I know I’m getting close to my hometown when my eyes start watering.

It’s the cow shit. It comes out of nowhere. One moment I’m lost in thought, debating which entrée to order from my favorite Thai spot. The next I’m wincing, gagging, sometimes swearing. If it’s summer, the scent has a certain mouthfeel to it, almost like you’re swimming through it, and so I get to discover just how slowly I can sip on air without asphyxiating. Soon enough, it passes. And I feel a familiar anticipation come over me. I’m almost home.

When I lived in New York, I rode the Amtrak home to Lancaster every few months. It took twice as long as the bus, but I didn’t mind. Trains are the only form of travel I look forward to.

I love this route in particular. It’s a little tour through eastern Pennsylvania. So ordinary and unassuming and beautiful. I’m still learning how to pronounce half the town names – Bala Cynwood, Bryn Mawr, Conshohocken.

On these rides, I glue my cheek to the window and watch the forests move. Every few minutes, the view opens into a small shopping center with a motley crew of local businesses: a Chinese restaurant next to a smoke shop next to a karate school. Adjacent to them: an electronics repair shop, a Dunkin Donuts, a Panera, and a Mattress Firm. The parking lots are never full and never empty, always dotted with old trucks and earth-toned sedans. 

Then they’re gone. The shops, the cars, the parking lot. Returned to the void. And now I’m passing through a row of backyards. I rarely see people in them, which can feel eerie, especially if the sun is setting, casting everything orange. But they’re also silent and still and warm. Each one is a slight variation on the next: a yard, a fence, and a small porch with two chairs angled slightly toward each other. They feel lived in – each house someone’s home. 

I think this is why I enjoy traveling by train so much: it offers an intimacy and scale that other forms of travel don’t. 

The intimacy comes from closeness. In a train, I get to know a place, or, at least, I get the feeling of knowing a place. It’s like seeing a painting close up, where you can notice the texture in each brush stroke.  

But it’s not too close. The barrier of the train window offers a feeling of total psychological safety: a one-way mirror to observe from. From that place, there’s no need to judge because I can’t be judged; no need to evaluate because I can’t be evaluated. These protective reflexes can fall away. 

Each person I see is also too ephemeral to know the details of their life, like their political leanings or line of work. The only thing I know about them – and this seems like a safe guess – is that they’re trying to be happy. And that it’s probably hard for them too. We’re all swimming through cow shit in some ways, at some points. From this distance, a feeling of connectedness becomes the dominant feature. 

Then the scale multiplies this feeling. In an hour, I pass a dozen towns, a hundred neighborhoods, a thousand homes, a million trees. It reminds me of the feeling of walking through crowds in downtown Manhattan, or driving through Brooklyn at night, considering the little lives in each illuminated apartment. It induces a pleasant sense of personal insignificance. A great, invisible burden is set aside for a while.

This combination of connection and humility breeds a curious offspring: it produces something like love. Not romantic love. But a state of loving awareness. You may call it something different, but you probably know what I mean. It feels radiant and undifferentiated, like the sunset casting everything orange. Like tiny embers are burning in your chest.

I’d like to spend more time in this state. Perhaps you would too. It offers the chance to feel at home, in ourselves, anywhere.

P.S. Aside from riding the Amtrak, my favorite approach to cultivating this state is through metta, or loving-kindness, practice. If you’d like to try it yourself, this is my favorite metta meditation.