re december 2016

Austin Tx, new years eve

Road some bnsf coal south out of denver. Thinking it'd get me to trinidad or amarillo.. When I woke the next morning we were in pueblo and went slinkin through it straight south to the refinery. I didn't even know what'd happened until I realized we were circling back almost in the other direction and stood up and saw it, the refinery just a mile down where the line ended. We were spiraling in on it. Way out there in the praries, pueblo co maybe 5 maybe 10 miles to the north.

Getting out again wasn't so bad. Took work and a bit of luck, but it's an alright little town. Like Witchita Falls. Not all unfriendly. Amarillo though, that was different. Amarillo was some of the most run down garbage for it's size I ever had the pleasure of leaving.

Yd was 100% visibility and nowhere to hide at all as for as the daytime went. But that's when you know lingerin around anyplace or walkin around it all too frequent is going to be as likely attracting attention from the locals as being seen on property itself, so as soon as I found an entrypoint I saw a geo eastbound ds pull in on the main and I thought 'well, better not hang around... here goes nothing... cross my heart, hail mary... hope I don't die!' I hadn't been there a full day but was so anxious to get out of there, purely out of revulsion, that I'd have taken my chances blindfolded. And I guess I may as well been, cause there was no way nobody saw me walkin on up to that thing through the lot. I think it might've been a sunday.. but I ran up and down that thing twice. First the back half, then the front.. and all I could find was suicide wells. There wasn't shit else.  'Well.. cross my heart, hope to die then. Fuck it.'

So I gingerly tucked my groceries and my case of beer up underneath inside the track, threw my bags over and dove in. Catching a brief glimpse of the bull or somebody in a big white truck pulling through a few strings over, as I dropped down into the well. I thought maybe they'd seen me and I got scared as hell for a little while. Expecting them to work their way back around my way. They didn't. But we didn't get moving again until the sky started dying on me and my beers down to just three.

Alright, fort worth. Here I come, fort worth. Gonna make it to austin by christmas, fort worth!

Fun fact. Amarillo's all bnsf trackage and they will take you five different directions. Northwest to denver, northeast to tulsa and kansas, east to dfw, south to lubbock, slaton, brownwood and temple.. And southwest to clovis and albuquerque.. new mexico. Not so fun fact: discerning between eastbound, southbound, and southwestbound trains might be a little difficult. And the south track doesn't even wye off to the west until you're well down it.

Six hours later I was somewhere out by the new mexico border, barrelling through the pitch darkness and freezing rain.. and barreling straight through clovis. Ffffffffffffffff. That means another six hours.

Standing up. Afraid I might fall asleep or else loosen my grip long enough for a jolt to throw me off the by then iced-over crossbeams.. I felt lucky I'd at least brains enough to be geared up for the winter weather, insulated coveralls and face mask etc the way I had, or I'd have had no choice but pull out the bivy and strap myself and all my gear to the rigging up on the porch.

Was soaked to the bones like an old scarecrow when we reached belen, finally, 8 or 10 hours later. But I was so glad to get off that thing I didn't even care anymore. I was so glad to be in belen I didn't even care it was the wrong direction. I was so glad to see lights that weren't headlights or highway billboards I didn't care anymore.
There was so much ice layered over the rocks, walking up the length of that thing for the second time.. trying not to break an ankle after all that anyhow was like pulling teeth. So tired. So, so damn tired.



Ft. Worth I didn't spend more than 10 hours either. It wasn't as desolate as amarillo or dark as clovis though. I walked through most of it in the early morning then got bored and wandered south of downtown to hit the coal again. It was weirdly empty, downtown and south of it. Ghostly. A lot of gutted shops and pavement that didn't look hardly driveable anymore. Even the bum I encountered under the bridge at the hopout north of the abandoned plant, rider paraphanilia and discarded junk everywhere, was weirdly despondent. He'd showed up a little after to smoke something.. and he was still standing there staring off into space an hour later when my southbound came through.

On the way down it was mostly just a lot of pasture land and a country route running right along. Sun still out, clear skies and thunderheads towering up to the east, setting up to rip ass on all ten country cunts and cows out there somewhere.

As soon as I sit up to snap some pictures of all this, there's another train holed up on the oncoming siding and before ducking down I see them standing out next to the head counting cars and I looked at the engineer and the engineer looked at me... Oh, shit. Somebody must've called me in, a passing car on the highway maybe.

I pulled out the scanner and dialed in the rail channels.. chatter.. noise.. chatter.. stop.. go back.. what's that.. there it is. They were saying they spotted me and askin my crew to pull into the next siding and they'd have em waiting for me. Ohh, shit. Oh, shit.

I throw all my things together and zip up. Kick the coal around a little bit and dig in a little deeper and huddle down against the corner. For what. For coal? You're tellin me you're gonna arrest me for riding your fuckin coal..

Ten minutes and we're stopped. A couple of doors slam fifty feet off somewhere and I can hear a couple of them talking and walking the ballast. I hear their radio. Somebody climbs up the ladder of some car nearby.. nothing.. climbs back down..

ballast.. rungs on the car directly ahead of mine.. they get to the top.. quiet.. I hold my breath.

The only thing I can hear is the little plastic bag full of food, deep in the corner of the container, moving slightly in the breeze. Somebody might as well have been ripping open a bag of chips for how loud it was to me and I thought that was it. But it was really windy, and for how I dug myself down against the wall, they might not've seen or heard anything. I'll never know for sure.. But I almost feel like maybe they were just feeling generous that day.. cause they just climbed on back down without a word and were gone.

Maybe they checked the next container, but they didn't stay long because the train kicked forward again right away.

Mixed feelings. Bewildered.. stupified.. Didn't know what to think. But that I made damn sure and stay the fuck down the rest of the way.

december 2016

Wichita Falls, 12/25

Made it to texas. Only been a couple of winters and I'm already headed back for austin. I've put this year through as much hell as I did the one before it and carved two giant circles into the lower 48 between them.

I wanted to try the rockies on for size this winter, so dived down the overland for my third or fourth go but hatching back instead this time down to the south and east into ogden via green river, wyo. I wasn't even sure where else after that but I knew I wanted for certain to go and see if I couldn't bag an east over the mountains. One hoped that denver would handle the rest I guess. And you know it did, cause three days and I'd seen enough. It handled me alright.

Provo yd was strange. Couldn't pick a spot that put one at ease to save my life, the way yd duty would go skirting around all five corners of the A, day and night. I went in by the west bridge on the first evening and then mosied over to the east one by midnight the next.. First thinking that the jungle in the middle there was going to be camp-worthy, until I seen work trucks parking right in there by it not long after noon pretty frequently, either on a smoke break or patrol. Took me a few days, dancing around for warmth there in intervals, steel toe boots and the snow.

And on the third day it was only when I was leaving over that bridge to go try for the macaroni at salt lake that they'd listed in the 2013/14 updates when I noticed a bnsf manifest, on trackage rights, laying over for a new crew further down in the yd itself. 

When I went to investigate there was cats and dogs brought down all the sudden and then hail too for a good hour altogether. I tried to be as low profile as I could but once I cut in right on up next to the train in question and hopped over the other side for better cover / less visibility between strings, I discovered that the far string was a maintenance line and there was a crew of welders, busy running a bead while I passed and who I only hoped wouldn't notice me. They heard my feet on the ballast I guess though, and I could hear them after passing, exclamations of disbelief behind me through the torrents of hail.. Look there goes one now, jack..

The ride was about 30 hours and I was damned hungery by noon of the second day. Hungry but happy; There were times of brilliant sunshine over the pass, skating cautiously through like a windsail somewhere round about 25 mph through a bright snow perfumed winter wonderland, gold and green when I awoke the next day in the late noon as the sun was still deciding on just where to bed in all the snow caked forrest it ever dreamed of eating. I wished then that I hadn't burned my phone dead shooting a video the previous evening when we'd departed, all radiant as christmas carols, sledding through a nightstand nativity of baby jesus and whipped cream.

I will have to find that line again -- and jump off!.. Wait until spring, bandini.

God but the cold. I could do nothing but stay locked up deep in my bedding. Getting out only to pee and to stretch, and then it was a real ordeal.. not at all pleasant but for the first couple of minutes, spent mostly just unwrapping and climbing out of the double barrel.. which I was, in retrospect, very lucky to have found. It was the only double punched grain container on the whole train, and the best shelter anyone could ever hope to find on it at that. But for an open box of course and I don't think that order even carries empty boxes typically.
When we first stopped during the day (for like 5-6 hours, good lord), I first thought when I began to feel like it to climb off and have a look around and get some air in my veins but on stepping down discovered the snow to be a lot more than I guessed.. it was kneedeep. I didn't feel like getting out for a walk much after that. Not because I wasn't layered enough for it, but because my feet were stiff and I was feeling a little weak, hungover more like, and it was all I could do to keep toes thawed without the steel toes on and wading in ice was not going to be the solution to this.

Rolling in on denver then on the eve of it so to speak while there was still daylight lighting up the farthest expanses,  coming in on top of it on a winding track winding down off the back of the rocky moutains. Stepping down the grade like a snake switching back over itself down the trunk of a tree, sun behind you and the east a bleached rolling plains dyed peaches reds and purples as far as the eye. A plot of grey metropolis somewhere in the center of it frost bitten and relatively featureless from that distance... but what a distance. And from that height on the way down I wished again, terribly, that I'd still batteries in the phone enough to ask your photograph.

Rolling in on denver then, rolling in on denver.. It was even colder thanks to the twilight hour and it's not sixty seconds before your fingers are all gone rolling up the belongings all dry ice inside of that grainer when we finally ground to a stop at north yd. Or maybe 48th street I don't know right now. The one relatively center but fairly west of town also. And the adrenaline, oh god.. sometimes you kinda just have to expect the worse. Because you can't hear or see anything at all out of those things, and there's not seeing a floodlight if it fixed on you until you were well out on the porch of it.

Disembarked that son of a bitch and there I was, Denver! Denver then.. land ho... Snows even deeper now and I can't feel my hands nor any of my toes about as soon as I jumped down off the final rung of that ladder.. And I'm so goddamn starved and my waters all frozen and shit and I'm not sure I'd have noticed there were an SUV black or white or red if it were 10 cars away. Was lucky enough though that we'd pulled in on the last track west side and there was nothing but 40-50 someodd paces wading as I was, to the edge of rail property and to safety -- not even a fence to vault over.. Twice lucky aye.

But there was somewhat an embankment there waiting for me and in 2 and a half feet of snow it took about ten minutes to crawl up this little hill that couldn't have been any more than 10 feetsworth I swear to god.. Gasping and grasping and weezing from the effort of it and the whole time looking back over my shoulder for the yard dog any second now. The fattest I have ever felt in my whole life. I felt like a beached fucking whale. Have I used that yet? Whatever... Anyway when I dragged myself past the final couple feet of sleet, wrenching my bags up alongside me like a couple of logs, I lay down for something like another 5-10 minutes recovering and eating snow to cool down again. Cold does that, too. Guts all busted and the ride I just left not a hundred feet away nor cop nor camera anywhere.

I stayed at a motel that night. It's weird sometimes how you can have no idea whatsoever which way you're going but wind up heading in the right direction. And then the next night stayed at the squat down the road I'd found by pecos bridge where the coal like to stop. I watched that coal track for half the night and it didn't seem to be doing the things just the same as it used to as far as I could tell, and I even went out and walked the length of one of them once to see where they'd stuck the dpus, mid-train or back. Not a soul else but myself there that night - though not a big surprise when it's 5 degrees in or out.. And when I decided it was late enough I layed out a squat mattress somebody had so thoughtfully leaned up lengthwise against the wall, so as to avoid it's being snowed on through the empty windows.

September 4

If it is in eternity.

If it is in a word or a long roll of film.

This thine those thoughts this that vertigo

If it can be said or it can be seen.
If it can be hewn sewn sounded shown wedded

Welded or maybe righted only in the razing of the

Holy See

If it dwells in the wells of youth or
In the twin soulful pools of dark ponderous
Vacant silences of the old elder

Sanctuaries

If the conservatory if the aviary, if in the

Glint in the flinted visage of it the
Summer flight that hides in the
Darkest Twilight

If black terror if black gehenna thence
Or a conquistador of iron, epaulet hubris

In that.. singular art of his avarice his
Severity

If you would utter a single shred.
If you would breath one slaughtered
Sacred scarred argot of the thing the
Syllabus of the Sea..

If it is in eternity.
If it has the wings of a fish or the eyes of a dove.
If it can be flumed, wrought written in a

Viridis Whisper

Do not dare me do not dream do not deign it
To be more than it ought if you thought
To fall for good and not forever