• Being rocked to sleep by the train… #
• Layover in DC, perfect summer weather. I want to stay… #
• Richmond: 20 min to stretch our legs. Two Aussies smoke cigarettes… #
• “See that?” says the attendant, “woman engineer.” Must be unusual for him to mention it. #

The regional train service offered by Amtrak from New York to Boston travels right along the coast. From New Haven to Rhode Island, the tracks are especially close to the ocean, at times passing over salt water inlets via causeways. Twenty years ago, I rode a train from Boston to New York along this route right after a hurricane, and in several places boats had been pushed right up next to the tracks — that’s how close to the water you get. I’m riding train no. 174, one of several trains bearing the dull name of “Regional Service”; twenty years ago, train no. 174 was called “The Mayflower,” which reminded you that you were going back to New England.

I had my head in a book from New York’s Penn station to New Haven. After you leave New Haven, it always seems that the leaves are not so deep a green color as they are in the middle Atlantic states. The change was enough to make me look up from my book, and gaze out the window. The green of New England is mixed with a measure of gold, and the trees and bushes look lighter and even a little translucent.

We passed through the port of New London. Two ferries to Long Island were at their dock, with a few cars on board. The Block Island ferry was just a little farther along the waterfront, and here again I could look right into the car deck as we passed by. Beyond the ferries, I could see cranes reaching into a huge red ship, unloading containers. I saw only a few fishing boats. The far side of the harbor was dominated by the huge General Dynamics building — mysterious in its blankness, forbidding.

The train pulled out of the station. We passed through salt marshes with their peculiar green-gold color, the ocean disappeared and we passed modest suburban houses, suddenly we were on a causeway with the water lapping at the rocks not far below the tracks. A beach appeared, widened, people lay in the sun and splashed in the water, the beach got hidden by a dune and then by scraggly pine trees, a boardwalk with people carrying towels and floats and coolers, they headed towards an underpass going under the tracks.

The ocean disappeared, woods and houses, then a small inlet with just one mooring and one small powerboat tied to it, woods and houses again, then a fair sized harbor with two marinas separated by jetties. At the far side of the harbor, huge houses looked down on the water, in which they were reflected.

Another salt marsh, but here the phragmites had invaded, driving out most of the native plants.

We climbed away from the water and passed through woodlands. Many of the trees closest to the tracks had turned brown; or if they weren’t entirely brown, the side facing the tracks was brown. Through more woods, a beaver pond with standing dead trees provided a brief opening, back into the woods. The woods ended at a sewage treatment plant, and the conductor announced that the next stop would be Kingston, Rhode Island. And through it all, the woman sitting in front of me lay sprawled out across two seats; her feet, clad in thick black socks, propped up on the window; she was asleep and unaware of all that we had passed.

Written 14 August on the train, posted 15 August.