A Walk on the Rails

by Desarae Baker, Simms High School

The warmth of the sun permeates me as I walk down the worn dirt road. Abandoned buildings slump on their foundations, as if they know they have outlived their usefulness. Fields that once-upon-a-far-away-time yielded lavish crops lie barren, and more than a few people have taken on a defeated look.

The high plains just off the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains is beautiful country but it has never been an easy place for people to establish themselves. When I was younger I saw these monuments of time as a large playground. Down the street from my first home in Vaughn, behind a thick barrage of trees, I found an abandoned trailer and in seconds it became a dark dungeon where a horrible beast might take me, the innocent princess, prisoner.

Today, looking farther down the road, I'm not captivated by thoughts of dragons or dreams of being a princess. The road ends abruptly but I knew it would and I follow the tracks that run beside it. I know the way so well I could reach my destination blindfolded. Like I've done so many times before, I try to balance as I walk on the rails. As I move forward, years fall away like the pebbles thrown to the side by the trembling roar of freighters which frequently pass across this same path.

I hurry down the hill a little recklessly. I run through knee-high weeds down to the bank of the Muddy Creek. The dark-brown water cascades and tumbles off the rocks. I walk along the bank, kicking at tufts of crab grass. It may be the only thing that will grow here now, but I remember hearing somewhere that this whole area was once thick with vegetation. No one would know that now, looking at the noxious weeds and eroding creek bank. The weeds are all I have ever known.

I climb over rocks to reach the cement slab just beneath the bridge. Years ago, taking shelter under the bridge, a small, wet girl hid from the rain. It didn't matter that the rushing water competed wildly with the thunder she hid from, the bridge was still her only refuge.

Eventually, the grey drizzle began to wane. She knew Mommy would be mad, but she really tried not to get dirty. "It's not my fault it rained, it was the clouds' fault," she said to herself, rehearsing. But even as she thought of ways to get out of trouble, she began considering the games she might as well play since she was already wet.

Ten years ago, I played often on the tracks of the Muddy Creek railroad bridge. Despite the warnings of my worried mother, it was a perfect place to explore the jungles of Africa or the mysteries of outer space. Here the belief that pennies could derail a train kept my piggy bank full. I usually managed to get soggy clothes to the washer before my mom saw them, although a carelessly tossed shirt occasionally got me into trouble. Still, going to the bridge was worth it.

A lamenting bird cries overhead, and I come back to the reality of the cold hard concrete I'm sitting on. The structure has withstood the mighty fray with time, so far. From its unstable beginnings, to the present, it has endured and remained firm. At first the creek was only a minor inconvenience in the great rail race. Bigger problems lurked, so the planners paid little attention to engineering the bridge. But although workers complied with orders of construction at the beginning of each new day, the land had made its own demands. Unseen beneath the the valley grasses a layer of mud offered too little support for the bridge to stand.

The original piling plan of fourteen feet had to be doubled just to find ground solid enough to hold the structure. When it was finally completed the bridge fulfilled its many purposes. The train stopped in every town to pick up mail, milk, and people. All three shared a drafty and often cold boxcar on the swaying journey down the valley. Bill Norris, son of homesteaders, remembers waiting with his father at the station in Fort Shaw for the day's mail.

The train wove its presence into the memories of all the citizens of the valley. These memories are foundations upon which lives are built. Although an old bridge won't much affect the future, it has touched many pasts.

Time, which used to march slowly in single-file as if on parade, lately seems to slip through open fingers like sand. With each falling grain a person has changed, a city grew, or worse, a town died. Not much has stayed constant. Still, some things, like this old railroad bridge, remain to remind us of the world that once was. This bridge is but a small piece of the jigsaw puzzle known as Sun River Valley. Without any of these small pieces, who would ever put the picture together again?

Most of the important landmarks and historical places in the Sun River Valley are dilapidated, run down, or gone. Extinct from the earth and no longer a part of the generational hand-down of memories, these things often die with the people who remember them. Efforts to keep the monuments alive now exist, but I only wish they would have been started long before now.

Personal experience is the soul of a town. Such places in our tiny communities should be preserved and taken seriously. I see the gazebo condemned and broken. Once it was the intersection of hundreds of lives, a combination fast food drive-in and gas station. I wonder how many years before it is carted off to the dump with no more regard than for any piece trash we discard every day. At one time it was the focal point of activity and many people have memories of what happened there. It is part of their knowledge of each other, but now it's a splintered old building on the side of the highway, reduced to a pile of rotting lumber and rusted metal.

Essay of Place Issue
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