We took an 18-hour train through the American Southwest
I am in remote northern Canada – a world away from this post. A couple of weeks ago we visited family in Los Angeles and escaped the city for a week, boarding an eastbound Southwest Chief Amtrak. The whole route goes from LA – Chicago but we went as far as Santa Fe, New Mexico.
We took the sleeper class which meant eating in the dining cart. There were vegan options but they were limited. We had pasta primavera and salad. Leaving Los Angeles around 5 pm, we quickly climbed up into the mountains where it was greener. It was dark as we moved through Joshua Tree National Park and the Mojave desert. I have an apparent knack for bringing rain to dry places. When I was 14 I went to Joshua Tree National Park – supposedly one of the driest places on earth – and it down-poured. Soon I’d bring it to dry high desert New Mexico… We fell asleep reading in our family room, against that familiar sound of the train rolling over the train tracks, and sporadic rainfall. We woke up in Navajo territory, in Arizona.
For breakfast, vegan options were limited so we had juice, coffee and fruit and the food we brought on board: Wholefoods blueberry muffins and cashew yoghurt.
After breakfast we went into the observational carriage and watched Arizona become New Mexico – ‘the Land of Enchantment’.
We travelled on a weekday. Travellers were mainly retired people looking to travel slowly, also military, Amish people, and people scared of flying. I overheard conversations of people bound for Chicago, New Jersey and Virginia. I don’t think there’s a better way to see this humungous country – it’s a shame train routes have been so pared back – I hear talk that Amtrak plan to close this historic route and replace it with a bus which I hope doesn’t happen. Train travel gives me similar relief to rain. Sequestered in an ever-changing landscape I feel a little more connected with what is constant and unchanging.
After lunch – a delicious vegan chili - we disembarked at Lamy.
Lamy was on the historic route west through the so-called Frontierlands. It’s very Western in feel – with a 19th-century saloon and adobe houses. A colourful train was parked up – one of George RR Martin’s pastimes. The long-term Santa Fe resident has invested a lot in his adopted home city. We took a transfer onwards to Santa Fe proper where we’d stay almost a week.
Santa Fe was a pilgrimage of sorts. Uniquely placed between the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and the Rocky Mountains, it’s high altitude and high desert, home to the oldest buildings in the country, and with strong Indigenous roots and presence. My brother hitchhiked here from El Paso in the 90s and described it as Glastonbury in the desert. Some claim it lies on Ley Lines. Today the adobe city has become something of a mecca for artists. Back in 2017 I was attending a writers’ workshop in Tepotzlan, Mexico, and met a poet who told me she lives in Santa Fe – a city of writers. The landscape and history drew pioneering artist Georgia O’Keefe, and two of my favourite authors, George RR Martin and Cormac McCarthy. Soon I will have something to say but for now, here are photographs of the place, its museums, art, nature.
