I have moved to Belize from Canada. I have been hear 20 months. Today I realized that there are no trains in Belize.

That makes me sad. I don’t know why it makes me sad? It’s like a part of my life is missing. I will never have an occasion to sit at a crossing in a wheat field, on the Praries and watch a series of containers, with the names of Walmart, Hyundai, and Esso on a Canadian Pacific train, rolling by my windshield.

I won’t have a chance to race a train across the landscape, trying to beat it to the next crossing. I once got out of my car, went to pee and locked myself out of my running car, on a railway crossing. I was apoplectic!

Fortunately I managed to get back into the car before it became a pile of wreckage. I’ve seen lots of graffiti covered trains hauling grain and oil among other things, but I don’t think that clickity clack sound the cars made as they rolled by will ever go away.

I will miss seeing them roll by me in a mountain pass, or in a open field. I’ll miss seeing the caboose disappear into the distance, to come to a stop on a coast in British Columbia or in a railyard to rest up so it can chug along the same path, yet again.