On The Road

I wake up to the sound of my own voice, emitting a throaty howl from my seat on the Empire 28 Builder.

This has only happened one other time in my life, during a nightmare about my neighbor’s dogs probably fifteen years ago. But now, I am a grown woman, waking the nearby baby and perturbing the man in the seat next to me, as the train rolls into Sandpoint.

“What’s wrong with you?” my seat companion asks.

I don’t know exactly how to explain that watching a passenger pass between cars a few feet ahead of me had registered as having my house broken into during my half-asleep state. The angle from my seat to the doors was akin to my bed and the door to the hallway in my bedroom. For a split second, all of my roommate’s fears about having our place broken into became real, until my surroundings set in and they weren’t. All I can do is play off feeling like an a-hole and apologize to this man and the people across the way from me. As he leaves---Sandpoint is his stop--I take his seat by the window, wrap a blanket over myself, and laugh myself to sleep.

So begins the first leg of my voyage, a two-day route between Spokane and Chicago. After it passes the Idaho panhandle, the train carves through a Glacier Park that is hidden from much of civilization and gives weight to Montana’s “Big Sky” claim, meadows and mountains positioned under a crisp blue sky and thin, wispy clouds. Afterwards, the landscape remains largely flat and eternal, peppered with modern ghost towns where the train stops but passengers seldom board. These hamlets--with names like “Malta” and “Wolf Point”--seem to exist in the realization that they are barely places at all, but their residents will occasionally be seen walking a dog or riding a bike; proof of life not swallowed by the loneliness their hometowns possess.

Having forgotten to pack food for the trip (nothing about being on the road for two days triggered in me the realization I may need to feed myself) I eat an evening meal in the dining car with an aging couple and Eric, who is preparing to return to school so he can become a “real paralegal.” I douse my bean burger in mayonnaise, much to the mild horror of the gentleman sitting across from me. The Amtrak black bean burger is actually a decent meal, served with kettle chips but clocking in at $11.50. The first time I ate it was during a ride back from Seattle with my friend Lauren, whose book of poetry was just published by the University of Hell Press (and is one of two pieces of reading material I’ve taken with me for this trip.) The practice of trying to converse with the strangers you are seated with in the dining car never gets less awkward, but now I seem to have developed a system where I rely on my weirdness and whatever charm that holds to deflect questions about myself (“Yes, I do my blue hair myself! It makes me feel like a mermaid.” “I go places by myself all the time. It’s just easier.”) After the couple leaves, Eric, the not-real-paralegal tells me he really just wants to open up a Poutine foodcart or travel to India. I tell him to do both things, because going back to school for a career his current degree doesn’t match sounds way too boring to me. He tells me he likes my can-do attitude. I pay my check and bid him good luck with his life in Fargo.

Halfway through Minnesota, the sight of trees and shrubbery becomes more frequent. The Mississippi river appears, and the dwellings become more suburban-looking. Corporate America pops back up in the form of McDonald’s and Wal-Marts. We stop in Minneapolis, which I was only told I should have planned to visit right before my departure, so I probably won’t. I get off the train to stretch my legs and breathe air, half-contemplating jumping from the platform into a nearby field so I can roll in the weeds. After the screaming incident, I decide I’ve caused enough trouble at this point and get back on the train before we continue.

Wisconsin is surprisingly beautiful--lakes, forests, and golf-course communities whose inhabitants take walks in the sunset. Milwaukee’s river is an unnatural lime green. I express curiosity but no one arounds me seems to know how to explain this.

On hour 47, we pull into Chicago. I’ve listened to Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp A Butterfly” probably like five times in its entirety by now, noticing new nuances that haven’t registered in the bajillion times I’ve listened to the album back at home. Rap music and empty landscapes seem to complement one another in a way I can’t explain--or maybe it’s that the violence of Lamar’s art keeps me feeling alive when the wild outside looks less so for long stretches of time.

I’m on the phone with my mom, telling her about my hassle with the State Department and its doubt of my identity as a US citizen during my passport process. How, when I called the passport information center today to check on the status of my application, I became so infuriated with their bass-ackwards bureaucracy that I yelled at the agent and cried after hanging up.

(When, about ten days ago, I got a letter in the mail asking me for five more pieces of proof of identity, I wondered if this was a cosmic joke. I struggle with the notion that I am a real person sometimes, and at that point, it was especially infuriating trying to sift through. This is derived from multiple instances--my upbringing, my relationship patterns, my interactions with the rest of the world that seem to pit me on the extremes ends of a spectrum between “Magical and mysterious” and “damaged and bizarre.” I have my doubts some day, and now the government seemed to, as well. However, if I don’t get my passport processed by the end of July, I can’t attend a music festival that I paid $500 to attend, and the festival itself will not refund my money.)

As the train nears the station, I tell her I love and will call her soon. I gather my belongings, hoist my pack on my shoulders, and step out onto the platform.

On Thursday, read about Audrey's adventures in Chicago.