EDMONTON, CA (2024)

"That train looks like a Gordon Lightfoot song . . . "

Jasper National Park, Canada

I’d been in Canada almost a week when I realized I had not been listening to Gordon Lightfoot.  How had that happened?  I hadn’t even thought about him.

When I realized this, I was more than half way through my trip, passing through Jasper National Park, about to turn southward back toward the USA. 

I’d been in Canada for 6 DAYS and I had not listened to one Gordon Lightfoot song!  Not one.  Not even “Carefree Highway”.  And this was a trip in which I was driving 4-6 hours a day! 

*

I was in a beautiful mountain valley, three hours west of Edmonton, when I had this revelation.  I had pulled over to piss, and as I slid downhill off the highway (to get out of the sight of passing drivers) I spotted a freight train moving eastward about a hundred yards below me.  I could see the individual boxcars, passing through the evergreen trees. 

The caboose appeared and I watched it go by.  I followed it with my eyes until I saw a long straight section of train track a half mile to my right (see photo above).  I could see almost the whole train as it slowly moved away from me. 

I could hear the murmuring metal sounds of the train bumping against itself. Other than that, it was very quiet in that secluded location.  Maybe a little wind.  This was late-August and already a little chilly up there at 53 degrees latitude (400 miles north of the top of Montana).

I watched the caboose growing smaller and I thought:  that train looks like a Gordon Lightfoot song. 

That’s when I realized I hadn’t been listening to him.  And what was I listening to instead?  Podcasts, The Pet Shop Boys, local farm reports.  What the hell was wrong with me?

*

Back in my car, I immediately pulled out my current iPod.  But it only had a couple Gordon Lightfoot songs on it.  So then I dug up my secondary iPod which floats around the interior of my car, in case of emergencies.  Which this clearly was.

On that iPod I had the Lightfoot album Summertime Dream (1976) which I had downloaded at some point, knowing it was considered one of Lightfoot’s best albums but contained none of his radio hits. 

This seemed perfect for my purposes.  An album of high quality Gordon Lightfoot songs that I hadn’t heard a million times already. I plugged it in.

*

Gordon Lightfoot

*

I continued driving through the valley. But something was wrong, Summertime Dream wasn’t hitting right.  The unfamiliar songs were not satisfying. 

What I really needed was classic Gordon Lightfoot.  Like Canadian wilderness, train-tracks, half-way-to-Alaska, Gordon Lightfoot.  

So I dug up the play list that contained several of his obvious hits, “Sundown”, “Carefree Highway”, “Edmund Fitzgerald” . . . .