SEA to PDX, Amtrak Style

Are you in the market for a pick-up truck? Something retro perhaps? How about a flatbed to go with it? If you don't mind a little rust and you can figure out a way to extricate the pick-up from the back of the flatbed, I know where you can get a matched set for only $900.00!

In deference to midwinter break, the family and I took a little jaunt southward to Portland; or P-town as my neice Kelli, a sophmore at University of Portland, likes to call it. To change it up a bit, the kids and I ventured off the mighty interstate to take a ride through the countryside aboard Amtrak's #11 Coast Starlight. Oh the sights we saw.

In a few places the scenery was striking; the majestic Olympic Mountains rising up over the peninsula and looking across the Puget Sound, a bald eagle leaping upward right off the edge of it's nest and rising above our train, dewy, bare naked limbs on the trees in the poplar (I think) forests and even a few pretty little farmhouses with white fencing to stitch up their boundaries.

More intriguing however, and unfortunely more common, were the sights that left me wondering what people care about. I lost count the number of cars weathered by time and sinking slowly into the earth, that were left along the tracks or abondoned in streams. I thought it was a joke when I saw not one but three barns (or were they houses?), miles and miles apart, completely engulfed in blackberry brambles. And plentiful too were the yards littered with debris of all kind, including more cars and more trucks. In the 186 miles of rail between Seattle and Portland there were enough rotting vehicles to fill a junkyard the size of Safeco Field.

It was about half way through the trip, about Centraila I'd guess, that I remembered a train ride my son and I took some years back travelling from Paris to the Dordogne region of central France. On that trip I recall being struck by the pristine townships, pastoral views and the sparkling countryside. I saw not even one misplaced vehicle. In fact, every auto that I did see was tucked neatly into the driveway next to it's home.

I wondered then as I do now, why the difference? Is degradation prevention legislated in France? Are they just a more conscientious citizenship? Do the French have more interest in beauty? Are Americans lazy?

I still don't know the answers to my questions, but I do know one thing. When I return to my home, I'm going to take a thoughtful walk around my little piece of the earth and make sure passersby know at least one thing I care about.

By the way, if you are interested in that old pick-up truck, I sincerely hope you are in need of a flatbed too. Because the owner whose property butted up against that rail line clearly stated in his spray-paint on plywood sign that the $900.00 price tag included both vehicles and that no other offers or combinations would be entertained!