By then, we hope, I will have landed a permanent position, and we will have settled down somewhere between California and Maine. D.C. Mention to a friend or colleague that you are taking a train from North Carolina to Indiana, and you almost certainly will elicit some confusion, even amusement. Bring up the topic of train travel on the train itself, and the reaction is much different. Chatting over a meal in the dining car or taking in scenery together from the sightseer lounge, we are strangers of like minds. We talk about the leisurely pace, the scenery, and, of course, plane crashes.
Patience pays off, however.
Even in late fall, when most of the leaves have already fallen, I enjoyed some striking views of the Ohio River valley and green, rolling farms tucked in the foothills of the Appalachians. The highlight, however, was the hour-long stretch of the track through the New River Gorge in West Virginia, where I saw two wide sets of falls, rapids, the unbelievably tall New River Gorge Bridge, and enormous boulders, one of them the size of a house. After crashing at the home of college buddy Pete Amstutz in Arlington, Virginia, I got up the next morning and took a miniature tour of D.C., which I already have visited several times since moving to the East Coast. I enjoyed seeing photographs of young Ernest and his lover Agnes, especially after having seen In Love and War , the movie based on their romance. Other highlights were portraits of Hemingway by a friend, a spread on his African safari in Life magazine, and a high school essay on which Hemingway earned a D because of his poor handwriting.