Given the choice between air and rail, I will choose the train. Sure it will take a full day and sure I love airplanes, but there is a certain leisure to rail car. Seats are spacious and there's a plug for your computer, but the clincher is just idly watching the land go by.
It's the same reason I love road trips, but it provides a radically different perspective of California. People don't put Billboards by train tracks. There is, in fact, zero effort made to beautify the scenery. Trains pass through the grimiest, greasiest parts of town and view only the backs of buildings. There's a romance to the disembodied wharf pilings, weeds, stacks of paving stones and piles of rusted scrap metal so common along rail routes.
Of course, traveling through California by train also has long stretches of extreme classical beauty. It's hard to avoid in this great state, but I managed to sleep through them.
The most memorable thing I saw passed too quickly for me to catch a photo. There was a teenage boy sitting on a roof, watching the train go by.
Sometimes photography is an art of ideas. Juxtapositions and new ways of looking at the world. It isn't hard to use a camera the way it is to draw or to play an instrument, you just need sharp focus and a close frame. I think that's why it's such a popular amateur pursuit.
Othertimes it's about being at the right place at the right time or being invisible. That's when photography becomes something requiring patience and skill. That's when I go back to words.
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