Dear Amtrak,

Well hi there, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Ten years at least. The last time we hung out, I was on a train to Georgia to start the Appalachian Trail. Before that, we’d gone on so many adventures together. I learned to love you: your romantic penchant for beautiful farmland, your whistles in the night, your coy refusal to follow schedules. You’ve always been so complicated. So charming. So full of stranger’s farts.

Before I graduated high school, I told my dad that I was intent on hitch-hiking around the country for the summer after graduation. My father (sensing my blatant disregard of my own mortality, coupled with the type of steely determination reserved only for teenagers and politicians) knew it would be useless to tell me not to hitch-hike. So instead of dissuading me outright, he waited a little while and then casually mentioned to me that Amtrak had a type of ticket that could be used infinite times over the course of 30 days, for anywhere in the US or Canada, for less money than a one-way airplane ticket to California. This worked on me the same way that throwing a ball will distract a dog from trying to steal the Christmas turkey. Off I went, alone on a train, finding joy on my somewhat less dangerous journey.

It was on that 30 day solo trip that I learned to love you, Amtrak. I didn’t have a cell phone, and I didn’t have money for an mp3 player. I had a small backpack, a copy of The Stand, and the flexibility of a ferret, which made sleeping upright in coach seats no problem at all. There are so many stories from that trip, from getting stuck overnight underneath a set of train seats, to accidentally walking in on what was unquestionably a small gathering of the mob.

Our route out to Washington is the same section I rode during that trip nearly 20 years ago, and Amtrak, in some ways you’ve changed and in some ways you’ve stayed the same. The seats are bigger and more comfortable, and your dining car sells more than just stale hotdogs now (but don’t worry, you’ve still got those too). We had packed the makings for PB&J’s for dinner and crammed the five of us into a little four person table in the dining car. We made our summer camp sandwiches while a line of 20+ people waited for their hot train food, having to stand directly over us while they waited. I’ve never experienced so many strangers gazing covetously at my Skippy and Wonder Bread, but there’s a first time for everything. You gave me that experience, Amtrak.

You also gave me the experience of a bright, aggressive spotlight that beamed down at us all night long with no reprieve. I imagine it’s for safety, but does your gaze have to possess the lumens of an MLB stadium light? Listen, this may sound like complaining, but that’s only because it absolutely is. It’s a bad sign when you’re in a packed overnight train car at 3am and NO ONE is snoring. You made me miss snoring, Amtrak. That’s powerful.

We started out the evening attempting to sleep, as all adults do in coach seating, by twisting oneself into pretzels to see which previously undiscovered muscle or bone will suddenly announce itself by way of protest. This is especially torturous when your beautiful, comfortable, inflatable sleeping pad is folded up in your pack, mere feet away, taunting you with inaccessibility. As much as I would have enjoyed the choatic energy of inflating and arranging my whole sleeping setup in the aisle of the train, I’d rather not be arrested as a tripping hazard. Eventually, Toasty offered to take out his Z-Rest Sleeping pad, which doesn’t inflate but folds out, and half-unfolded it into a mini bed, and set himself up in the footwell of our seats. This freed up the space for me to lay across the two seats, which felt very luxurious, even though my feet stuck straight up in the air against the wall of the train, not unlike a child’s drawing of a dead ostrich. Little Brother and A did their best to snuggle together. And Dumptruck, lucky guy, got to get smushed against the wall by a heavily sleeping stranger on Ambien.

But in spite of all that, I do still love you. We’re 24 hrs in, and have 44 more to go. We made it through Ohio, the corridor of freight trains, and you miraculously stayed on schedule the entire way. We made buddies with an Appalachian Trail Class of 2022 thru-hiker named Mountain Doctor, who also happened to be on our same train but several seats back, as he’s heading out to hike the Colorado Trail. We have spent our quick layover realizing just how many people we have in common even though we hiked 9 years apart, and just how safe we all feel with other hikers. He will be getting on a different train from us from here on out, but it has been a delight to be with him.

Amtrak, you have given me a new friend and a painless, if sleepless, trip to the actual Midwest. Even though I’ve only gotten a cumulative 2 hours of sleep via 40 micronaps of 3 minutes each, I haven’t given up hope on you yet. Hopefully we’ll be out the way of the light of Helios this time as we get on our second train. Regardless, even if we stumble out of the station in Wenatchee fully hallucinating from lack of sleep, I know at least you will have gotten us there safely.

I would want it any other way.

Love,

Thresher