Amtrak (Hour 20)

Sitting in the train car, I chose the SkyView cabin as we cruised through Glacier National Park. I wondered about the engineering behind the trestle bridges cleaving through this wondrous beauty. Clouds misted around the top of the window, blocking my view. My son, two years old at the time, stood at the window, pointing to bald eagles, moose, and elk who munched lazily on the mountainside. I wondered about the Chinese who laid most of the rails through Montana. Those men who woke every morning with coffee, looking at the same glaciers as me so many years later. Men who struggled to communicate, who families didn’t find out until months later if they fell from the mountain or were crushed under railroad ties. Amtrak continued to cut through the countryside, no memorials. Just the same path cut by man’s hands from the mountains to the plains.

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