"Good Mornin' America, How Are You?"

I had an enlightening experience in June. I was in the Baltimore/Washington, D. C. area, getting ready to head home to Yucatán with a three-day stopover in Florida on the way south, when I was told that for medical reasons I should not fly. My head was so congested and ears so plugged up that I could barely hear. The abrupt changes in pressure during plane travel would cause pain and possible damage to my hearing. I would be able to fly soon, but not in time to catch my return flight to Florida. I needed to give my medication time to clear things up.

Penn Station, Baltimore

After checking into options, I decided to take Amtrak's Silver Meteor train back to Florida, which would give my ears a few extra days to recuperate before my scheduled onward flight to Mexico.

Unexpectedly, I really enjoyed the trip.

The interesting part is that I haven't enjoyed traveling in the U.S. much in years, but generally have a good time doing so in Mexico. Sitting on the train for about 22 hours gave me plenty of time to reflect on this.

In the early afternoon I left Baltimore's old Penn Station on a local train for Washington, where I spent a few pleasant hours with my cousin Kim, who lives there. At 7:30PM the Meteor pulled out of Union Station headed for Miami, with perhaps fifteen stops along the way.

The train originates in New York. I boarded in the District of Columbia with backpack- and camera-toting tourists, families, dignified old ladies in big hats -- a diverse and cosmopolitan mix of people.

I was prepared for an endurance contest and at first my worst fears were confirmed: as a last-minute passenger I'd been reserved an aisle seat, and that was my only choice. The train was full. So much for slouching against the window and getting a few hours of decent sleep.

And my seat-mate did not make things easier. He was a young guy who, I realized after a few minutes, has some health and possibly developmental challenges. He spilled drinks on himself three times in the first couple of hours, and each event involved me getting up and standing while he pulled his huge bag out of the overhead bin, propped it up on the (my) aisle seat, and looked carefully and at length through what seemed to be all his worldly possessions for a change of clothes.

And that was just the start. The details aren't important here but I'll report that my dreams of a good sleep were not fulfilled. And through it all the guy was so very likable, apologetic and polite that it was impossible to get annoyed with him. So I patiently smiled a lot, and realized that most of the other nearby passengers, witnesses to our little dramas, were doing the same.

That's pretty much the way it went. I enjoyed the trip for a couple of reasons.

My fellow travelers and the Amtrak employees I met were nice people. It was a mellow, helpful and friendly bunch. On the train you can get up and move around, go to the cafe car, take a walk. From the windows you see small towns and peer into back yards. You can view forests, lakes and fields of the countryside. You witness happy welcomes and occasional sad goodbyes of passengers at stations along the way.

Train travel is sedate and human-scale. I liked my trip on the Silver Meteor because it shares many of these attributes with bus travel in Mexico, which I happen to enjoy and do frequently. Human contact and a sense of the country is something we miss when we travel by plane and along sterile, homogeneous interstate highway corridors in the United States.

On the train, I learned something about the country. I grew up thinking that reasoned problem-solving, respectful disagreement, civil discourse and willingness to compromise are needed for a society and a democracy like ours to function. I haven't a great deal of recent experience with life in the lower-48 United States, having spent just about all of the past thirty-eight years in Alaska and Mexico. The screaming, hate, name-calling, disinterest in facts, rudeness and raging emotionality I see on current U.S. television, talk shows and web site comments often makes me wonder if I know my country at all at this point in my life.

The people I met and the things I saw on the Silver Meteor weren't like that. I realized that despite extreme challenges and severe problems, The United States of America could be in slightly better shape than I'd thought. And it's greener and more beautiful than I've noticed in a long, long time.