March 3, 2017
Heaven’s peaceful eye, rising,
faithfully, effortlessly, paints her ephemeral pastel chef d’oeuvre
as wispy clouds float across its crepuscular creation on a stiff
morning breeze. At Fahrenheit 32 - on the cusp of stasis - opaline
snow, slowly, still, steadily recedes to reveal the forlorn landscape
as it has and will for millennia past and future. And though winter
is a stubborn old man, she breaks his frozen fingers to thaw her
earth by day only to let him reclaim his icy grip upon her orb
overnight wreaking havoc on the vulnerable infrastructure of this
venerable railroad forever known as the “CW” (Central Washington
Railroad). At MP82, just a few jointed-rail-sticks west of the ghost
town of Govan (elevator in the right background), Engineer Jerry
Miller helms Eastern Washington Gateway’s HM02-2 as it undulates
the contour of the steppe-like topography, like the sun, rising and
descending ad infinitum the train begins its increasing to 1%
corniche drop into Rattlesnake Gulch along Jarchow and Bender Lake,
crossing Childers and Corbett Draw all the while dwindling the few
miles to the next hamlet of Almira at a comfortable twenty some-odd
miles per turn of the hand with thirty-in-tow “mtys” destined for
the waiting grain spouts and the hardy men that man them twenty-four
more miles down-the-line at end-of-the-line Coulee City where Jerry
and his Conductor F. M. Simon, calling it a day’s work, will tie
down and tie up.
