It is amazing what you can see of the old towns and homesteads from the train. Prisons, tidy farms, courthouses decorated with murals, old Carnegie public libraries, cattle, cornfields, mules and horses in back yards, rodeo paddocks. Stuff. But nothing beats the landscape and it seems a terrible shame that night has to fall and obscure it all.

About 9am we see the first snowy mountains in the distance. About 10:30am the first evergreens appear. Lots of frozen streams stiff with grasses. The colors of dried foliage and rock are mesmerizing and unlike anything in the Eastern US. The sleeper attendant drops off a copy of The Pueblo Chieftain (Volume 142, Number 226) with fully half its two sections covering sports. By 11:30 we’re into New Mexico.

I’ve been busy calling friends and family while I can, especially when the sun goes down. My sister Rita calls to tell me she’s sending a useful piece of clothing by courier to Hawaii. I also get a message from Melanie Prater in Hot Springs about work on the next step of a grant project for the Appalachian Trail kiosk.

I’m also, of course, reading. The day before Christmas Eve I ran into a friend Lisa, whom I know from Westminster Presbyterian, and managed to solicit from her, in a very brief conversation, advice on two points: 1) how useful a netbook might be for writing on the go, and 2) what literature would be best for travel across the American South West. I had researched both but it never hurts to check with someone as smart as Lisa. Sure enough. Her son has a netbook and likes it for writing. (As it turned out, I couldn’t find one to buy in the after-New Year’s Day crush of preparation for this trip.) And she suggested Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. My husband has read all of McCarthy but I’ve not been able to stomach the violence. But she said it wasn’t typical in that respect and so I took our hardback book, despite its weight, and it was perfect for the train trip. But I don’t get to several Willa Cathers. I plan to read those on the ship in addition to finishing up several sustainability tomes. (And I do mean tomes; many of them are weighty volumes.)