Returning On The Train

The beautiful marbled interior of another "temple to democratic travel" in the marble lined Union Station in Portland. Creative Commons License, Wikimedia

We arrived at Portland's Union Station; this time, no naked man resembling Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers crossed in front of the car like last time, leaving the two young children with us slack-jawed. Portland is the poster child for the outrage battles of right-wing news, and like most such places, once you are there, it never seems quite so dramatic. 

 

Again, as in St Paul, this Union Station, though smaller is even more a temple to public democracy. With three separate Amtrak lines and Greyhound bus service, something is always going on. Amtrak Coast Starlight, Cascades, and Empire Builder leave from there, and Portland's Max light rail is just a block away. 

On the trip out, we rode in a seat. Anyone who has spent twenty-five to thirty hours flying to Asia like we have several times will have no problem spending time in the same in a spacious first-class seat that reclines. On the way back, I booked one of the small but efficient roomettes for just a few dollars more since I had a free companion ticket. While these nice little rooms come with free dining car meals, I sleep better in a seat than on a horizontal bed on the train. The five meals we got with our roomette ticket and the fun we had meeting new people while also being able to close ourselves off in a little room made it a good rest before returning to work.

We awoke about Whitefish, Montana, just in time to see Glacier National Park as the sun rose. The part of Glacier that the train traverses is less scenic than the part between Whitefish and Spokane, but unlike our summer trip in 2022, it was all in the dark. Glacier Park ends abruptly, and the nine or so hours from there to Williston is a better landscape. Like the trip out where I found this meditative, I found it excellent for reading a book about notions of time across cultures and time, ironically—a Sideways Look at Time. There is no better place to read a book about time than a half day across a landscape that is the physical embodiment of endless time and space.