The Train

Occasionally a sound or smell, or even the way the wind is blow­ing, will unex­pect­ed­ly trig­ger an old mem­o­ry. I took this pho­to on one of those occa­sions sev­er­al win­ters ago. There is some inten­tion­al cam­era move­ment as I panned my cam­era to fol­low the train, result­ing in an image that I thought had an impres­sion­ist look. Below are my thoughts as I wrote them at the time; the mem­o­ry is still vivid.

A train track runs about a half mile from our house. It winds through our rur­al land­scape going through the woods, and fol­lows a creek for much of its route. The faint sound of the train whis­tle as it cross­es a road in the far dis­tance is still a sound that I enjoy hear­ing, espe­cial­ly on a warm sum­mer night when we have the house win­dows open.

When our boys were young and we would all be play­ing in the creek, they would motion to the train engi­neer to blow the whis­tle as it went by. Although there is no road cross­ing here, more times than not, the engi­neer would oblige, to the delight of us all. The boys are grown and no longer live at home. I was walk­ing along the creek by myself on a cold fog­gy morn­ing when the train came by with its head­lights on, and I took this photo. 

I only had time for one pho­to, then I motioned for the engi­neer to blow the whistle.