One hundred on; one hundred off. Whitefish Montana is the busiest stop between Seattle and Chicago. The western and most popular gateway to Glacier National Park. Only two parks are more isolated than this cross-border preserve and they are above and below the ocean. In the southeast is Key Largo National Park the only all underwater park in the system. In the southwest are the Channel Islands off-shore of Santa Barbara.
Whitefish is also a way station for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad that runs the Empire Builder for Amtrak. Four deadheaders join us for the road down out of the hills. They are BNSF employees going home. Whitefish survives on tourism, logging, and freight. The town expands from a base of 9000 to double that in the winter and triple that in the summer (or the other way around).
These facts were relayed by a newly minted college graduate going back to Minneapolis after visiting family in Whitefish. His father had long been a long haul train driver and now is a reserve engineer. He drives a single locomotive up and down the line adding an extra push for overloaded freight trains that otherwise would not make it over the mountain passes. He is also on-call for the rare but deadly runaway train. You can’t stop them but someone has to be around to pull away the cars left on the rails.
This young man is unsure what he will do with his marketing degree yet. Luckily he is pulling down good money as a waiter in a swank Minneapolis area restaurant. Real estate? Manufacturing rep? Like a growing number of young people, he did what was expected of him to a point and then stopped for a moment to catch his breath rather than barreling headlong into a career.
Less than an hour later, guitar music drifts in from the vestibule in the center of the car. There he was sitting on the yellow embarkation stool playing and singing as if in a trance totally oblivious. He was good. Real good. Playing Americana, folk, blues, and possibly a tune in the set that he wrote himself. He was that good. During the entire hour of our shared breakfast in the dining car, he never mentioned he is a musician or that music was a possible vocation. I learned nothing more since I did not want to disturb him. I just listened.
