From The Canadian – For Train Enthusiasts

From The Canadian – For Train Enthusiasts from Mugo on Vimeo


I mention the Rocky Mountain Trench which is where the train is traveling while I am taking this video. We are close to a town called Valemount where I spent some happy times while in Canada, 2004-2006.

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6 thoughts on “From The Canadian – For Train Enthusiasts”

  1. Bowing to you for willingness to include trains in your blog. In 1990, having some hint that I would soon settle into this body’s own experience for its solitary journey, I took a trip I’d always wanted to take. The train: from Berkeley to Vancouver to Kamloops, past what is now Dragon Flower [the train stopped so we could all stand in the fresh air and observe the clear and the cloudy rivers joining] and then on to Jasper. I am drawn to glaciers. Once in Jasper, because I could still walk then, I touched the edge of glaciers with my hands, walked on the other side of bushes with my bear karma, and breathed as my eyes looked deeply into layers of ice that always connect me to the evolution that we are. How I loved hearing your train and your voice in some of those spots that I remember with gratitude. Just a few years after the train experience, I moved to this Shasta mountain, to be close to the monastery, where, as Dogen said, “A cuckoo’s song beckons me to return home.” He continues, “But do not ask me where I am going as I wander in this limitless world where every step I take is my home.”

  2. Reverend Mugo,

    Always thanks for sharing your training with us, in every sense of the word. It was a vicarious delight to ride with you aboard the Canadian.
    The railroad yards are close enough for us to enjoy hearing the whistles and sound of steel wheels on rails. Always lifts the spirits and imagination. Safe travels.

  3. We could use one of those vintage Canadian Pacific observation cars at Kirkby Stephen East for our grand re-opening next summer if they have any going spare …

  4. Anna, it made my day to read your comment. I’d wondered about posting this video ‘what’s that got to do with anything’ I though. Seems it has a lot to do with a lot of things… Loved the image of the glacier and touching it. There is a book by a Canadian author called Ice Fields by Thomas Wharton. You would do well to get hold of a copy, it goes deep and it is set in the Canadian Rockies around Jasper.

  5. It takes me awhile to get the ‘in every sense of the word’ reference. I’m slow at that sort of thing, but I get there eventually.

    BTW I didn’t mention, and I will here, that when I got off the train at 3.30 am at Boston Bar I had a very close brush with a HUGE black bear! I didn’t actually see it but the guard who saw me off the train did. When he had dealt with the train leaving he marched me briskly off the tracks, no such thing as a platform there, and into the light, warmth and safety of the railway man’s ‘bunk house’. There to wait for my ride to the temple. I gazed out of the window down towards the tracks but I didn’t see the fuzzy one. They said he/she would be attracted to the grain fallen from the freight trains and now fermenting. Yum! Oh and the apple tree near by was probably also an attraction too.

  6. pick up on this post Iain. I will have to post some of the photographs I took in Jasper of The Canadian, taken back in 2006. I’ve also ones of interior details of these wonderful historic cars, stainless steel heaven. You know, when we stopped in Jasper and had hardly come to a halt all of the windows were cleaned. Hosed off and squeegeed clean and dry. Impressive. As was the free wifi connection in the station.

    I am not sure KS East is ready for such stainless steel wonders. Given the teak bodies of those vintage cars at KSE, reminiscent of the Orient Express, the Canadian would blush in their presence.

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