At 12:40 p.m. my sister and I toed the yellow line between us and the gravel train tracks. The afternoon sun burned in soporific waves, and we passed more than a few people taking siestas on the station benches. The turtle-dome of Solana Beach Station sat queen-like on the opposite side of the tracks, fanned by two grand palm trees. We waited for rumbling of the train.
It was spring break. My sister and I, armed with five oranges and a water bottle, had undertaken a grandiose quest: ride the train up to Carlsbad beach. “I wouldn’t trust you to drive us there anyway,” she teased. My stomach flipped as the train flew in, and I ushered my sister ahead of me.
I felt I was on a grade-school field-trip again, looking for a window seat and a friendly face. This time seating wasn’t a problem: a sprinkling of passengers sat expectantly in the cabin, all on the left-side, waiting for the ocean to unfold. We took our seats as the conductor’s muffled voice announced departure.
We moved hesitantly out of the station as bushels of smiling bougainvilleas waved goodbye. It was the best send-off ever. The cool, uncrowded carriage was the perfect place to watch the fields of yellow flora flying by. We were halfway through break, but I felt vacation had only just begun.
The rectangular window framed everything perfectly, in Rockwell fashion. People left the train like saying goodbye to an old friend, with slow walking and lots of looking back.
One guy, with “I’M KIND OF A BIG DEAL” printed on his duckbill hat, squinted at the train as he walked backwards in measured steps. He walked straight into a grey-haired woman with groceries, dwarfed by his size. They look bewildered and then both fled in separate directions, like billiard balls colliding.
I looked around the cabin, and everyone who was not sleeping was looking out the window, at the ocean.
We were nearly there. Outside of the Carlsbad flower fields, I’d never seen so many blooms at once. My camera battery had a near-death experience because I tried to capture all the flowers sweeping past in saffron swaths. They seemed to say “Drought? Ha! What drought?”.
At Carlsbad Village Station, we stumbled off the train and onto the sun-baked cement platform, and the epic fifteen-minute trek to the ocean began. Beyond the cliff-side brush shone the turquoise tide and golden sand, peppered with stones. We had made it: the great expanse of sand muffled all sound except the crashing waves. To celebrate our arrival, we ate our bounty: I peeled all five oranges and let the juice dribble down my arms. I savored salty air and citrus. We marched up and down the shore, surveying the sea for dolphins.
For most of my life I’ve lived ten minutes from the train tracks. The cacophony of cars and construction begin the moment I wake, filling the city with chaos and dust. But when it’s late at night, and the whole city sleeps, the only sounds are the booming of trains cutting steady ways into the dark.
At 12:40 a.m. my sister and I toed the line between wakefulness and sleep. I heard the trains and drifted off as they filled the night, echoing blue horizons, golden flowers, and the steady rumble of the rails in the sun.
