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Column: Stuck at railway crossing, lost in train of thought

Great Outdoors by James Murray
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By James Murray

Contributor

The other day I was in town to get my tires changed over so I decided to saunter down towards the lake to see how high the water had risen in the bay.

I’d heard the water levels were quite high this year. I only made it as far as the railways tracks, however, when the crossing arm started coming down.

As I stood there waiting for the westbound freight to go by, my mind started to drift back to the long ago days of my youth when I would walk along the railway tracks near my grandmother’s house. Whenever a passenger train would go by, I’d wave to anyone looking out their window and wonder where they were heading and what adventures might lie ahead of them in some distant part of the country.

I can remember one time, when I was maybe 10 or 11, I was walking along the tracks with my bow and arrow when a train came by. One of the boxcars had an image of a Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep painted on its side. I notched an arrow, drew back and let go a potshot. I was so impressed with my marksmanship when I hit the sheep, but my satisfaction quickly turned to despair as I watched the arrow fade off into the horizon stuck in the side of the boxcar.

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Sometimes I’d stand in the middle of the tall fields of grass that grew near the tracks. Stretching out in all directions like a huge sea of green, the grass would sway back and forth in the wind like waves out on the brine. My very existence disappeared into those waves as they washed over me. When a train did come by, I would yell and scream and shout at the top of my lungs. The amazing thing though was that my voice would be drowned out by the sight, sound, fury and enormity of the train as it rolled and rumbled by shaking the ground beneath my feet. When the train had passed, all would be back to normal. Life is like that.

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