Westward, ho.

The sun bakes through, slow. First it singes the window's corner- curved, like a cookie tray. The heat seeps like oil- it oozes; the thick glass like a hamburger wrapper greased gradually clear. There are the watermarks like stubborn frosting, flecks of mud like cookie dough. Through the Amtrak window, the Colorado river rushes by.
Inside: the viewing car. The tables arranged how I imagine they are in a high school cafeteria. Folks sit around each table; all kinds of folks, each with their disposable cardboard trays. Midwestern families sit alongside old married couples, the odd loner. Across from me a cowboy complete with ten gallon hat drinks coffee, plays solitaire. They are united; pilgrims or tourists, together, depending on the way in which the sun penetrates the window, the way it plays upon their skin.
The marbled blue laminate tables gleam like a rock in a rapid, the elbow-grease of an unseen busboy within the sheen. On the left, sachets of ketchup, relish sit alongside the napkins for wiping these away. Each of these from the factories, counted, stacked, delivered here.
A Park Ranger with a microphone and an iPad reads by rote a tour guide, in an innocuous Midwestern drawl. Her voice washes over me, each vowel stubbornly drawn out, a log against the stream.
The train traces the Colorado with blind puritan faith, the asphalt line of the road having snaked away some miles ago.
You can only see this part of the river only from the Amtrak or from a canoe, the Park Ranger reads. Notice the immensity of the gorge. Everyone, look- a bald eagle. All this, frontier spectacle, played out perfectly for me.
Notice, too, the Amish family who boarded at a quaint mountain town, two by two, with their suitcases on wheels, the little boys in their oversized hats drinking Fanta through plastic straws. To the left of our carriage you will see the little Amish girl.
I see the ranger present to her the iPad in an outstretched palm.
She first feigns disinterest, but then I see her eyes slip, a sidelong glance.
The girl seems to murmur something. Her mother watches with some stern interest.
Look- I think I see her finger waver a second, break from its pious hover, brush, imperceptibly the screen. Does she touch it? I wonder, is she Columbus, pushing galleons westward, pushing madly until they fall off the edge of the enchanted parchment of her known world?
We whip- around the corner. Fast. In a second- a solitary boat. The rowers stop- oars set against the current as if in a sudden sigh at the sublime: then. In an instant, or by instinct, the rowers bend in unison, bow down to the sheer cliffs.
But- do they?- can I, yes, look: their buttocks, bare, produced proudly, just for us. They are white- perfect spheres. Hamburger buns, they glow in the sun. The river bends, we rush them by. In a second they are gone.