Friday, February 9, 2007

Rail Retreat, Chapter 5 -- Evening

Beyond the mountains of western Montana, the plains opened expansively. Wide, ranging, seemingly infinite. I was caught by the wire – hundreds and hundreds of miles of it – twisted wire and barbed wire nailed to fence posts within which the cattle and horses roamed, but only so far; electrical wire strung across pole after pole after desolate pole. I noticed the same thing earlier in the trip as the train rolled across the southern plains, and I tried to remember the stories about the range wars when the frontier was being conquered. Battles were fought, tempers were flared, lives were lost over the idea of fencing off the open range.

Few, I’m guessing, fought the later efforts to string more wire. Craving the prospect of power, people no doubt clamored for it. And though it looks so odd to me – poll after powerline poll – I can hardly feel smug. Here I am tucked warmly away in my rolling bedroom with an octopus extension chord to which is attached an iPod, a cell phone charger, a camera charger, and a laptop. Hardly primitive; hardly “roughing it.” My letters, had I been such a candle-lighted pioneer, would have been the first to make their way to the “powers that be,” begging for electrification.

Rolling now across far eastern Montana, the sun is fading. The landscape has surprised me. After miles and miles of flat, open range, the land is now filled with plateaus – hills that the wind, or perhaps God’s own hand, sliced off horizontally. Against one side of the slopes – the easterly side – snow has accumulated. To be sure, there is a general dusting of snow all around – in the ground cover of the plains approaching the rise, and around the plateaus as well – but the accumulation is on the one side. I noticed a similar phenomenon this morning in the mountain forests, when it was the southeasterly face of the evergreens that collected the snow.

It has caused me to remember my favorite views of running rivers, where stones interrupt the flow of the stream and cause, at one and the same time, both a rise and a diversion. The stones, no matter their size, have simultaneously caught and redistributed the river.

And perhaps that is most of what life is: standing in the way of life as it passes or blows its way through – wisdom, experience, love, grace – and offering ourselves as a catchment.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Tim,
Still in Des Moines, though I feel I have made this trip with you. Surely your train ride has been a refreshing retreat, but we'll be glad to have you home again.
See you Sunday...or whenever the train pulls into the station.
Judy Holby