This morning, I was for the first time wide awake during the train ride from Seattle to Vancouver. And the scenery inspired me to grab my laptop and start a stream of consciousness thing:

Foggy. Visibility is less than a hundred feet. It is high tide, and the shoreline is often no more than five feet away. I see a very still gray ocean, fading into gray nothingness. A few ducks here and there. The train gently lurches, and we’re suddenly going past green meadows. It lurches again, a sign reads Samish, and there are clapboard fishing buildings – peeling blue paint, white roofs. Now nothing but ocean again. Black rocky beach. Red rocky beach. Seagulls going by. A goose, seemingly flying backwards as we pass by quickly. Tough looking men on a sandy beach, driftwood arranged in artful patterns. Rocks, piled high in gravity-defying columns. Now a green evergreen forest, then a grove of green and yellow and orange maples. A beach again: lone seagull perched on a rock. Now, mostly just the water. Old pier logs jutting out of the water in neat rows, like ancient broken columns. Hurrying past giant boulders. We are higher up. The ocean isn’t visible, just a white expanse of fog a little ways away. A street sign: Pleasant Bay. An expanse of green: ferns everywhere. Finally a road – a man taking his dog for a morning walk. A red shingled roof, sheltered cove: quiet community of fifty homes. Man painting fence. Cedar homes. Then back to quiet ancient trees. Water again. Still. White bleached logs, black seaweed. Snake-like giant kelp.

Within the space of less than five amazing minutes: where there was nothing but gray water and gray sky, now there is the hint of yellow, and then the sun emerges from somewhere behind me. At the same time trees appear from the fog which is quickly burning off. The water is blue! Then back to foggy nothingness.

Bellingham. Then an hour later: White Rock. Unbidden memories of childhood and clam digging. The long pier where long ago I once spent a day setting crab traps – today the end of which can’t be seen through the still heavy fog. Beachfront stores, more tacky now than I remember, but still quaint; memories of going into town from Auntie Ling’s store, running errands which I can no longer remember. The giant white rock itself, now up on a grassy lawn and not the sandy beach as I remembered.

People stop and stare as the train moves in and out of their lives. And we stare back, and then are gone. I leave something behind.