R A I L R O A D I N D E N V E R
Last Saturday I couldn't go anywhere. I was stuck at Alex's Auto Repair waiting for a radiator to be put in the good old Jeep. He's 13 years old and had numerous radiator operations and is fully aware that he is my train. I am aware that this organ transplant will take until noon at least. Now it is 9:30. I met with Alex and his team with a sip of coffee and handshake just East of the Denver City Prison just inside of Stapleton, Colorado, the new chic in Denver living. Between you and the newly developed hash-modern family homes, the gound hogs, the railroad, downtown view, and Mount Evans, is the skyline of the Western promise. This view coordinates all that is is desert and all that is rock. On the other side is more rock and more desert, but its so different. Totally separate cultures were doing the same tasks with similar tools and all that inhibits their speaking is the massive and old and dying Rocky Mountains. Yet, they are similar. Those people were united by the mountains, just by different direction. Their gravitational relationship with the continental divide simply pointed them in separate attractions.
Yet they did many of the same things.
At 9:37 I made the decision to leave Alex's office and walk the railroad.
I had brought my camera. I remember Alex asking what I intended to do while waiting. I mentioned picture taking. He inquired as to what? I immediately thought to myself he was thinking about me photographing his shop. I settled on mentioning I'd be out walking. Was only mentioning picture taking.
But I wonder. And I sat there bored of the porn star posters in the garage and the model cars and hot bod magazines in his office. So I stretched, grabbed my apple and made off across the road and wander West, eyeing a stretch of parked train cars, at least a dozen in length, a half mile away.
Ten minutes later, I find myself here, checking out the graffiti on the cars.
One says Max1994. Its 2010, so either these cars have sat here for 16 years, or they've seen some road time and this tag came from St. Louis or somewhere along the line.
I trip on a rail tie.
I pick it up and wonder when it was first hammered into the ground. The tracks don't show
a sign of missing a tie. Now I wonder when the repair happened and therefore when this spike was pulled and thrown. I throw it down and walk up track another mile. I turn around often to photograph, but the light is wrong. Too bright. Its still coming up.
I will still sunburn.
I make way for the tracks up ahead. All of the sudden I felt the insatiable desire to walk the tracks. It is, afterall, level ground. The ruts and bottles and paint brushes litter the path anyway. So 157 steps later I'm at the cross road and I have to wait for the cars to drive across. I don't really care, dash across the street, and find myself in a prairie dog den.
The time is now 10:32.
I scope out a few dens and manage to get a shot. After a long, quiet wait a dog jumps up, squeaks like a dog toy, and stands his little ground, swiffing his tail stupidly.
I can only think that if you save the prairie dog, you save the red tailed hawk.
I caught myself at the junction tracks and realize I have a pretty good view. And it doesn't include the prison or any 18 wheelers or trailers, but the rock and snow of the mountains in the distance. I stand there ignoring the sun's ascension upward at my view westward and realize I'm several miles from the car. I couldn't care less.
Up to my left is a similar stuck train of cars, about 5 cars long and to my right is a stack about 3 cars long. To my left a no trespassing sign. To my right, no word otherwise. I head right and intend to duck left and pass my way along the tracks back eastward with no question.
Not that anyone is going to question me here. I would hope I'd be smart with any cop and smarter with anyone else, especially a convict newly escaped directly across the street.
The view from the right isn't as cool as I expected. I'd been hunting a good shot of the mountains the entire walk. I couldn't keep my footing along the steep gravel and when I could the point of view from between the train cars wasn't great. The sight was nice. The photographs were not.
So, making my way past the prairie dog holes and "trespassers will be questioned" (yeah right) sign, I found a flock of birds circling the air and landing in the hundreds directly between me and the train cars and Mount Evans.
It took me several minutes to reach the cars and I didn't bother to check the time.
The birds circled and landed, circled and landed, each time a different set of birds.
Next to the railroad and cars I found a nice little spot and watched. They would blacked the snow covered peak from time to time. It seemed like a good twenty minutes went by before I felt satisfied with my jungle gym climb up the cars and photographs galore.
At 11:40 I decided to head back. I was no doubt already sunburned.
Luckily, when pocketing my camera, I remembered the apple. I thought of Adam and Eve. And him being handed the apple of destiny. And how they walked down an unknown path themselves.
Walking back I remember feeling that this was not the same town Jack Kerouac had visited. It carries a different beat. I leave Denver thinking about how photography isn't doing well here. How creativity is trying so hard. And these tracks are so long, but got us all so far.
We found a way to connect two places that weren't connected before.
Some happened to stop here, in Denver, what could have been Auraria, just East of the Rocky Mountains and just on the side of the Platte River and Cherry Creek. Others went Westward.
Some time in yesterday.
I am here today. And I walk a railroad in Denver.
And I admit, I dream of a girl as well. I remember someone special.
So special that I walk two miles, past the original and forgotten train cars, and realize I have gone too far. At least 50 yards.
I backtrack, make way across the brush, something of dead sunflowers, check for rattle snakes in the dip, and await safe passage across the road. I cross the lot of cars with numbered tickets thanking god I was number one for the day. I see a 9 and feel sorry for them. At high noon, the sun is piercing through the shallow clouds. I enter the office and find my seat is no longer mine, of course. Certainly expected. I nod and pass through to the garage. Alex is standing there, arms crossed, laughing with another guy in plain dress. They speak spanish and this man is certainly not a worker. Alex sees me and pardons himself, points to my red car, and signals me over. He introduces me to Hector, his mechanic, and I expect to be given a load of bullshit. But my expectations were wrong.
The face of my girl flashes across me, also unexpectedly.
Alex simply told me Hector needed 15 more minutes then we were good to go.
10 minutes later me and my train make smoke and leave after a greasy handshake, a good ol' switch-a-roo of cars in the garage, and a fleeting glimpse of the mountains in the rear view mirror. I see why people come here, of course. They are why I came here and those who do have an impression. Much as they would the feeling of being on a train. Experience is memory and memory is alive.
