Rail Retreat -- The Final Chapter

Happiness is two kinds of ice cream
Finding your skate key; telling the time
And happiness is learning to whistle
And tying your shoe for the very first time.
Happiness is playing the drum
In your own school band
And happiness is walking hand in hand
And Happiness is five different crayons
Knowing a secret and climbing a tree
Happiness is finding a nickel
Catching a firefly; setting it free
And happiness is being alone every now and then
And happiness is coming home again…
(from You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, Music, Lyrics and Book by: Clark Gesner)

Being alone…and coming home again – although more than happiness, it is pure joy. Especially now, after a week of the former and over 5000 miles to both enforce and punctuate it, it is the latter that is happiness and joy. The sight of home in my imagination, and before long just around that final, evocative turn. The welcoming touch of one whose parting embrace animated the quiet and kept me company in that strange, ephemeral way.

So what do I bring home with me? Some tasks gratefully accomplished – books read, words written, services imagined, a sermon series well underway. Indeed it would be hard to justify this trip without such things in my pocket.

And there are the people – Ron, the stoically efficient attendant between LA and Portland, and Darryl, the effective and jovial one along the final leg who went to work with Amtrak as a summer job – 24 years ago; the retired FBI agent/business owner/theology student and his wife from Detroit visiting grandkids throughout California, and their adult daughter – roughly my age – traveling with them who along with her husband is building a stone, wood-fired pizza oven in their back yard; the two brothers and their wives who rode the Coast Starlight together just so they could spend time and visit; the train marketer is riding across the country to evaluate and assess how Amtrak is doing; the Metropolitan Lounge attendant in Portland who was born and raised in Marshalltown, Iowa, graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Piano and a teaching certificate, and taught music appreciation in an elementary school in Minneapolis before hooking up with Amtrak; the Goth young man riding in coach in all black, a flaming yellow goatee and a shaved head with a tattoo just behind his ear that looks like it was done by his little brother; the three “U-Per” women who each retired from careers in different places and settled in the same community in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula because of a love of skiing, met and now share an annual ski trip together to somewhere – like Montana; the many waiters, conductors, and other employees who combined to afford me an extraordinary experience.

And, of course, there is the land which has blessed me with rich passage – the rustic red deserts of Colorado and New Mexico, the coastal magnificence of California, the rivers and forests and mountains and plains of the American northwest; frozen lakes and persistent streams; snow-covered evergreens and crystalline brush; the warmth of Albuquerque, New Mexico and the pure icy chill of Shelby, Montana; herds of antelope galloping in eastern Montana and bald eagles soaring and feeding along the river east of Red Wing, Minnesota. Yes, almost indescribably so, the land. “Come now and look upon the works of the Lord, what awesome things he has done on earth” (Psalm 46:9).

All those things, and of course, more. But mostly I return home with an awe-filled gratitude to a God who fashioned it with words I can’t even imagine, and to a church and a wife who offered their blessing on my longing to roll through it.

Happiness, indeed. Amen.