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the afternoon has been pleasant. the plains of montana leave nothing to report, just more of us snaking our way across the flatlands on rails…
i got a short nap in earlier, pretty much exactly one hour to the minute, waking up to see us about to pull into another station. we’ve been through one or two since then, going past havre and now malta. out here there really isn’t much to photograph or report on at all except the rare landmark like “fifteen mile creek,” a sign and even a creek i would’ve missed if blinking.
the land is covered in brown and yellow grass, with a rare bush or tree breaking ground, defying the crust only enough to still appear mostly dead, like a hand reaching out for its last hope for survival. despite all the clouds overhead, i don’t see any rain happening, so things look like they’ll remain as is.
the infamously gruff café attendant seemed a bit nicer a very short while ago when i ordered a veggie burger and red bull from her. she had just returned from a one-hour break, and one of her co-workers had stopped by the counter to socialize with her. she was still getting annoyed because the co-worker, a short black woman in her thirties with curly hair, was trying to get camera phone pictures of her, and she good-naturedly complained that she “keeps getting pictures of me with my mouth open.”
the co-worker seemed to be very interested in the veggie burger i ordered, and made me promise to give her a verdict on how good it is the next time she walked by. having now eaten it, i’d give it maybe a solid 6 – about what you’d expect from a microwaved sandwich served in its plastic freezer bag. she hasn’t come by since, so my report is still due, i reckon.
other characters in the café/lounge car right now include a middle-aged man wearing an outerwear vest over a bright orange long-sleeve tee and a navy blue baseball cap with a star on it. he’s dining on a cup of ramen noodles, hunched over them sucking them down hungrily while reading some kind of paperwork or reports he brought in with him. a blonde, attractive woman probably in her early thirties is sitting a few tables behind mine, with what looks like a playstation portable and a touch-screen phone, just sitting alone. a couple in front of me to my right are playing cards and taking camera phone pictures of the scenery passing by…
i’m listening to john vanderslice, wishing i had the whole romanian names album(his latest). one of the songs on there entitled “too much time” references mt. hood, and made me slightly homesick. cell service is spotty. obviously if you’re following my twitter feed it may look like i’m just sitting online, but i’m mostly just making the best of it during the few points we pass through actual civilization. at the moment i’m writing this my phone tells me i have a non-data signal, just enough to make/receive calls, but not enough to access anything online.
a lone, short cross on the top of a hill passes by my window, and i can only imagine it marks a grave, but whose it is i’ll never know. i wonder why they’d want to be laid to rest overlooking the train tracks and a small grove of trees that appear to be fatally wounded if not dead entirely. misery loves company?
phone and/or power lines cross and weave the empty expanse, connecting what must be some rather remote outposts with the rest of what many of you reading this would consider the modern civilized world of 2009. i wonder what important communiqués have passed over them, and how often they lay dormant.
-h