Riding In Trains With Girls

Australia is out the window and I’m feeling every bit of it.

The wobble of a train-shaken gut, the blur of gum trees and their naked cousins—every element of this three-hour train ride seems to be working together, whipping me into the icky sick of it all.

What a surprise this country of mine is, as we rumble along the tracks. It’s the middle of winter, and yet rural Victoria is a little bit confused about it all. What dress would I like to wear this winter, she wonders. And oh, how easily she changes her mind.

One moment she wears grass, like straw—paddocks of it, tall and waving in the sun. The next: sheep nibbled fields of emerald-green. Such indecisiveness makes me wonder if perhaps Mother Nature is a Pisces, like me.

The train is relentless in its quest to make good time, so much so that it seems to be wishing the beauty of the country away. I can’t say I’m sorry about that. Because although this vast stretch of land is all the bits of beautiful, and ever so charming in her lop-sided-windmill ways…this train has somewhere to go.

Home.

I’ve been visiting family in country New South Wales—just me, no one else—and do you know what? It’s been reading, and writing, and wonderful. How these few days have filled my belly and breathed life back into my dreamy (and maybe a little bit exhausted) soul.

But do you know what else? The very best thing to have arisen from this refreshing time away? Home. Knowing it would still be there. Knowing that after I’d finished letting my soul do all the deep breathing…home would be waiting.

Gosh, how I’ve missed home.

And gosh—how I’ve missed the people I share it with.