Life's Train Wrecks

I've never borne witness to a train wreck - thankfully. However, we ventured to the site of a decades-old train wreck tens days ago or so. It's become quite a novelty around here and lots of folks hike into the woods to see the seven rail cars that remain from the crash. As the story goes, the railway company likely decided it was too expensive to extract the cars from the forest so they just left them there - gnarled and rusting. As we wandered through the wreckage, Philip and I joked that Harrison Ford was surely going to jump out of the twisted metal boxes a la The Fugitive. The cars are scattered through the forest that has grown up around them and mountain bikers have turned portions of the wreckage into a bike park - with bridges and ramps around the cars and sometimes on top of them. I can't imagine riding my bike over the roots that run along the ground like veins and arteries to get to the wreckage - much less intentionally riding my bike off the top of a 6' tall rail car! The cars also serve as homes to some - as evidenced by the bedspeads inside them and the remnants of campfires and various beverage cans strewn about. The whole scene makes for quite an experience as you wind along the Cheakamus River en route to the frozen-in-time disaster scene.

Cheakamus River - the glacial waters are a beautiful green/blue color

Here's the thing - what was once left as forgotten rubbish has become a destination. It's become a place of renewal, of physical challenge and of home to some. Grafitti artists have decorated the twisted old metal cars in a way that seems so shout, "Welcome! We're glad you're here!" Strangers cross paths here and say hellos. This abandoned place has become the site of spontaneous, temporary community - and its new reality probably never crossed the minds of the number crunchers who determined it easier to cut their losses than tidy up the mess they had made. My aha! moment came when it dawned on me that we've all lived through our own train wrecks - more than a few sometimes - and we're life continues when we find a way to redeem the wreckage and make it into something beautiful - even home. The analogy reaches further still when you think about the fact that these wrecks happen when a train is in the midst of a journey - going somewhere - when it's stopped abruptly and unexpectedly.  Alas - the journey doesn't wait - damage must be assessed, 'new normals' defined.  If the train stayed parked on the railway after a wreck, commerce would come to a halt, other journeys prematurely truncated.  The wreck, while informing the railway's future, can't be allowed to definitively end all journeys that travel that road. 

 

 

The thing that looks like a wooden palette is part of the bike path.

Native art - the orca

Grizzly Bear

Bridges for bikers and hikers

We're in the midst of a nasty, nasty teacher strike here in British Columbia. The whole province missed two weeks at the end of last school year due to the strike and there is no indication when we will go back to school this fall. I'm irritated. I'm sick of the political pandering. I'm super-sick of the fact that both sides keep saying they want what's 'best for the children'. Give me a break - what's best for the children is that they go to school. We're lucky though. I'm at home full time and can try to serve as my children's teacher. Families that have two working parents are scrambling to find childcare. It's a messy, messy wreck indeed. [Full disclosure: my attitude is not positive. But - we're in this reality and I've got to figure out a way to help my children learn and make the best of it.] So, each day we learn. The glimpses of redemption include: friends who share curriculum they find online that has been immensely helpful; books of curriculum at Costco that cover Canadian standards; a plethora of field trip opportunities in our backyard to help in hands-on learning; a supportive husband who helps make sure the house stays tidy and reminds me to breathe as I don the hats of mama, teacher, lunchlady, janitor and wife. I hope and pray that Henry and Lydia will look back on this time as a positive time - and that they even have a little fun with their mama as their teacher. I'm learning quickly that my patience needs work, routine is important and days are long. But we're working our way through the wreckage - finding a way to try and build our own bike park amidst it and hoping a resolution to the strike will bring renewal and solace to a currently disjointed scene.

The week we took this hike we had gotten some really hard news. We learned that friends from Charleston had to bid farewell and bury their 18 year old daughter just a week after she began her freshman year in college. Their sweet girl had been one of 'my kids' when I served a church in Mt. Pleasant - when we met, she was the age that Henry is now. She was shy, had sparkly eyes and a smile that lit up her entire face. She had 2 sisters and her mom had been part of the committee who called me to the church position and her dad and Philip were both engineers with experience at the same firm. I learned more than I realized from their family - they parented with love, boundaries and faith. They showed me what it looked like to be involved in the lives of your children and the lessons I learned from them have helped shape me into the parent I am today. The news that their daughter was gone was abrupt and tragic - and I was a wreck. For the first time since we moved here, homesickness was palpable. I wanted to be with and among 'my people'. I wanted, selfishly, to be able to grieve this loss in the midst of a community that had helped raise me. I wanted to hug my parents and my sister and I wanted my children to be surrounded by people who had known them since birth and loved them deepest. I cried. I hugged my own children tighter and we prayed - for her family and for the doctors who had cared for her and for all children. We prayed that every child could know the love that she had known and that the community who loves her and her family could heal together. I felt stuck in sadness but something about being among those broken, twisted railway cars helped me shift perspective. How could I find a way to redeem the grief? How could I react in a way that honored her memory and family? In that moment, it occurred to me that I'd never told her family how they had impacted me and I needed to do that. That simple act moved me into a new focus - and I realized that there were lots people I need to thank for their role in my becoming. This would be the conduit by which this wreck was ushered toward becoming something more beautiful.

Inukshuk in the forest - a native way of marking a path; pointing the way - these had been built about every 10 feet along the hiking path leading back to the railroad

Now I understand that while I've never personally witnessed a train wreck in its literal sense, I've survived more than a few in the figurative, and am wading through a couple as we speak. I know I'm not alone - we've all got our own wrecks and trying to leave in our wake places where hope springs from disaster is helpful and beautiful. I see wreckage in a new way now - it's a birthing ground for something we haven't thought of yet - something to redeem the mess. And that makes me want to live intentionally. May we all try to see one another as survivors and agents of rebirth. May we be part of continuing the journey and helping point the way when we see people stuck in the wreckage. Maybe, just maybe, if we shift our perspective the world will become a better place - heaven knows we've all got something to share.

 

Continuing the journey...