February 14, 2015: Night on the Great Divide

If you want to feel insignificant, spent a night or two alone up at Blossburg, Montana. At the summit of Mullan Pass, draped across the Great Divide, the only man made light comes from the searchlight railroad signals and the headlights of passing trains.

Whether it is the altitude, the lack of the constant droning of urban life, or just the dark solitude, my ears seem ultra sensitive to sound.  Somewhere in the night one of Dave Schatz's cows is bellowing out a call, answered by her calf.  The "conservation" ensues until the two are reunited only to be replaced by the not too distant yipping of coyotes.  The amazing thing about these animals, two scraggily coyotes can sound like 50, especially since their chilling howls are multiplied by their echoes bouncing off the surrounding hills.  I have to convince myself they are a lot farther off then my imagination is trying to tell me.

As if on cue, to the west and to the east a faint rumbles become obvious.  Distant whistles intermingle.  A westbound and helpers are rounding the Austin horseshoes to the east, an eastbound is whistling for the crossing at Elliston.  The noise ebbs and flows as the trains duck into back canyons them emerge out into the more open valleys.  Finally, to the west the bright light of the eastbound emerges illuminating the switches at Blossburg.  To the east, the rumbling of the westbound suddenly ends, the head-end is in the tunnel.  The train's helpers also fall silent, but a glow to the east tells me the head-end is about to emerge just down the track from where I am situated.

And then all hell breaks loose!  The lead locomotives of the westbound climb out of the tunnel cut, their diesel engines straining under the load.  Headlights are momentarily dimmed as the engines of the two trains pass, then are turned back on to light the way.  Cars inch by, and then a set of helper engines, with only a bare minimum of lighting thunder by, shoving part of the train downgrade, while still pulling the remainder of the tonnage uphill.  More of the quiet clickity clack of the cars, the cadence increasing as more and more the train crests the summit and roll downgrade.  In time the last set of helpers drift by, no longer powering, but rather helping hold the train back for the downhill run to Elliston.

Within a few minutes of the westbound's passage, the eastbound gets a green signal to proceed.  The engineer throttles up just enough to get the train rolling over the summit, then backs off into braking, the a long string of empty coal hoppers following in an obedient line.  With that, the little drama ends and once again I'm surround by darkness.  A few distant whistles can be heard as the two trains continue to put distance between them.

The late night rising of the moon adds a luster to the scene.  One of the helper sets off the westbound returns, stopping briefly for a red signal then continues east to Helena and its next assignment.  Silence again returns. 

Be it the unbelievable show of horsepower over gravity, or merely the wide open spaces, I am left feeling as important as a single chunk of the ballast.  Under a canopy of stars not to be seen in but a few places these days, I come to the conclusion,  I represent a pretty small cog in a really big gear.

February 8, 2015: 44 Years and 20 Bucks Later

Driving rain, blowing wind, Dad and good friend Brian Ambrose attempt to take shelter under an umbrella.  We had splashed our way from Auburn up into the foothills of the Cascades to catch an empty grain train at Palmer Junction. We had spent part of the morning in town watching trains, but when a grain empty left the yard for Stampede Pass, we decided a chase to Kanaskat was in order.

Lucky for us, the train showed up before the rain penetrated through our coats and shirts.

As the train roared past and around the corner, Dad and I remember back to a time almost 44 years to the day when we had come to the same spot.  Our goal was to photograph the Burlington Northern's version of the famed North Coast Limited.  We parked the family wagon on the road, within yards where we parked this day.  We hiked around the corner, just beyond where this shot was taken and climbed up on the hillside above the curve.

Like this day, it was only a short wait before the train came around the bend and headed up the Green River Gorge.  Our goal attained, we called it good and went back to the car.  During our short absence, the soft shoulder of the ground had given way, and the rider's side of the car had settled to the frame. We were stuck.

Lucky for us, just across the tracks and down in a little hollow was a single wide trailer house whose owner had a Jeep.  Not only did he have a Jeep, he loved roaring around the countryside in his Jeep.  Dad told him of our predicament, and in an instant he fired up the straight piped Willis and dispensing of such formalities as a driveway or road, came flying straight up the embankment surrounding his yard, spun a couple of "brodies" on the dirt Tacoma Watershed road, then backed up to our listing station wagon.  A few quick tugs and we were on our way, the owner of the Jeep obviously disappointed it took such a minor pull.

As Dad and I were recounting the tale to Brian, Dad laughed, "that guy got my last 20 bucks."

February 2, 2015; That Damned Norwegian Work Ethic

This is a photo taken of my Mom back in 1970.  If my math is correct and memory clear, I believe she would have been 84 today.  She passed away about 4 years ago.

The Old Man was a hard worker, but Mom was the one with the driven work ethic.  I think I get my work-a-holic ways from her.  This shot of her on her knees, weeding the big garden at the farm was taken on the 4th of July.  I remember Dad was up on the front porch taking a break before we went to the annual Grange picnic.  Not so Mom.  She had finished frying 6 chickens for the feast, and while they browned in the oven, with still an hour or so before we left, she took her weed box and trowel, and went to the garden, with me in tow.  I snuck away long enough to take this shot, before she was able to look up and realize I had skipped out.

Mom was well read, an accomplished musician, a very intelligent woman, and a career housewife.  When I say career, I mean that in a very industrial/corporate sense of the word.  She worked at that job with the same vigor, seriousness and intensity modern women put into their careers outside of the home.  By any standards, our house in Tacoma was a "shack," but under Mom's care the interior was immaculate, not a blade of grass out of place in the large yard.  Later, when she and the Old Man moved back out to the farm, her childhood home, we used to tease her.  The lawn in front of the big old farmhouse under her care was referred to as "the putting green."

So if I work long hours at the mill.  If I spend 7 months out of the year farming nights after work and week-ends.  If during the winter months I spend my week-ends out in the fields weeding, it's not my fault.

It's that damned Norwegian work ethic.

It's one of the many gifts Mom gave me.