Trains in the Snow
Many years ago, when I was a boy, my friends and I would toboggan in an old sand pit that we reached by going through a fence in the schoolyard, crossing some railroad tracks and walking about a mile through a grassy field. Many an Ottawa winter night was spent in such a fashion. We'd go up and down the hillside dozens of times until our legs were spent and the wrists of our parkas were ice-bound cuffs. It was important to save just enough energy for the return trip, made through the knee-deep snow of the empty field.
Often as we headed for home we would hear the distant and eerie sound of a train's horn as it was passing through the level crossing at Bell's Corners, headed our way. For some unknown reason, it became vitally important in our eleven-year-old boys' minds that we reach the tracks and cross before the train would prevent (only temporarily) our access to the fence and the schoolyard. Onward we would race through the frozen night, all the while monitoring the progress of the barrelling train approaching from our left. More than once we reached the tracks with that ominous engine lamp looming ever larger, lighting up the tracks (and us) as we scrambled up the embankment to hurl ourselves across the tracks. Our terror would be amplified by the impossibly close blasts of the train's horn, as the conductor undoubtedly sought to scare us off of our ridiculous and completely unnecessary and dangerous actions. If we won the race we would flop down on the other side, and as the train thundered and screeched by, we would lie still and feel the gentle flakes of snow lightly land on our upturned faces.
And we never felt more alive.
To this day, when I hear a distant train horn on a winter's night, I'm immediately taken back to those times.
If you would like a print of any of the paintings featured in this blog, the links are down below:
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