Speaker 1: then there was old Joe, who claimed he could smell
Speaker 1: salmon in the river two towns over and always boarded
Speaker 1: with a dented lunch pale. Luke, the teenager, with his
Speaker 1: inherited basketball jersey and a quiet, restless energy, often rode
Speaker 1: home late after practice, legs splayed over his battered backpack.
Speaker 1: The route was as familiar to me as my own hands.
Speaker 1: Pine Fork to Heather's Crossing, passing a blinknd miss hamlet
Speaker 1: called Carter Spur, the logging depot at Walker's Mill, and
Speaker 1: Lars's Post at midtown. Rituals anchored every ride, Coffee from
Speaker 1: the cart, tickets waved at Alice, and the soft rumble
Speaker 1: when you crossed the moscoated trestle in the heart of
Speaker 1: the pines. Even after retirement, I kept my surveying maps,
Speaker 1: yellowed root pamphlets, and a collection of train tickets tucked
Speaker 1: into a shoe box. I'd ride the line every November,
Speaker 1: an old promise to my late wife, remind my the
Speaker 1: system could run without me, and that comfort did not
Speaker 1: require control. But this, this odd expansion of the route
Speaker 1: ate at me in places I thought immune to puzzling.
Speaker 1: Was I getting forgetful? Maybe I'd lost my knack for
Speaker 1: numbers or mist A stop somewhere in Reverie one year,
Speaker 1: a surveyor friend rode the loop with me, measuring every
Speaker 1: stretch with a calm confidence only civil engineers possess. He
Speaker 1: pronounced it forty four point seven miles, a clean run. Congrats, Walt,
Speaker 1: and swigged his coffee. That's when I began tagging the
Speaker 1: trip out of habit, comparing my times with the posted schedules,
Speaker 1: and up to now finding only small discrepancies. After that
Speaker 1: puzzling journey, I told myself to let it go. The world,
Speaker 1: I reasoned, was full of trivial mysteries, missing socks, unexpected
Speaker 1: traffic jams, the way rain fell softer this side of
Speaker 1: the river. But some habits are stronger than reason. I
Speaker 1: grew uneasy in the evenings, measuring the minutes between passing trains,
Speaker 1: keeping watch out my kitchen window. If something was changing,
Speaker 1: If the reliable stretch of iron was no longer so reliable,
Speaker 1: I would know. Two days later I decided to test it.
Speaker 1: I left my cottage for the station, under a sky
Speaker 1: the color of old pewter, a hush on the air
Speaker 1: that made my footsteps sound loud against the brick walks.
Speaker 1: I bought my ticket at the counter, smiling at the
Speaker 1: agent's puzzled look. Back again so soon, mister Mason. As
Speaker 1: I waited on the platform, I made a point of
Speaker 1: noting the clock behind the counter. The hands agreed with
Speaker 1: my own watch, which I had serviced last year. No
Speaker 1: excuses for malfunction, Alice grinned as I boarded, clicking her
Speaker 1: punch along the string of new passengers. Don't tell me
Speaker 1: you missed me already, Walt, I'm running a personal experiment,
Speaker 1: I said, Observation day for the old guard. She deadpanned,
Speaker 1: So long as you don't try to drive from your seat,
Speaker 1: Then she added, half joking, careful, or you'll get stuck
Speaker 1: on the never ending loop. We pulled out under curtain
Speaker 1: of mist. I counted every stop, every whistle. Alice seemed unhurried,
Speaker 1: moving up and down the cars, chatting about the parade
Speaker 1: coming to Pine Fork next week, the way Sarah had
Speaker 1: braided her hair this time. But part way through, just
Speaker 1: after the third stop, I started to feel something was off.
Speaker 1: The train glided through familiar curves and the trees peeled past,
Speaker 1: but the station seemed to arrive more quickly than my
Speaker 1: gut expected. I peered out the window for landmarks, the
Speaker 1: overturned log, the shack with the painted fish sign, the
Speaker 1: three pines in a perfect line, and all arrived, but
Speaker 1: too soon, like a flickering film cut a few frames short.
Speaker 1: When we reached Heathers Crossing, I checked the platform clock.
Speaker 1: Barely an hour and fifty minutes had passed since departure,
Speaker 1: not three, and certainly not four as had slipped by before.
Speaker 1: For a second, I questioned my own eyes. Alice was
Speaker 1: chatting with the engineer, unruffled. No one seemed in a rush.
Speaker 1: I asked the ticket agent as I disembarked, did we
Speaker 1: leave on time? He checked his register? Nine fifteen sharp
Speaker 1: got you here early, good day. For the schedule, I
Speaker 1: handed him my stub. Printed on it in faint blue type,
Speaker 1: was the duration trip duration one fifty five. Two days earlier,
Speaker 1: my ticket had shown trip duration three fifty seven. I
Speaker 1: kept both tucked in my palm, comparing them under the
Speaker 1: gray light. No difference in price, no hint of a
Speaker 1: special run or all. Turn it root. When I brought
Speaker 1: it up with Alice, her auntswer flitted by like a swallow.
Speaker 1: The time's always whatever's on the ticket, unless I'm late
Speaker 1: for lunch, she added. Schedules are just paper. Get you
Speaker 1: where you're going, that's the important part. I tried to laugh,
Speaker 1: but the urge stuck in my throat. The trip was
Speaker 1: faster than ever, but the outside world, the stretch of
Speaker 1: trees and glassancing reflection of the pond, had never switched.
Speaker 1: I asked Alice if the engineer had sped up. She shrugged,
Speaker 1: feet on the pedal, one speed. All morning, standing on
Speaker 1: the platform, I tried to root out some reasonable explanation,
Speaker 1: track maintenance, a change in crew, a bypassed stop, but
Speaker 1: the numbers weren't on my side. Every inherited instinct told
Speaker 1: me either. My memory was failing the clocks had gone
Speaker 1: to mischief, or some quiet core of the line had
Speaker 1: loosened its hold on reality. Back at home, I laid
Speaker 1: out my findings, two tickets, both official printing two durations
Speaker 1: for the same journey, platform clocks solidly in agreement with
Speaker 1: each other. Pocket watch ticking as it should. I paced
Speaker 1: the kitchen, counting steps, heart nudging faster. The more I
Speaker 1: ran through events I considered, sleep, deprivation, cholesterol, medication. All
Speaker 1: came up empty. To be thorough, I checked the physical
Speaker 1: timetable posted at the PINEFK station. There, clear as the
Speaker 1: thunder clouds in March was a print out showing the
Speaker 1: ride as a prox two zero zero each way. I
Speaker 1: fished from the pocket of my vest an earlier time table,
Speaker 1: same schedule, trips daily average duration of pros three zero
Speaker 1: zero each way. No one I questioned seemed to notice
Speaker 1: the discrepancy. When I flagged down Alice in the staff
Speaker 1: lounge to show her, she squinted at the slips and
Speaker 1: tapped her pencil on the edge of the table. Different seasons.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we run slow for leaves on the line. That
Speaker 1: sort of thing never hurts to pad the schedule. People
Speaker 1: hate to see late on the board. She grinned, swung
Speaker 1: her feet up on the seat opposite, and said, Walt,
Speaker 1: I think you're fussing just to keep us honest. A
Speaker 1: soft feeling of doubt began gnawing in my mind. Had
Speaker 1: I been inattentive, let the old nerves take over. But
Speaker 1: a quick flip through my note book, dates, times, sequence
Speaker 1: of stops showed there were no gaps in my recording.
Speaker 1: Every step seemed clean. I would have forgotten the whole
Speaker 1: thing if my notes had fallen apart. Instead, the more
Speaker 1: I poured over them, the sharper the contradiction became. Nothing
Speaker 1: in my memory or the world outside explained how a
Speaker 1: journey could stretch or contract by entire hours, while the
Speaker 1: train's pace and the landscape outside seemed as unswerving as ever.
Speaker 1: I made a decision I would test it one last time,
Speaker 1: different hour, different crew, if possible, and with the most
Speaker 1: obsessive note taking of my life. That morning, a low
Speaker 1: fog hung over the siding, cotton thick and silent. The
Speaker 1: train creaked up to the platform, engine heat shimmering in
Speaker 1: the chill. Alice wasn't on the manifest. A temporary replacement,
Speaker 1: Reggie Tall and wooly browed greeted me with a nod.
Speaker 1: Back again, He asked, squinting, you logging these rides for
Speaker 1: posterity something like that, I replied, how many times do?
Speaker 1: As the line run to day usual three each way
Speaker 1: should be a straight forward run unless the trees start
Speaker 1: growing sideways. He winked, and I almost laughed. I selected
Speaker 1: a new seat, no distractions. My watch was synchronized with
Speaker 1: the station clock, my notebook open, pen poised, the car filled,
Speaker 1: Sarah grading again, Joe talking bait with the woman across
Speaker 1: the aisle, three teen girls hunched over headphones. I made
Speaker 1: sure to note every landmark, every station buzz. The train
Speaker 1: rolled out slow, trailing a scarf of smoke along the
Speaker 1: wet rails. The sequence outside was as familiar as a
Speaker 1: family recipe. Carter Spur's battered sign, the sharp escurve past
Speaker 1: BlackBerry Lane, the slan troofed barn that always threatened collapse
Speaker 1: but never quite surrendered. But as we passed Lars's station,
Speaker 1: I glanced at my watch even slower than before. We'd
Speaker 1: spent over two and a half hours before even reaching Midtown.
Speaker 1: By the time we coasted into Heather's crossing the sky
Speaker 1: gone from fog to slate. The trip had eaten more
Speaker 1: than five hours. All the platform clocks and Reggie's print
Speaker 1: out agreed arrival time four thirty two. My ticket again
Speaker 1: read trip duration five nineteen. My note book, trembling slightly
Speaker 1: in my hand, was filled with a minute by minute
Speaker 1: log that showed no extra stops, just a slow, even
Speaker 1: ride through the same countryside, but stretched like music played
Speaker 1: at half speed. When the passengers filed off, not one
Speaker 1: seemed frazzled, just an ordinary ride. Even Sarah, clutching her
Speaker 1: stack of unmarked quizzes tighter than usual, only muttered lost
Speaker 1: the afternoon somehow, as the platform emptied, I caught up
Speaker 1: with Lars, the station master, his red vest unusually crisp.
Speaker 1: I asked him how long the ride had been. He
Speaker 1: considered it for a second, as if checking the answer
Speaker 1: in the air just takes as long as it takes.
Speaker 1: He decided, voice cheerful. Some days time's thick. You'll get
Speaker 1: used to it, Walt. He clapped me on the back
Speaker 1: and retreated into his office, humming something off key. I waited,
Speaker 1: running my hands over the cold metal of the railing,
Speaker 1: hoping for some sign that he was levitating between joke
Speaker 1: and confession. But apart from a light wind and the
Speaker 1: distant bleat of a logging truck, there was ordinary life
Speaker 1: unfolding without hurry. I wondered, had I become blinkered by
Speaker 1: my own obsessions? Was I missing some obvious solution, like
Speaker 1: a magician's misdirection. The question itched all through supper and
Speaker 1: nagged into the next morning. At sunrise, coffee growing cold,
Speaker 1: as I stared at my log book, I made up
Speaker 1: my mind I'd seek out a second opinion. I found
Speaker 1: Sarah at her usual breakfast spot, next to a cramped
Speaker 1: cafe window, dressed with faded nautical flags. She smiled when
Speaker 1: she spotted me, Mason. I heard, you're doing your own
Speaker 1: versus of groundhog Day on the line. I told her
Speaker 1: my theory, duration shifting, the ride swelling long or short
Speaker 1: with no apparent pattern. She grinned, brushing biscuit crumbs off
Speaker 1: her sleeve. You know, when I was a kid, the
Speaker 1: trip always seemed to last forever. Sometimes I'd fall asleep
Speaker 1: and wake up convinced we'd cross the state border by accident.
Speaker 1: She shook her head. I figured it was childhood kid's
Speaker 1: sense of time. You know. I asked if she'd ever
Speaker 1: checked her watch or looked for official travel times sometimes,
Speaker 1: she said, pulling out her phone. Honestly, I just rely
Speaker 1: on the app for train info. Some days I swear
Speaker 1: the trips only an hour. Others I miss half my
Speaker 1: prep period for no reason, she tapped quickly. We get
Speaker 1: the occasional complaint about trained delays, but mostly people just
Speaker 1: look up the posted times. Her look here. Last week
Speaker 1: average trip was two hours and thirty this week over three.
Speaker 1: Sarah scrolled further, frowning. You know the online schedules changed
Speaker 1: three times this month. I'd noticed the difference but thought
Speaker 1: it was just schedule tweaking. Feels like an it glitch,
Speaker 1: But every other bus or ferry is the same, she
Speaker 1: laughed softer. Now, maybe rural time just slipped sideways. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it was meant as a joke, but the phrase wouldn't
Speaker 1: leave me. I jotted it in my margins, underlining it twice,
Speaker 1: sideways time. As unscientific as it sounded, it fit better
Speaker 1: than any other explanation I'd heard. After breakfast, I lingered
Speaker 1: in the station lobby, leafing through old and new pamphlets,
Speaker 1: train maps, faded time tables, glossy tourist brochures, each one
Speaker 1: with a different shape for the route. Some were textbook clear,
Speaker 1: a curved horseshoe the logical arrangement. Others, drawn with more exuberance,
Speaker 1: showed the train line looping back over itself, an improbable
Speaker 1: not On one, the shadow of the track cut across
Speaker 1: rivers that in reality ran impassable, looked closely, and alternative
Speaker 1: lines were drawn in pencil, as if some one in
Speaker 1: authority had second guessed the surveyors but neglected to erase
Speaker 1: the evidence. Pulling out my phone, I flipped between digital maps.
Speaker 1: Some days, satellite images revealed an unbroken arc through the trees.
Speaker 1: On others, the river crossing was missing, or a side
Speaker 1: track appeared where no bridge ever stood. I squinted, half,
Speaker 1: expecting to find I had lost my grip on which
Speaker 1: day was which. On a particularly bold map from the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, bright colors fading under lamination, the route doubled
Speaker 1: back near the Midtown station, looping the same segment of
Speaker 1: forest twice. I made notes. Then, out of a stubborn
Speaker 1: desire for order, land marks tallied stops listed in sequence,
Speaker 1: sketches for the more remarkable trees and outbuildings. If the
Speaker 1: scenery changed, I would see it. If the order shifted,
Speaker 1: I would have proof. Afternoon stillness gave way to the
Speaker 1: gentle tremor of another departure. I held my notebook tight,
Speaker 1: boarding with a sense of mission, eyes sharp for anything
Speaker 1: out of place. I chose a new seat, still on
Speaker 1: the right side, but one car back from my usual.
Speaker 1: As we rolled out, I logged each detail. A twisted
Speaker 1: Douglas fir with two trunks, a pond half concealed by reeds,
Speaker 1: a billboard faded always for a lost farm dog named Chester,
Speaker 1: than the trestle bridge, that spider webbed above the shaded gully.
Speaker 1: I watched the people outside my window, A man mending
Speaker 1: a fence, a girl flying a red kite, a blue
Speaker 1: truck idling where the logging road crossed the rails. Hours passed,
Speaker 1: the wheels humming their lullaby. I checked each landmark in sequence,
Speaker 1: each exactly where it ought to be. The trip again
Speaker 1: stretched long, over four hours this time, but nothing altered
Speaker 1: in the world outside. No new paint on the billboard,
Speaker 1: no weeds overtaking the fence, no sun bleached plastic on
Speaker 1: the dashboard of that blue truck. Trying not to sound ridiculous,
Speaker 1: I asked Alice, who was back on duty. How come
Speaker 1: the billboard for that dog never changes? It's been there
Speaker 1: for years. The same shadows scratched the sign at exactly
Speaker 1: the same spot. She smiled, as if I'd complimented her
Speaker 1: on some minor virtue. That's just chester. He's a piece
Speaker 1: of the landscape. Now. She gave the word landscape a
Speaker 1: little lilt, as if it meant something more. Then she added,
Speaker 1: some things always stay the same. It occurred to me
Speaker 1: then that my problem might not be with clocks or tickets,
Speaker 1: but with the land itself. If I was always seeing
Speaker 1: the same, never aging scenery, regardless of how long the
Speaker 1: trip took, had the landscape become unmoored from the expected world.
Speaker 1: Was I moving through time differently? Or was geography itself changing,
Speaker 1: stretching or folding but only for us aboard the train.
Speaker 1: I could no longer tell if I was searching for
Speaker 1: a solution or just circling the question. But the details
Speaker 1: and contradictions kept stacking, each observation, disconnecting neatly from the next,
Speaker 1: like cars on a train sent down oddly diverging tracks.
Speaker 1: That night, I called up an old trainman's story. When
Speaker 1: I was first hired a senior engineer, a man named Guss,
Speaker 1: who claimed to have seen everything that could be seen
Speaker 1: between Tacoma and Canada, once told me there's one run
Speaker 1: up here, Walt, where the train might loop so many
Speaker 1: times you see yourself out the window. I'd laughed it
Speaker 1: off as pure folklore. Railroad men love their tall tales.
Speaker 1: But as I considered the impossibility of what I'd seen,
Speaker 1: variable journeys, identical scenery, shifting maps, I felt a chill,
Speaker 1: not a fear, but of something like awe had I
Speaker 1: dismissed a clue? I remembered too, a bit of Sailish
Speaker 1: oral tradition, though clumsily, stories about rivers that circled forever,
Speaker 1: leaving those who strayed onto their banks to loop until
Speaker 1: you remambered where you'd begun. As a conductor, myth was
Speaker 1: something you packed away at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: like a bench schedule or an off duty badge. Now
Speaker 1: I wondered if myth belonged closer to the mechanism of
Speaker 1: things than I'd ever allowed. I reviewed my findings every journey,
Speaker 1: no matter whether it lasted two hours, four or five
Speaker 1: passed the same number and order of landmarks, with objects
Speaker 1: and scenery completely unchanged in appearance. Tickets and posted schedules
Speaker 1: flexed week to week, with platform clocks and my watch
Speaker 1: both agreeing but always with contradictory journey lengths. Yet the
Speaker 1: sequence outside and the interior sense of movement never deviated.
Speaker 1: If this was a trick of memory or aging, then
Speaker 1: my notes were lying too. If the world outside the
Speaker 1: train was unchanged but the span of travel altered in
Speaker 1: ways that left no trace, then the world operated by
Speaker 1: rules I hadn't been taught. That finally forced a new
Speaker 1: idea into focus, sharp and unsettling as the first frost.
Speaker 1: I'd always believed travel time was a cousin to distance covered,
Speaker 1: same track, same terrain, same hours measured. But confronted with
Speaker 1: the evidence the multiple durations, the invariable scenery, I began
Speaker 1: to see I was asking the wrong questions. Maybe the
Speaker 1: journey measured something deeper than station to station ground. Maybe
Speaker 1: on this peculiar stretch of the Pacific Northwest, space itself
Speaker 1: was subject to conditions I hadn't recognized. Perhaps movement wasn't
Speaker 1: about passing through a landscape, but about the landscape passing
Speaker 1: through you, and occasionally, for reasons hidden in fog and furs,
Speaker 1: the measure bloomed open or snapped tight, the way a
Speaker 1: story might. I stayed up late at my kitchen table,
Speaker 1: piecing the fragments together. My next step was clear, abandoned
Speaker 1: passive observation and launch a careful, experiment based investigation. The
Speaker 1: ordinary had erupted into quiet impossibility, and for the first
Speaker 1: time in years, something that wasn't loneliness or habit woke
Speaker 1: in me a fierce, impatient need to understand how a
Speaker 1: journey could be perfectly familiar and yet quietly impossible. I
Speaker 1: slept restlessly that night, notebook under my pillow, as if
Speaker 1: it might hatch some essential truth. By morning, rain wrapped
Speaker 1: at the window, and the radiator ticked in small, uneven pulses,
Speaker 1: ordinary sounds, but somehow edged with tension, as if the
Speaker 1: world was bracing for me to breach some small, well
Speaker 1: kept secret. Through the walls, I could just make out
Speaker 1: the faint whine of the four thirty freight headed north,
Speaker 1: and I wondered, did its engineer ever feel it? The
Speaker 1: stretch and bend of invisible track beneath unchanging scenery. I
Speaker 1: made plans with unusual care. First light found me at
Speaker 1: the little hardware store that clung to Pinefawk's main drag,
Speaker 1: choosing a roll of blue painter's tape and a yardstick,
Speaker 1: draworing curious looks from the clerk painting the cottage. Wald
Speaker 1: just measuring, I said, which seemed to amuse her. I
Speaker 1: packed a thermos, my note book, a battered map, and
Speaker 1: slipped the roll of tape into my jacket. At the station,
Speaker 1: the platform clock blinked seven forty two. The air was sharp,
Speaker 1: the mist curling along the rails, and everything smelled wet
Speaker 1: and electric. Alice was running the early shift she'd taken to,
Speaker 1: greeting me now with a tilt of her head, half camaraderie,
Speaker 1: half caution. What's the scheme to day Mason, I grinned,
Speaker 1: trying to look casual, just catching the view seat seven
Speaker 1: car B. Don't suppose any one s claimed it. She
Speaker 1: shook her head. All yours. You planning to start charging
Speaker 1: us for your research, only if you let me drive,
Speaker 1: I shot back. That earned a laugh, and her guard slipped.
Speaker 1: I'll make a note to sell tickets for the Walt
Speaker 1: Mason science out, she said, and handed me mine I
Speaker 1: waited for the last call, then boarded. The few regulars, Sarah,
Speaker 1: Luke and Old Joe, were scattered. I tried not to
Speaker 1: make eye contact. I wanted no distractions, only pure observation.
Speaker 1: I chose my seat right side, seventh row, where the
Speaker 1: window glass bore a scratch like a comma. I set
Speaker 1: a strip of blue tape just above the frame and
Speaker 1: one below, bracketing my Sightling from this position, two unique
Speaker 1: firs stood in perfect alignment, one tall and fire scarred,
Speaker 1: the other with branches swept west, opening to a clear
Speaker 1: view of the pond. I measured the angles against the marks,
Speaker 1: careful to memorize every slant and shade. A few passengers
Speaker 1: glanced curiously, but I affected the bored air of a
Speaker 1: retaree with odd hobbies. When the train heaved to life,
Speaker 1: I began my watch steady as a pendulum. Was fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes out when it happened. I was certain because I
Speaker 1: kept the stopwatch right, cunning eyes tracking the outside world
Speaker 1: more closely than ever before. Passed the dog billboard over
Speaker 1: the sunken bridge, through the last bend before midtown. The
Speaker 1: pines outside the mark tape lined up in the exact
Speaker 1: configuration as they had at the ride's beginning. Almost frame
Speaker 1: for frame, the pond flashed into view, its ripples frozen,
Speaker 1: and there the blue truck once again parked beneath the
Speaker 1: same buckled elm my landmark's reset, as if a hidden
Speaker 1: film editor had looped a stretch of reel and spliced
Speaker 1: it seamlessly. But the train's motion was unbroken, the noise undiminished,
Speaker 1: no slowing, no hesitation, no indication from the cars or
Speaker 1: rails that anything out of the ordinary had occurred. The
Speaker 1: world outside moved in its established rhythm. Only the alignment
Speaker 1: in the window locked in my tape brackets said otherwise.
Speaker 1: A cold flush chased down my spine. I raised my
Speaker 1: note book, dated the observation and put a mark. Fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes had passed, but I had entered the same piece
Speaker 1: of forest again. I rode out the next hour in
Speaker 1: a strange blankness, adrift as it seemed, on a track,
Speaker 1: undetectable by those around me. Sarah happened past, pausing near
Speaker 1: my seat, working on a novel walt. I tried to
Speaker 1: sound light, just a game tracking scenery. Did you notice
Speaker 1: we passed the same blue truck already? She peered out
Speaker 1: the window, then at me, then shrugged. You must be
Speaker 1: seeing double. She let herself laugh, but eyed the tape
Speaker 1: with curiosity. You always were methodical, she said. I decided
Speaker 1: to escalate. At Midtown station, I switched seats with Sarah,
Speaker 1: letting her take my careful viewing spot. I moved to
Speaker 1: her unmarked place a row ahead. I explained what I
Speaker 1: wanted to test, keeping vague about my suspicions. Just look
Speaker 1: through the tape marker, would you, I said, tell me
Speaker 1: if you see anything odd, just humor an old man.
Speaker 1: She agreed, half smiling, and perched cautiously, tucking her bag
Speaker 1: beside her knees. We rode in silence, and I watched
Speaker 1: her face in the reflection. Her brow furrowed once, then relaxed.
Speaker 1: After ten minutes, I asked, quietly, what do you see?
Speaker 1: She shrugged, Just trees, the pond, the billboard with the dog. Pretty,
Speaker 1: but nothing unusual. Should I be looking for something specific?
Speaker 1: I nodded, anything that looks familiar. She grinned. All of
Speaker 1: it is familiar, Walt, we go this way every week.
Speaker 1: But then she paused, gazed, sharpening as the blue truck
Speaker 1: edged into view once more, didn't we already pass? She
Speaker 1: trailed off, uncertain. I let the silence hum. When the
Speaker 1: train arrived at Heathers Crossing fifty minutes late, she looked, pale,
Speaker 1: gathering her things with more haste than usual. You had
Speaker 1: me doubting myself for a minute, she said, as we
Speaker 1: stepped on to the platform. But it's just a long trip,
Speaker 1: isn't it. I didn't answer. The contradiction had deepened. The
Speaker 1: experience of duration was not shared evenly, not only between
Speaker 1: my eyes and memory, but perhaps between watchers and world.
Speaker 1: Later that afternoon, as the rain slackened, a young boy
Speaker 1: named Caleb, maybe eight or so, approached as I sat
Speaker 1: scribbling in the station waiting room. He wore a raincoat
Speaker 1: several sizes too large and had the matter of fact
Speaker 1: curiosity children sometimes wheeled. Did you see the same truck again?
Speaker 1: He asked, almost conspiratorial. I hesitated, Why do you ask?
Speaker 1: He shrugged. It's always the same, isn't it? Every time
Speaker 1: I ride, I tell mom'll count the dogs outside. I
Speaker 1: always count six dogs, same ones. Sometimes the rides long,
Speaker 1: sometimes short, but the dogs are always there. Except he
Speaker 1: glanced up at me, voice softer, Except when I closed
Speaker 1: my eyes. I put my hand on his shoulder, grateful
Speaker 1: for the simplicity of his report. You're a better observer
Speaker 1: than most adults, calib He grinned and bounded off without
Speaker 1: waiting for thanks. I felt a strange relief. If children
Speaker 1: and the inattentive missed the phenomenon, what else might go undetected?
Speaker 1: Was the loop a trick of focus, or some property
Speaker 1: revealed only to stubborn watchers. That night, archival impulse carried
Speaker 1: me to my maps again, all pocket ones folded to translucence,
Speaker 1: glossy station pamphlets, digital satellite views blinking on my phone.
Speaker 1: I lined them up along the kitchen table, flattening the creases.
Speaker 1: What leapt out now wasn't just error, but outright contradiction.
Speaker 1: Some maps showed the tracks in overlapping knots, figure eates
Speaker 1: impossible to build or maintain. One. A company promo from
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen depicted the Pine Fork line as a clean arc.
Speaker 1: Another published the following year feature a second, smaller loop
Speaker 1: by secting the river at a point where there was
Speaker 1: no bridge. I squinted at Google Earth, toggling the satellite
Speaker 1: overlays for different years. On Thursdays, the trestle appeared above
Speaker 1: pure forest, the river flowing wide on Sundays, A stubby
Speaker 1: spur poked from the trees, fading without intersection. I drove
Speaker 1: into the next town over, Calvinsville, tracked down the local
Speaker 1: archivist and asked about official survey records for the line.
Speaker 1: She brought out a sheaf of blueprints and a folio
Speaker 1: of hand drawn surveyor's notes. It's the oddest thing, she said,
Speaker 1: leafing through them. We keep getting new additions, roots, re drawn,
Speaker 1: bridges shown or not, and yet the physical track hasn't moved.
Speaker 1: I chalk it up to sloppy record keeping, too many
Speaker 1: cooks in the cartography kitchen. But some of these documents
Speaker 1: are only a year apart. She tilted a map toward me,
Speaker 1: eyes narrowing as she traced a sharp bend, dueling with
Speaker 1: a dea straight line. See same scale, same towns, different geometry.
Speaker 1: This one shows the route refolding itself near midtown. But
Speaker 1: there's no switching station there. Some railroad prank, if you
Speaker 1: ask me. Another librarian, older with a face burned by
Speaker 1: years of fluorescent lights, chimed in. My grandfather always said
Speaker 1: the line never made sense on paper. Something about the
Speaker 1: river twisting wrong, said, if you trust your feet more
Speaker 1: than your eyes, you get home quicker. It offered cold comfort,
Speaker 1: but I stashed the copies in my satchel and headed
Speaker 1: for home, mind spinning with a question that became larger
Speaker 1: every time I pressed at it. If the maps and
Speaker 1: the journey's time couldn't agree, what exactly was being measured
Speaker 1: track time or something else. Unable to let it rest,
Speaker 1: I paid Las a visit, ostensibly to chat about weather,
Speaker 1: but really to judge his mood for honesty. His office
Speaker 1: always smelled of apple, brass, polish and sawdust. He was
Speaker 1: tidying time tables as I entered, eyes twinkling, I tried
Speaker 1: an innocent gambit, how long do you reckon the ride
Speaker 1: is these days? Lars? He grunted, that's a riddle, isn't
Speaker 1: It depends who you ask? Some say two hours, some four?
Speaker 1: Feels right to me, however long it goes. Then he
Speaker 1: leaned back, tossing a stray time table into the bin.
Speaker 1: Why worry about time, Walt, You only need it when
Speaker 1: you're in a hurry. You ever notice the map in
Speaker 1: the lobby keeps changing? Sometimes I could swear that trestle
Speaker 1: is on the wrong side of the pond. He considered that,
Speaker 1: then shrugged. I don't check it that close. You trust
Speaker 1: your feet and your whistle. That's all maps are for
Speaker 1: city folk who don't listen to the rails. I waited,
Speaker 1: hoping for a flicker of doubt, but Lars navigated ambiguity
Speaker 1: with practiced ease. If the ride's long, you nap. If
Speaker 1: it's short, you enjoy the scenery. Nobody s missed their stop.
Speaker 1: Yet only in the hallway passing the cleaning closet with
Speaker 1: its arsenal of brooms and varnish did he say, quietly,
Speaker 1: almost so, I missed it. If you find the answer,
Speaker 1: let me know. On a sudden impulse, I hunted down Luke,
Speaker 1: the high school kid, while he was jogging laps near
Speaker 1: the tracks. He was puffing, sweat streaking his neck, but
Speaker 1: he grinned a welcome thought. I'd see how it feels
Speaker 1: at ground level, I said, matching his pace. How long
Speaker 1: does it take you from Pine Fork to Midtown on foot?
Speaker 1: Just over an hour. If I'm quick, I can chart
Speaker 1: every curve. It's always the same, never changes unless I
Speaker 1: sprain something. He slowed thoughtful on the train, though it's weird.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the trip s over in no time. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: nearly missed dinner. But when I run along the tracks
Speaker 1: myself distance feels steady. It's the ride that bends, not
Speaker 1: the track. Don't know how else to say it. We
Speaker 1: paused by the signal post and luke stra sketched, staring
Speaker 1: into the forest's hush kind of makes you wonder if
Speaker 1: being carried is different than carrying yourself. That line stuck
Speaker 1: with me through the rest of the day. On foot,
Speaker 1: the land remained solid. By train, it flexed. This was
Speaker 1: not simply an artifact of memory. It was physical, repeatable,
Speaker 1: and crucially selective. The elasticity only emerged for the riding passenger,
Speaker 1: not the pedestrian, not the stationery. My mind returned to
Speaker 1: the Salish legend i'd heard as a younger man, half remembered,
Speaker 1: about a river that loops until you remember where you began.
Speaker 1: It had once felt like metaphor, one of those old
Speaker 1: culture's jokes about landscape and return. But as I tucked
Speaker 1: into bed, I felt its reality closing in around me,
Speaker 1: a story unspooling in the dark. Could the line itself, wood, iron,
Speaker 1: gravel be pressed, folded, or extended without any outside sign.
Speaker 1: Days passed, and the world grew stranger by the hour.
Speaker 1: I dugged visiting the Pine Fork Tribal Heritage Museum. I
Speaker 1: found the curator, a woman named Rachel, gentle voice, hands
Speaker 1: always busy with bead work, open to questions about local myth.
Speaker 1: She listened to my summary, then smiled, her eyes fond
Speaker 1: but not condescending. Our story isn't unique, she said, guiding
Speaker 1: me past display cases of carved canoes and woven baskets.
Speaker 1: The sq w Uke's Woo seven mesh tell of a
Speaker 1: river never flow, where time and distance win together. It
Speaker 1: said travelers were sometimes caught in a loop, neither lost
Speaker 1: nor arrived until they remembered some vital part of home
Speaker 1: and broke the circle. I craned over display two maps,
Speaker 1: one sketched on elk hyde, the other crayon bright on paper,
Speaker 1: both showing loops and knots where the river and the
Speaker 1: old travel roots bent in ways. The real topography never
Speaker 1: had Rachel tapped the high town's sketch. This one's from
Speaker 1: my grandmother. The rail comes in here splits into two
Speaker 1: See and read your coins over here, where the river
Speaker 1: is both wide and narrow, depending which story you believe.
Speaker 1: Did anyone ever try to walk these loops? I asked.
Speaker 1: She grinned some. Did none ever made two full circuits.
Speaker 1: Once you returned to the beginning, the land straightens itself.
Speaker 1: That's the lesson. You can't short cut return. Her eyes twinkled.
Speaker 1: But you, Walt are not walking, are you? No? I admitted,
Speaker 1: I'm being carried. She considered that, then said, with a
Speaker 1: gentle certainty. Then you'll only see what the journey allows.
Speaker 1: As I left, I mulled her words, stories, maps, travel times,
Speaker 1: and physical steps, all bent around the act of being carried,
Speaker 1: of surrendering control, of trusting the rails. Perhaps I thought
Speaker 1: that was the mechanism, or at least the door to
Speaker 1: its meaning. Back at the tracks, I performed my final
Speaker 1: most thorough test feet aching. I walked the railway from
Speaker 1: Pine Fork to Midtown myself, tape measure and pedometer, clicking
Speaker 1: the bends, the outbuildings, the trestle, the pond. Their distances
Speaker 1: were unchanging and as consistent as the surveyor's tape decades ago.
Speaker 1: It took me just under two hours, a slog but possible,
Speaker 1: and timed by three separate watches for certainty. But on
Speaker 1: the next train ride. The journey stretched three hours, four
Speaker 1: sometimes five. All my measuring, all my logic confirmed the
Speaker 1: ground remained steadfast. It was the voyage, not the land,
Speaker 1: that flexed. In desperation, I leafed through the station's maintenance logs. There,
Speaker 1: in bureaucratic black ink, trip records showed impossible variations outbound
Speaker 1: and inbound times logged on the same day for the
Speaker 1: same train, three durations given for the same run. Ticket
Speaker 1: stubs bore different durations for the same trip punched by
Speaker 1: the same conductor. Finally, I reached out to mister Daly,
Speaker 1: a local high school history teacher and amateur railroad buff.
Speaker 1: He maintained a private collection at his house and prided
Speaker 1: himself on spotting historical inconsistencies daily. Welcomed me with a
Speaker 1: pot of coffee and his cat perched warily on the
Speaker 1: window sill. I laid out my stubs, note books, photocopied maps,
Speaker 1: and a stack of anomalous schedules. He paged through in silence,
Speaker 1: the cat blinking at the shifting papers. Well, he said,
Speaker 1: after a long spell. The likeliest explanation is simple old
Speaker 1: surveyor's errors or confusion over daylight saving may be some
Speaker 1: misprinted maps. Everything up hears, a mess of old traditions
Speaker 1: and poorly filed paperwork. Did you check for time zone kinks?
Speaker 1: This line does weird things at the county border. I did,
Speaker 1: I answered, But it isn't just the times, it's the
Speaker 1: route itself. Look here, I showed him the maps most
Speaker 1: egregiously at odds, the looping railway over the rivolous patch,
Speaker 1: the double back with two midtown stations side by side,
Speaker 1: the satellite image that placed the trestle somewhere in pure woodland.
Speaker 1: He grew more serious. Well that's not simple, I'll grant.
Speaker 1: I've seen old maps with revisions surveyor's love correcting each other.
Speaker 1: But these these are only months apart. Did any one
Speaker 1: ever build a temporary spur? I shook my head. No
Speaker 1: evidence of construction crews, no new timbers. I've measured the
Speaker 1: distances on foot, it's always straight. On the train, the
Speaker 1: distances multiply or contract daily. Frowned. Do the records show complaints, lawsuits?
Speaker 1: Any one else troubled? I sorted through the historical logs
Speaker 1: trip records in the company files, with three log sheets
Speaker 1: for the same train, same date, three durations. He was
Speaker 1: silent for a long moment, You know, he said, at last.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, we avoided the topic. The
Speaker 1: old folks all said, the train line is just longer.
Speaker 1: Some days we thought it was code for bring a book.
Speaker 1: He let the papers rest, looking equal parts frustrated and
Speaker 1: quietly delighted. This is one for the books, Walt. But
Speaker 1: if you're looking for my answer, I can't resolve it.
Speaker 1: Maybe every railroad has a little myth in it. Maybe
Speaker 1: yours simply has more than most. The evidence, tickets, maps, schedules,
Speaker 1: folklore stacked up not in harmony, but in a deep
Speaker 1: and irreducible contradiction. The shape of the world itself was
Speaker 1: at stake, two realities locked in the same rails, with
Speaker 1: only the act of riding as the trigger. I thought
Speaker 1: of the Salish never flow river, looping until memory or
Speaker 1: need recalled home. I thought of the children counting dogs
Speaker 1: and the adults ignoring the clocks. My sense grew sharper.
Speaker 1: Whatever anomaly ruled the journey was not physical in a
Speaker 1: way that a footstep could reveal, nor entirely psychological. For
Speaker 1: every attempt at explanation crashed against the data. It was lived,
Speaker 1: but not seen. Measure, but not fixed, dependent wholly on
Speaker 1: the act of participation in the journey. One final question
Speaker 1: tugged at me. What changed for those who paid attention?
Speaker 1: And what did the train give to the inattentive? Did
Speaker 1: this place hide its strangeness to ease passage for most
Speaker 1: or was it revealing something larger about the nature of
Speaker 1: travel and memory and belonging. Was geography itself a matter
Speaker 1: of perception, elastic only to the intent and curiosity of
Speaker 1: those journeying through it. The time came for a full reckoning.
Speaker 1: I gathered my experiments, notes and questions and shared the
Speaker 1: story piecemeal, shyly with Alice, Lars and Sarah, seeking not
Speaker 1: explanations so much as witness. We met in the station lounge,
Speaker 1: a wedge of worn arm chairs, coffee cups, ticket stubs,
Speaker 1: and the ambient glow of an old floor lamp. Sarah
Speaker 1: listened silent as I explained my finding. It's not time,
Speaker 1: not speed, not land that's changing. It's the measure of
Speaker 1: distance distance has experienced, not mapped, that shifts under us
Speaker 1: only when you ride, only for those aboard the train.
Speaker 1: She shook her head. You always did have to make
Speaker 1: things complicated Walt, maybe it's just a reminder that not
Speaker 1: everything needs measuring. Alice smiled, but there was a carefulness
Speaker 1: in it, a squint of understanding. Sometimes the trip's quick
Speaker 1: as a cat, she said, Sometimes it drags. But you know, Walt,
Speaker 1: I kind of like the idea that the ride can
Speaker 1: hold as much as you need more time for a nap,
Speaker 1: more time to finish a story, or less if you're
Speaker 1: itching to get home. Maybe the line gives you what
Speaker 1: you're willing to notice. Lars leaned back, nothing wrong with
Speaker 1: a ride that lets a man think there were stories,
Speaker 1: then nudged out. As the night stretched. Joe the fisherman,
Speaker 1: half asleep in his coat, told us once he'd watched
Speaker 1: the moon rise twice through the same gap in the pines.
Speaker 1: Luke remembered a summer he'd made the whole trip home
Speaker 1: in what felt like a blink. Certain he'd lost a day,
Speaker 1: but with no missed work or meals. Coach said, maybe
Speaker 1: I just needed more sleep. Each confession, reluctantly given, built
Speaker 1: a pattern of acquiescence experience that bent quietly, beautifully toward
Speaker 1: acceptance rather than alarm. I sifted through it all, my
Speaker 1: conclusions more question than answer, the best I could say.
Speaker 1: The final central revelation was that the Pinefalk Line did
Speaker 1: not so much cross land as charted anew With every
Speaker 1: ride distance redrawn around the needs, perceptions, and attention of
Speaker 1: those aboard, Rational or not, The phenomenon tangled the measurable
Speaker 1: with the felt. For most, the world remained blithely ordinary.
Speaker 1: For me, and for others who insisted on watching, the
Speaker 1: world yielded its strangeness, elastic, mutable, quietly wondrous. After that night,
Speaker 1: a deep calm settled over me. Not resignation, but a
Speaker 1: kind of open curiosity, acceptance that the trains impossibilities were
Speaker 1: a gift, not a threat. I started riding with a
Speaker 1: lighter heart, no longer an auditor, but a participant in
Speaker 1: a journey that would never quite repeat. There was beauty
Speaker 1: in the uncertainty, intimacy, in the way the world slipped
Speaker 1: into new shapes. When I paid attention, I filled fewer
Speaker 1: pages in my note book. The urge to measure faded.
Speaker 1: I sat in my window seat, blue tape gone, watching
Speaker 1: the forest roll by, not trusting clocks or maps any more,
Speaker 1: but content to wait and see which version of the
Speaker 1: trip the line decided to grant me. On my last
Speaker 1: ride that fall, the carriage nearly empty, Alice brought me
Speaker 1: an extra coffee and settled in the seat across from me.
Speaker 1: We watched the world go soft with dusk, the blue
Speaker 1: truck appearing in its proper place, the lost dog billboard
Speaker 1: half swallowed by ivy. So Alice asked, you ever figure
Speaker 1: it out? I shook my head, not entirely. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: the point. She nodded. Satisfied, good, she said, wouldn't want
Speaker 1: you out of questions. The train rumbled on. I pressed
Speaker 1: my forehead to the cool window, remembering all those years
Speaker 1: trusting a schedule, believing the world could be charted hour
Speaker 1: by hour, mile by mile. Maybe it could for most,
Speaker 1: But somewhere between Pine Fork and Heather's Crossing was a
Speaker 1: place more fluid than I'd ever guessed, drawing its shape
Speaker 1: from attention, memory, and longing. The rhythm of the rails
Speaker 1: vibrated through my bones, and I found myself wondering not
Speaker 1: only about this line, but about every ordinary route and
Speaker 1: routine i'd ever known. How many places do we pass
Speaker 1: each day whose true shape hides just out of sight?
Speaker 1: How many impossible journeys go unnoticed except by those who
Speaker 1: watch outside. The mist wove between the firs, never quite clearing,
Speaker 1: never quite closing. There in the blurred glass, the landscape
Speaker 1: stretched as far as wander aloud. And that is the end.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
Speaker 1: the next one.