Train pulled out said my goodbyes
Sky blue
Back on the road alone with the sky
Sky blue
Theres a presence here no one denies
Sky blue
– Gabriel

I woke up to a dark day and heavy rain. A day when I had to make my way north to the little town Mauston on the Lemonweir river. The drive took me through miles of rain soaked fields, low hills, sandstone cliffs and all sort of slowly collapsing barns and tattered sheds. Each crumbling structure I passed reminded me of an old forest log crumbling back into the earth.

Like a passenger on the Amtrak train that shadowed me most of the way north, I was simply passing through on my way from one point on the globe to another, a passenger catching dream-scape glimpses of a foreign place more imagination than reality.  Yet, the hills, barns, rivers, cliffs, and even the scattered, unincorporated villages kept grabbing at my curiosity. Autonomous in my own transportation I kept going off the rails, slipping a mile down some country road or taking an abrupt turn simply to see what was hidden around a hazy bend.  I was a train off the tracks and given to bouts distraction.

After the business of the day was complete, I began the journey home again. I drove past a low head dam and parked in a small gravel driveway which ended abruptly at the water’s edge. Rivulets ran in lightning strike formations down my grey tinted windshield. I turned down the music and rolled down my window feeling the spit of rain suddenly crossing my cheek. I could see a lone fisherman cast his rod just feet away and down muddy bank. He never once looked up to take stock of the sudden arrival of the V8 engine roaring over his left shoulder. For a few moments I contemplated saying “hello”. Then simply slipped the Jeep into reverse and pulled back out onto a wet, crumbling, little asphalt road that would take me back to the highway.

I drove south past cemetery and realty sign. Past locked gates and low open sky. All the while train tracks rose and fell to my left on high grassy embankments and into deep, dark, wet valleys.

Stamped in the middle of the emerald, dripping, wet countryside I came upon the village of Lyndon Station. A solitary Sim-City block of old houses and small businesses, a church, a water tower and a VFW hall dwarfed by an immaculately kept world war era tank parked out front. As I drove down small town strip, I happened a glance into the window of Martha’s Lyndo Inn Restaurant. (Offering daily lunch specials, & breakfast anytime. “Don’t forget your Frostie Brand root beer!”). Framed in each square window was the classic image of elderly men in duck billed caps holding coffee cups and gesturing wildly. I could only imagine their day’s plans had been impacted by the rain… and the reigns of government.

I tried to catch a picture of the old “Double Dip” Ice cream shop just down the road, but the image through the windshield was simply a dark watercolor of  black and brown swirls accented with beads of silver and white.

I followed a country road through an open field decorated by a thin tree line that gave off the image of the Serengeti in a monsoon where telephone poles were Giraffes and an old abandon tractor became a stalking lion crouched in the high grass.

I found an old barn faded brown to match the sandstone wall that rose behind it. It’s rusty tin roof gave away it’s camouflaged location reflecting the dim light of  a thickly gauzed sky.

A mile off the main road, while framing a picture of a septic tank truck rushing down a distant highway and casting a cloud of mist in it’s wake, I realized I had better make a serious attempt at getting home. I put my camera down and slipped the Jeep out of park. I turned the truck around and drove back once again to main highway. I turned south and pressed my foot on the accelerator. As the jeep got up to speed I rolled down the window and let the rain fly in. Meanwhile on the stereo, Peter Gabriel sang “Sky Blue“.

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