Tales from the train.

There.

A water tower here, a smoke stack puffing up and out of tree stands there, salt shacks in obscure places that remind me of none other than Dryden town. I am on a train, zipping through Quebec country. Little fuel towns with orange tin roofs, burn blocks and Birch stands, Red Pines (I think) and Black Spruce (I know), crops shorn short, fallen logs that remind me of Spraycation so long ago with Birdy and K. Old farmhouses perched atop hills and tucked into valleys. The car sways like a woman with hips, it is nice. Monte Carlo Motel, see yuh. Cornwall, Quebec approaches, and then goes as fast as it came up. For now it is all birch trees as far as the eye can see draped in the dull early morning light that comes with winter in a damp province.

It is really nice to be on a train again. I have been looking forward to this ride for three years. The idea of my siblings waiting at Point B is quite something. I will write more as the hours wear on, but for now I am simply happy looking out the window at the snow falling. Toronto, here I come.

Ontario here I come, how I have missed you!

We must be rolling into Ontario now, I can feel it. The land looks different and it calls out to the planter who lives inside of me. Furrows row on row outside of my window, no keifshow here. Trust me. There is water lapping at lake banks right beside the tracks under our bodies and everything is the same color as the sky: winter white. It is very serene and for the first time since November 9th, I feel wholly serene. I am not quite sure what it is about Ontario that draws me in the way it does. Maybe it is the familiarity of the little character mill towns puff puff passing my train window, or the wildness of the bush paired with the hopping creeks. Tobacco creek, my creek long dried and gone by now.

I hope there is a time in my life where I am able to really live in Ontario. Little houses tucked into their plot in the woods; driveways winding out of sight. That is the kind of place I dream of when I picture the happiness of my older self. Just a few days ago I couldn't rid myself of the idea (and didn't bother to try) of wining and dining in such a house like the ones I see flying past, my lady guests of honor laughing with necks craned to the heavens, low light, happy women full with good food and pride of our scattered broods screaming somewhere high above our position around the table in the and amongst the trees on the land. I can see a little kitchen, with one of those serious butcher blocks beaten with age and use in the middle, the anchor of the home. It is quite an idyllic daydream and it is not the first time I have been swept up in thought to that place. I have been there before and I have a feeling I know where I can find a home just like it (Casa Seargent, from the sounds of things).

Someone is peeling an orange behind me. And now we just whipped passed a bunch of four or five year old crop trees! Planters were here, plain as day. Oshawa, Ontario is up next, which always makes me think of flying with Grandpa and Milky years ago, Erin and I tucked into the small seater in the back of the plane, our tiny heads taking turns listening to Plane Talk in the giant head set. You have control.