“ALL ABOARD!”

MAY 1, 2019 – Life is like a long rail journey—across India or Australia, let’s say, or the length of Egypt, or from L.A. to St. Paul.

At the starting point, the train is clean, fresh, and ready to roll. The crew is welcoming, and as you will soon discover, your fellow passengers are quite fascinating. You find your compartment, stow your luggage, take your seat, and beam with excitement.

You hear the “All aboard!”

Through the clean window, you watch eagerly as the train moves along the platform, then away from the station. You contemplate the trip ahead—spectacular scenery, wine and cheese, conversations with other passengers, reading time mixed with late-afternoon naps, leisurely four-course meals served on linen tablecloths embellished by a fresh rose in a vase, and rocking gently in the sleeping bunk of your compartment.

Soon you explore the train and its amenities—the club car, the observation car, the freshly sanitized lavatory and even shower facilities. Camera at the ready, you capture exotic scenery as it races by. In places, a fierce competition develops between vistas on the left side of the train and vistas on the right.

Time and distance give perspective. Impressive cityscapes and countryside early in the journey are surpassed by landscapes farther along. As daylight yields to darkness on the first day of the trip, you see your own reflection in the window. You draw your attention more to life inside the train—conversation over coffee, reading over a glass of wine, working a crossword puzzle before bedtime.

Though you chose your route for the scenery along the way, by far the most memorable part of the journey is the transformation of perfect strangers into fascinating friends. The long conversations are what stretch your view of the world—far more, as it turns out, than do ancient citadels, glittering seashore, majestic mountains, fields of blazing sunflowers, and other vistas that tease the eyes and imagination.

At the halfway mark, you marvel at how fast time flies aboard the [Destination] Express. As time accelerates, the windows become dirty, clouding your view. You notice that the crew is not as quick or fastidious—the lavatories aren’t as clean, and the table settings are less trim and square. The rose in the vase has dropped a petal, which rests abandoned on the coffee-stained linen.

Your fellow travelers show weariness too. You’ve run out of conversation, and many of the people you found so enjoyable are no longer even aboard the train. They reached their destinations miles ago. New passengers have joined up, but when you begin to tell them about all you’ve seen, they yawn.

Toward the close of the last day, dusk descends on the landscape as the train speeds toward the end of its route. You ready your luggage and consult the time. Before long, the whole journey will be a memory—fading as fast as the trip.

And so goes life as one travels through it.

© 2019 Eric Nilsson