Creosote

We hiked over to the CN railway tracks that ran past their farm and we started walking on the tracks towards town. Norman pulled out a coin from his pocket and showed us. It was a penny, but the size of silver dollar. He had laid it on the track and the train had flattened it. With that, we all rooted out pennies and nickels and laid them on the track. Then we waited. And we waited. When would a train come? Who knew? Raymond said that you could hear trains coming miles away if you put your ear to the rails. With that, we got down on the gravel and railway ties to listen. I kneeled besides the track, turned my head towards town, placed my ear and rested my cheek on the sun-warmed steel of this track, and gazed down the glistening rail. I inhaled and held my breath so there would be no noise. And, except for the sound of grasshoppers and a gentle wind caressing the grass, there was none. I saw heat rising from the gravel railway bed and black creosote-treated railway ties. All that I saw shimmered; my view of the field that lay beyond the curve of the railway track was vivid, yet distorted, not quite solid, wavering in the rising heat. I stared beyond the tracks into a field of grain, intense green, present, but on the verge of dissipation, like the wisps of a dream one had when awakening. As I lay there I took in a deep breath. I filled my lungs with air. It was like the first time I had drawn air since Dad’s death. My nose and senses were full in that instance with the scent of the creosote wafting off of the railway ties, I was captured by the bending light rising from the hot ground, and the warmth on my skin of the hot sun above enveloping all of me, embracing me. I breathed it in again and it was nice. This creosote smell rising from those hot railway ties was lovely in an odd way. It tasted of the world, it reminded me of Dad’s workshop. It was sweet, it was musty, it was pungent, it smelled of machines. This smell reminded me of Dad when he came in from working in his shop.

In that instance, I was happy again. I experienced joy in being again. This, I had not felt since before Dad’s death, since that day when we planted caragana trees together. He was still dead and this loss still with me, I was still shattered and desolated, but, coexisting with that, was this moment. This magical, amazing moment, when the world around me seemed to embrace me, warm me, fill me and my senses with the presence, smell, sounds and touch of beauty.

In that moment, I somehow came to realize that the world, this beautiful world I discovered in the Eden of my childhood, had not ceased to exist. It persisted. I could still know it, still be in it, still feel it, and be touched by it. I could not forget or remove myself from the pain of my father’s death and absence. But I could still have this. I could have this.