That Night Train to Whistler (2019)

With less than twenty cars on the train, most of them unrideable gondolas with hoods, I didn't have much choice than to climb up on inside a foxhole in Squamish. 

Now the grainer can be a tramp's best friend at times, but also his worst enemy.  In this instance, it fell in the middle. I've come to learn with age, the small bangs to my joints, knees, shins, the bruises, the cuts, and generally squeezing into a small space often leaves me hurting and sore for days, nothin' I can't get through, but watchin' time trickle by in there, waitin' for her to leave, definitely isn't the most comfortable of rides.

Time gingerly passed and the loose grain caked to my ass like sawdust. The filthy blackened walls expired to the crevices of my hands, neck, and face, and smeared in blotches upon my clothing.  The corroded steel behind flakes of rusted paint chips and dust all gradually entered my nasal passage making me congested and always on the whim of a sneeze. I spent countless hours scrunched in there covered in thick films of soot like I had just fallen out of a chimney, listening for the sweet golden sound of air to fire up this lifeless beast.  A beast that wrenches your ears around each bend, bellows her horn at each crossing, and wanders the defined path of track set many years ago, piercing the air for all to hear, day and night, through rain and snow and blistering heat. She keeps chuggin' takin' her sweet time through the forgotten lands. 

Late that evening, she whistled through chasms of bedrock, working hard to power up the steep high mountains of Garibaldi and Whistler, meandering the curves and jostling through thick, verdant forests while glacial torrents ripped through the valley below carving a path of rounded stone. 

The color looked majestic, the surrealist of blues, so keen, so vibrant, it's astounding such beauty still exists in the lands with which man hasn't toiled much yet.  Just as the sun took its last breath, she followed the sinuous track by turquoise lakes and I crammed myself back in the foxhole with my head on my pack and my legs all cattywampus.  I shut my eyes and drifted off to the lulling sound of her wheels and rattling motion...