Ticket to Ride

 Bordering the Western edge of our farm there’s a line of track that cuts through the ghost town ruins of old Copas. The snow melts quickest along the rails, and sticks down the sides of the hilled spine that snakes its way with crowds of thicket and ephemeral water bogs cheering it along. In April, a walk along that line rewards the wanderer with view of marsh marigolds by the plenty. One year there were so many they seemed to give off a glow like a pot of gold hidden in a tuck and roll of the earth. This is the railway which, 130 years ago, used to send spuds off to the city by the car-load. Now it’s largely used for hauling rock quarried up in Dresser, WI, and the weekend tourists riding the historic train from Osceola into the state park.  Last year the faster (and louder) rock train didn’t come by at all, prompting us to wonder if trains were yet another random pandemic casualty.

photo by Ben de la Cruz, NPR

In Kroscienko, Poland there’s a similar all-but abandoned rusty line of rail skimming through a thickety countryside near the Southeastern border with Ukraine. The pictures of this particular set of parallel lines, grimacing with its rotting planks and patches of stubborn snow, like shaving cream on the face of the hill, are remarkable because they look exactly like the ones in our backyard-which is to say, they are not remarkable at all. There the trees are also bare, the recently sawed-off ends of the encroaching junk saplings by the work crews, marking the abrupt imaginary line where the wild tangle of overgrown weeds and grass and shrubs were deemed suddenly unwelcome, after nearly 100 years of having it their own way. Poland is sending several crews along the line to rebuild it, and bring it back into use to help with the refugee crisis. I wonder how many old things, old ways our tech-savvy world has abandoned, only to frantically return to them when faced with something like war. Why not live with it in place, in use, always?

Fran in Winter

Over the years we’ve met people randomly who recognize our farm slowly by remembering their first view of it from the back, waving at us from the train as we planted out the pumpkin crop or harvested cabbages. To them, it seemed like the train was a magicked thing, which took them back 100 years as soon as they stepped upon it, and it chugged its way across the St. Croix, through the woods, and suddenly happened upon a clearing where Buttercup and Fran were grazing and gazing at them placidly with their big Jersey Cow eyes, and little girls in calico dresses were running barefoot to catch a glimpse of the engine.

When the train starts running again, and the picnickers wave from the historic cars and stand at the back for a better view of things, it will be hard not to think of that sister train in Kroscienko, hauling women and children away from the shelling and gunfire. I hope it too will be a magicked train, breaking the evil spell that made them into hunted creatures, giving them a chance to enjoy a better view of things again.