Monday, March 14, 2005, 5:35pm
Monday, March 14, 2005, 5:35pm
Under failing sunlight a defect graces the outer coating of this window glass. Something struck this sheet with a glancing blow and shoved the plastic lamination a bit to reveal a sense of its depth – a lot thicker and tougher than my earlier impressions of saran wrap. Ordinary safety glass has an inner layer of clear plastic sandwiched between two sheets of tempered glass. This keeps the window intact on impact. Yet if you want a super-tough safety glass, you’d laminate the outer surfaces instead – which is what seems to be the case here. Unfortunately this exposes the plastic coating to whatever scouring agents are used to de-grime, de-ice, and de-scum the train each night.
Past the turnpike tolls and through the Alston rail yards we roll with still enough light to resolve the colors of brightly painted store signs and ‘look-at-me’ cars and trucks. Overhead the sky barely glows a steel blue tapering to brighter bands — first in a lighter cyan then luminous green farther down before faint streaks of yellow with pastel pink trim the horizon. These are the actual colors, though for some reason it requires an inordinate amount of willpower to see green in the mix. Where cyan blends into yellow there must be a greenish transition somewhere even without human nature ignoring it.
In the dimming light I deliberately ignore cocktail-party chitchat washing from various corners of this cabin. Words overlap other words mixing with noise from a vestibule doorway left wide open to an outside world full of road noise from the Pike. The pink sky has faded some, yet the distribution of color follows the same sequence as before.
The coming of night is a matter of this or some other sequence trailing over the westward horizon as blackness leaks in from the east with its own sequence of darker shades. The sun itself remains mostly unchanged during the setting process – though it does rotate about one degree on its own axis during my evening commute and at a million miles per hour the entire solar system travels three thousand miles in its orbit around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy in the general direction of Centaurus.
Yet tonight, from my own perspective aboard a train rolling much more slowly I see only New England drifting into a gathering darkness.
Sometimes to the east on especially clear evenings I’ve noticed the rising of the Earth’s shadow and when this happens the darkness rolls in on a soft line. But I’m not likely to see any sort of line like that from this train with its limited views, dingy glass, and bright interior lighting.
After Route 128 we shift rails to the north tracks. The train lurches to the left a few times, then back to the right a few more until recovering its dignity atop straight running steel. By Wellesley Farms thick tree branches remove my view of any pink sky – if any remains. From here I still have another 30 minutes to ride, and by Ashland Station twilight will be nearly depleted with perhaps a hint of deep purple in the general direction of Worcester farther to the west. The end of winter and the coming of spring is a waiting game for me right now. The Old Man is bound to lose his grip eventually even if he has a few last tricks up his sleeve before retiring to his summer quarters.
If global warming takes hold as predicted the old guy in a hundred years may not even find a summertime haven at the North Pole with a completely melted Arctic Ocean during the summer months for the first time in eons. Then we’ll be in big trouble.
The Atlantic Ocean current system is driven by dense arctic water sinking thousands of meters into its deepest depths. With sunlight pouring into the northern ocean the Gulf Stream might eventually shut down leaving Europe in a freeze it hasn’t seen since the last ice age. For now much of southern Norway has milder winters than Boston, but this could change to where they feel winter the same way as winter is felt in eastern Alaska. I hope not, yet the possibility is discussed in scientific circles even as the automotive and oil industry thought-police claim some sort of vast left-wing conspiracy theory in all of this. It would be laughable except for how so many influential people choose orthodoxy over reason.
At Natick the twilight is still noticeable enough to say that night has not yet fallen entirely. Not much else can be said of it. Streetlamps are more than mere orange dots now with their light taking over as the prime source of illumination along rail platforms and passing boulevards. Buildings are two-dimensional black silhouettes against a steel gray sky.
Fifty minutes out of South Station we roll towards West Natick — the 5:30pm local now nearly empty. Perhaps 15 remain in this cabin. Beginning with the Newton stops the rest have been leaking away unnoticed.
By the time I take my own leave at Ashland this coach will resemble those ghost trains running later at night with only a head showing here and there. I have boarded only a few of those later trains, and except for treks filled with happy Red Sox fans usually passengers sit dazed in a zombie-like trance not quite awake and not quite asleep.
Patrolling these undead, newbie conductors work the night trains waiting on their chance to work less dismal hours.
From light into darkness, from warmth into cold, from clear perception into shadowy mists I ride aboard this one train from work to home on a Monday evening one week shy of spring according to the official calender.
Unofficially spring will arrive when it is good and ready.
