I grew up in Appalachia where three houses separated our house from the railroad that runs through every western Pennsylvania town. We walked along the railroad tracks. We practiced balancing and running on the rails. We would run fast on the ties trying to place our steps perfectly so as not to trip. We liked to put pennies on the rails for the trains to flatten them, even back then when five pennies bought a much bigger Milky Way bar than 75 cents does now.

My best friend, Laurie, who was 2 years older than I, once told my other best friend, Jeannette, and me that the little hollow boxes that substituted for ties every 50 yards or so were actually pixie houses. So Jeannette and I would dutifully bring small food offerings for the pixies; leaving them at the pixie entrances. They were always gone when we came back so we were sure the pixies had eaten them.

Sometimes when we walked home from school at 3:30 in the afternoon, the train would be stopped, blocking streets for blocks on either side of our street. Some of the bolder kids, usually boys, would run under the train cars through the arch formed by the coal spouts on the underside of the coal cars or under the box cars. I did it once and it terrified me. My mother had done such a good job of portraying the sorry result of an ill-timed dive under the train that I never attempted it again. I remember waiting many long, cold, miserable minutes on gray winter days for the train to move. Sometimes we would hike the four blocks to the main street of town to walk around it and then back since the main street was seldom blocked.

Back in those days, trains not only had engineers, they had a caboose and men who rode in the caboose. We always, without fail waved to engineer and caboose tender. They always waved back and often would sound the horn. Back then it seemed as though by waving to them, a part of us went with them. Chuffing through the beautiful western Pennsylvania mountains, along the wide rivers, into the industrial allure that was Pittsburgh, the only city we knew, and then who knew where it would take us? We only knew that we wanted to go.

To this day, I still wave at trains and it still evokes the excitement, the wanderlust, and the hint of adventure I felt back then. I remember once about 11 years ago paddling my whitewater kayak above Bull Falls on the Shenandoah Staircase one cold spring day as a train approached on the river left tracks. I paddled over and, sitting bobbing in my boat, waved for all I was worth. I couldn't see if the engineer waved back, but he sounded the train's horn 3 times and a part of me went with that train down the Shenandoah, alongside the Potomac, and on down to Richmond and Newport News.

Now my husband and I live in a city where we live next to a river. Along that river is a path bordered on one side by river and on the other by train track for about a mile. Today, a train passed as we were returning from a walk upstream. I ran to the side of the trail closest to the train and waved at the engineer I couldn't see. As the engine passed, I saw a hand behind the glass waving back.

A part of me is journeying on that train now...north and then maybe west, under the starlit night, into the western Pennsylvania mountains, following the rivers that lead up to the headwaters of the Eastern continental divide and over Chestnut Ridge, then down past Pittsburgh to places and seas I have never seen.

To my friends in the west, in mountains and on rivers, if you see a train, be sure to wave. A part of me is on that train and will be waving back.