The Reindeer Keeper

I've only ridden on a few trains yet I can honestly say I love trains. Where I live I can hear trains passing by across the river in Canada. Listening to the chugging of the train down the tracks, hearing the whistle blowing, me wondering who is on board and where they are going all takes place as soon as I hear the movement of a train. It's especially mesmerizing at night as I'm wrapped in blankets. I listen to those sounds until they fade into the darkness. My most memorable train ride was back when I was in junior high school. My grandmother asked me to go with her on a train from Syracuse to Indianapolis to visit relatives. I was so excited, first to be asked and second to be riding on a train that would include riding the train all night long. I would be one of the passengers and maybe somewhere in the darkness someone would hear the whistle of my train and the chugging of my train down the tracks and wonder where I was going. Of course no one would know me but that di...

Like so many small communities, my hometown had a functioning train depot many years ago. I don't remember much about it nor do I recall the trains coming and going. I've seen photos and heard stories and understand its history-a history wrapped about our country's history of growing and expanding with people taking the rails to travel-with industries using the trains to ship their goods. I took the above photo of our train depot more than a few years ago. At that point in time, it'd been closed down. Travelling by train was becoming a thing of the past. Unfortunately my hometown lost this piece of history to a fire. Gone went its marble floors and the hustle and bustle. But one thing that hasn't disappeared is the howling of trains passing in the night. Living about an hour from Ottawa and two hours from Montreal on the U.S. Canadian border along the St. Lawrence River we are blessed by the howling of trains on the Canadian side drifting over the river, chuggi...

Most of us will go through life having more than a few places we'll call home. Different stages in our lives-different circumstances warrant changes in our address. Some of those changes go unnoticed. A very few remain with us no matter where we go. It's not because of brand name counter tops or built-in fireplaces or in-ground pools with surrounding paper brick. While that stuff might make us comfortable, none of it matters for the simple reason home is not defined by a price tag or a brand or color or design. Rather, home is defined in our hearts. Home tugs at us. Like a bird in its nest, we know when we're there. Home wraps us up in comfort like an old, tattered quilt. Home keeps the world away. Home allows us to be still. I have a few places I call home. The one that comes to mind more often than not was my first home. The home where I grew up before we moved to the country when I was in the third grade. I remember every nook and cranny of...