Along the Fraser River

Rico looks out at the Fraser River. Photo by David Lansing.

After breakfast rather than going back upstairs to our dome car, I walk outside to the viewing platform. I want to hear and smell the terrain we’re passing through. The train, traveling no more than 20 or 30 mph, follows the Fraser River as it cuts through fertile farmland. A young woman, feeding horses in a paddock, stops her chores long enough to give me a short wave and then stands there holding a bucket until we disappear from sight. She probably sees this train pass through most mornings and I wonder if she thinks about who is on it and where they’re going, and does she wish she were on a train going somewhere instead of feeding the farm animals?

The air is brisk and smells of hay and woodsmoke. The Fraser itself is not a pretty river—at least not this part of it. The First Nations people called it “muddy” in their language, and that’s exactly what it is, a thick mocha brown color that looks liked heavily creamed coffee. That’s because of all the sediment it carries down from the mountains from its headwaters on the west slopes of the Canadian Rockies as it flows northwest to the Vancouver delta.

Rico, whose real name is Frederick and lives in Portland, comes out on the viewing platform. He nods at me and I nod back. We lean against the cold metal railing, our heads hanging out to better feel the icy breeze, taking in the passing scene of bridges and barns and school buses waiting at crossings. When we go through some small town like Chilliwack or Komo, the engineer lets off a few plaintive blasts that roll across the flat farmland and dissipate in the trees.

“Why is that such a sad sound?” Rico says. It is a rhetorical question. He’s not waiting for an answer from me. There is no answer. Just the melancholy clickety-clack of our train as it crosses an old suspension bridge.