Notes from a Night Train

I took the overnight train from Chicago to New Orleans this spring because I wanted to see the country slowly. I shared a dining car table with strangers at every meal, which the train does on purpose.

At breakfast I sat with a retired couple from Iowa who were celebrating their forty-fifth anniversary, and a jazz drummer heading home from a gig. At lunch, a nursing student showed me photos of her twin baby brothers. At dinner, a man in a cowboy hat taught me a card game called "spit" and beat me eleven times.

Outside the window: cotton fields, small towns with one stoplight, a heron standing in a flooded ditch as if waiting for a bus. At night the train swayed like a cradle.

I've flown that distance in two hours before. This time it took nineteen, and I wouldn't give back a minute.