Train music

Spider Dreams; Turtle Island String Quartet

Since I was very young, I have been captivated by the notion of an oasis. The thought of a place of fresh water, vegetation and respite from ruthless, even deadly, desert surroundings of massive proportions is powerful to me. I’ve never been to, or seen, a real oasis. But I encounter them all the time.

My 2008 Chevy Trailblazer is an oasis. I set the temperature to a cool sixty-two degrees, turn on the Sirius/XM radio – or local radio – and the outside world keeps its troubles to itself. All I have to do is drive around the troubles.

My house during a snowstorm … or during a ninety degree summer day … is an oasis. The wilderness is outside. Pancakes, maple syrup, puzzles, movies and board games are inside.

The cruise ships on which I worked … oases. The lap of luxury completely hemmed in by thousands of square miles of water. My cabin on the Delta Queen, without a port hole, because it was below the waterline – definitely an oasis – a retreat from the nasty brackiness that passed by only inches from my pillow.

The first time I took the Amtrak out to Montana in 1997, I couldn’t stop thinking about the quarter-mile long oasis on wheels – on tracks – transporting me across the plains, carrying me through parts of the earth that seem to have been impacted very little by our fancy modern times. I looked outside to see the world as nature chose to present itself in these lonely, grassy and treeless places. Then I looked inside and saw the carpeted floor, an comfortable chair, a place to put my cup and a resting place for my feet. Now, HERE was an oasis.

On that trip I listened to “Spider Dreams” by the Turtle Island String Quartet, released in 1992. I had bought it some months before, but I had only listened to it once. It had sounded like something that needed my focus. That is to say that it didn’t provide particularly soothing background music. So I chose it for this trip. Interestingly enough, since the new music coincided with the new landscape, they bonded. Now, whenever I listen to this album on my iPod, I have a silent North Dakota/Montana travelogue reel that plays endlessly inside my mind. How ‘bout that? A mental oasis. Beautiful.

Credits: To Aunt Jemima and her pancake mix. You bring so much happiness to the first few hours of the morning. God bless you.

This is the nineteenth of my final forty-five CD's.