Where the Rails Took Me

Across America by Amtrak, and the New Beginnings Beyond the Last Station

By HH Prince DeAndre, Duke of Hanumanteshwar

There is something deceptive about the words final destination.

They suggest an ending. A place where movement stops, luggage is collected, goodbyes are exchanged, and the journey can finally be placed safely into the past.

But when my final Amtrak train carried me into Washington, DC, after weeks of crossing the United States, I understood something different.

There was no final destination.

There was only the place where this particular train journey stopped.

And another journey began.

I left the Pacific Northwest carrying a USA Rail Pass that gave me ten segments to use within thirty days. By the time I reached Washington, I had used seven. Yet somewhere between Tacoma and DC, I stopped thinking about the journey in segments. I began measuring it in people, conversations, windows, mountains, rivers, unexpected changes, friendships, moments of stillness, and the things I found myself writing because I had finally slowed down enough to see them.

The Journey That Almost Did Not Begin

I was supposed to leave Tacoma earlier.

The itinerary had been carefully constructed around people rather than destinations. Los Angeles meant friends. The Bay Area meant friends. Provo meant friendship and discovery. Michigan meant family. Washington meant another community waiting for me.

Then the forest fires came.

Rail service was disrupted. Plans changed. Seats available through my USA Rail Pass became increasingly difficult to secure. Hosts had schedules of their own. What looked beautiful on a calendar suddenly had to negotiate with fire, railroad operations, geography, availability and reality.

Terri and Trish had planned to welcome me in Los Angeles. There was a birthday celebration, a Hollywood rooftop, the pool house and even the promise of a midnight swim. The fires erased that portion of the itinerary before I ever arrived.

That became the first lesson of the journey.

Sometimes the adventure is not in preserving the plan. Sometimes it is in releasing it.

On August 11, I finally left Tacoma. Even the beginning carried evidence of disruption. The fires altered the route, requiring a bus connection to Portland before the rails could truly begin carrying me south.

I had my luggage, my USA Rail Pass and a schedule that had already learned how to bend.

I was traveling alone.

Somewhere between Tacoma and Portland, the journey became real.

Los Angeles: Arriving After the Plan Changed

Los Angeles was no longer the Los Angeles I had originally planned.

That did not make it less meaningful.

Naomi Grossman opened her home to me in West Hollywood, and what could have felt like a compromised beginning instead became days filled with people, conversations and experiences that reminded me why I travel this way in the first place.

There was Shiva Yoga, SKAM Summer, a meeting at the Sunset Tower, a UTA/HBO Max Half Man Q&A, the Hollywood Bowl with Al Green, time at an extraordinary 1920s Hills estate, a beach house, a 50th anniversary celebration in Hancock Park and a friend's 86th birthday. Eventually, there was time with Terri and Trish after all.

The original plan had disappeared.

The friendships had not.

That distinction would follow me across the country.

Travel has a way of revealing how much energy we spend trying to make life resemble the itinerary we imagined. Yet some of the most meaningful experiences happen after the itinerary fails.

On August 18, it was time to move again. I boarded the Coast Starlight north, Los Angeles began disappearing outside the window, and the Bay Area was waiting.

The Bay Area: Friendship, Memory and a Living Memorial

Ram and Dini welcomed me into their home in Fremont. Mykel became part of this chapter of the journey as well, and the days unfolded through breakfast in Niles, Coyote Hills, family time and conversations that did not need an agenda to have meaning.

Then came San Francisco's Marines' Memorial.

I entered a place carrying the history of people who had served, sacrificed and remembered. What stayed with me was not simply the building or what was displayed inside it. It was the realization that memory itself can be an active responsibility.

A memorial does not have to remain frozen in the past. It can still speak. It can still ask something of those who enter.

I wrote about that experience because by then this trip was becoming two journeys at once. There was the physical journey taking place outside the train window, and there was another journey taking place inside me.

I was not simply crossing America.

I was writing my way across it.

On August 22, I returned to Emeryville Station and boarded the California Zephyr.

This time, I was heading east.

When America Slows Down Outside a Train Window

There are stretches of America that cannot be adequately understood from an airplane.

The California Zephyr gives the landscape time to introduce itself. Mountains rise slowly. Rivers accompany the tracks. Towns appear and disappear. The light changes. Strangers become temporary neighbors.

You stop measuring distance only in miles.

You begin measuring it in windows.

That is one of the great gifts of rail travel. America stops being something you fly over.

You move through it.

Eventually, in the darkness of early morning, the train brought me to Provo, Utah.

Steeven was waiting.

Utah: A Dinner Made With Intention

One of the things I remember most about Utah happened around a dinner table.

On Sunday evening, there was a gathering in Salt Lake City where the meal had been thoughtfully prepared around my nightshade-free diet. There was purple rice with pomegranate, a fresh green salad, Moroccan citrus chicken and lemon pie with a pecan crust. There was champagne for the table, and I enjoyed my tequila variation on a Cuba Libre.

Everything had been homemade.

Food becomes something different when someone has taken the time to understand what you can and cannot eat and then builds a table where you do not have to worry.

That is hospitality.

But Steeven had another surprise.

He had copies of A Royal Commitment for the guests.

I personalized and signed them.

Thousands of miles from where the journey began, a memoir about marriage, activism, identity and commitment was moving from my hands into the hands of people gathered around a table in Utah.

That was not something I had planned when I bought an Amtrak Rail Pass.

Neither was what happened next.

Monday: Looking for Community

The following day brought another question.

Where was LGBTQIA+ community in Provo?

That curiosity eventually brought me to Encircle Provo and its Gay Adult Friendship Circle.

There was something important about walking into a community space while traveling. You arrive without the history everyone else carries. You listen differently. You observe. You learn.

Later came dinner and conversations about belonging, identity and the realities people carry quietly into community spaces.

Provo also brought me closer to the circumstances of an asylum seeker trying to establish a life in America. Travel can be beautiful without becoming blind. Mountains do not make someone's uncertainty disappear.

The landscape was extraordinary.

So were the human stories within it.

Throughout these days, I continued researching and writing. The journey was not a vacation from my work. The journey was feeding the work.

Ideas were moving into the H1927LLC IP Library while I was still moving across the country. Questions about citizenship, institutions, belonging, equality, community, responsibility and inner peace traveled with me. I also began researching and writing around the upcoming September 20 Inner Peace Summit and International Day of Peace gathering that would later become part of my Washington-area journey.

The next destination was already beginning to speak to the current one.

Gino, a White Jeep and Wendy's

Then came one of those stories that sounds almost insignificant until you realize it is exactly the kind of thing you remember.

Gino is Steeven's best friend.

For my final outing in Provo, Gino arrived in his white Jeep. As we talked, I learned that Wendy's had been where Gino got his start in the workforce. He no longer works there, but his mother works in district management with a Wendy's franchise operation in Utah.

That immediately made me smile.

I happen to love Wendy's. It is one of my favorite fast-food restaurants.

Of all the conversations I expected to have while crossing America by train, finding myself in Utah talking about Wendy's was not particularly high on the list.

But that is exactly why I remember it.

The white Jeep then took us somewhere very different.

Gino took Steeven, Steeven's son and me toward the mountains for my final outing in Provo. We walked beside the river. Eventually, I found a place to sit.

And I meditated.

There was no formal program, no audience and no carefully constructed spiritual experience. There was simply water moving, mountains standing, friends nearby, and me sitting still long enough to receive whatever the universe had brought me there to notice.

That became one of the gifts of Utah.

Not everything meaningful announces itself as meaningful while it is happening.

Sometimes it arrives in a white Jeep, begins with a conversation about Wendy's and ends beside a river in the mountains.

Then it was time to leave.

The Long Ride East

In the early morning darkness, I returned to the California Zephyr.

Provo disappeared behind me.

Chicago was ahead.

This stretch of the journey gave me an opportunity simply to watch America. Not America as an argument. Not America as a political abstraction.

America as land.

Small towns. Industrial corridors. Mountains giving way to plains. People boarding and people leaving. Meals eaten while moving. Conversations that existed for only a few hours and then disappeared forever.

The train window became its own form of meditation.

Eventually, the skyline changed.

Chicago.

Another station. Another departure board. Another train.

The Wolverine pulled away from Chicago, and that evening I reached Kalamazoo.

This stop was different.

I was going to see my mother.

Allegan: Where Family Settled

I have written before that Allegan is not my home.

It is where family settled.

There is a difference.

That distinction became clearer during the days I spent there.

Family visits are rarely the polished things photographs sometimes make them appear to be. There can be love and frustration occupying the same room. Gratitude does not erase boundaries. History does not automatically create compatibility.

My mother is experiencing different stages of memory loss, so I began appreciating smaller things.

Taking her outside in her wheelchair. Walking with her around town. Sitting together. Listening. Being present. Recognizing when presence itself was enough.

But Allegan gave me another gift I had not expected.

Time.

The Sports Complex and the Gift of Doing Nothing

I spent time walking alone.

The local sports complex became one of the places where I could simply move, sit and allow myself to be outside.

No train to catch.

No meeting.

No audience.

No expectation that the moment needed to become anything.

I could walk. I could sit. I could watch. I could receive the gifts of the universe without asking what I was supposed to do with them.

There were deer moving slowly through the landscape, eating, resting and occasionally becoming startled. There was the forest. There was sunlight against my skin. There were quiet mornings and moments when nature required absolutely nothing from me except that I notice it.

That mattered because so much of my life involves doing.

Writing. Advocating. Building. Traveling. Representing. Responding. Creating.

Sometimes the universe gives you a bench.

And sometimes wisdom is knowing enough to sit down.

Utah had given me the river and the mountains.

Allegan gave me the sports complex, the trees, the deer and permission to simply be.

Stillness was becoming one of the hidden threads of the entire journey.

Family, Without Pretending

Being present with my mother did not require me to rewrite our history.

That may have been one of the more important realizations of the visit.

I could love her. I could take her for a stroll in her chair. I could appreciate our conversations and acknowledge that being together in person can sometimes be more complicated. I could feel gratitude for the opportunity to return without pretending that Allegan had suddenly become home.

This is where family settled.

That sentence stopped feeling defensive.

It simply became true.

I did not need Allegan to become something it wasn't. I needed to allow it to be what it was: a place connected to family, a place containing memories, a place where I could sit with nature, a place where I could spend time with my mother, and a place I could leave with love.

Eventually, my sister took me to the station.

The luggage began rolling again.

Kalamazoo to Chicago.

The final chapter of the rail journey had begun.

Six Hours in Chicago

Chicago gave me approximately six hours between trains.

By then, stations had become familiar territory. Departure boards. Rolling luggage. Announcements. People looking upward whenever a track number appeared. Strangers reuniting. Others saying goodbye.

A long layover is an unusual kind of suspended life.

You are no longer where you came from, but you have not yet arrived where you are going.

Maybe that was exactly what Chicago needed to be.

A threshold.

California had been movement. The Bay Area had been friendship and memory. Utah had been community, mountains and meditation. Michigan had been family, nature and stillness.

Chicago became the pause between what had happened and whatever was about to begin.

Then evening arrived.

I boarded the Floridian.

Chicago to Washington, DC.

My final train.

The Last Overnight

The Floridian felt different from the western trains. A different rhythm. A different landscape.

By then, I knew the rituals.

Find the seat. Organize what I would need overnight. Keep the important things close. Charge the phone. Watch the window. Listen for announcements.

Somewhere along the way, a Spanish-speaking seatmate offered me donut holes.

It was a tiny gesture.

Yet those are often the things I remember.

Not every meaningful exchange needs a biography attached to it.

Sometimes someone simply shares what they have.

During the night, the train reached Pittsburgh, where cars were consolidated. Then morning arrived with coffee, more tracks, more announcements and the increasingly difficult question:

What time are we actually getting into Washington?

The train was running behind schedule. Digital trackers offered one time. Announcements suggested another. Friends in Washington were trying to determine when I would arrive.

So was I.

Then came the announcement that mattered more than any app.

Washington was next.

I began gathering my things.

Washington

When the train finally carried me into Washington Union Station on September 8, the rail journey that had begun in Tacoma had crossed Washington State, Oregon, California, Utah, the Midwest, Michigan, Chicago again, Pittsburgh and finally Washington, DC.

Seven of the ten segments available on my USA Rail Pass had been used.

But numbers could no longer adequately describe what had happened between the stations.

Bev was there to welcome me into the next chapter.

Washington was already beginning to fill itself with possibilities. Friends. Dinners. Museums. Meditation. Reunions. Conversations. An International Day of Peace gathering. New writing. Experiences I could not possibly have known about when I stood in Tacoma with my luggage.

The train journey had ended.

Life had not.

What the Rails Taught Me

I began this journey thinking about logistics.

Ten segments. Thirty days. Host dates. Train numbers. Arrival times. Connections. Luggage. Accessibility. Reservations.

By Washington, I was thinking about something entirely different.

Movement.

I had traveled through communities that could hardly have looked more different from one another, yet everywhere I went people were trying to do remarkably similar things.

Build lives. Protect families. Find belonging. Remember those who came before them. Love someone. Survive something. Create something. Be seen.

And find enough peace to continue.

The train window became a moving meditation on America.

It reminded me that this country cannot be understood entirely through its largest cities, its politics or its headlines.

Sometimes you have to watch it pass slowly outside a window.

Sometimes fire changes the route.

Sometimes you miss the party.

Sometimes someone makes an entire dinner mindful of what you cannot eat.

Sometimes someone puts your book into the hands of people who become friends around a table.

Sometimes community is waiting behind a door you decided to walk through.

Sometimes your last afternoon in Utah begins in a white Jeep with a conversation about Wendy's and ends meditating beside a mountain river.

Sometimes a stranger offers you donut holes.

Sometimes you return to family and understand more clearly that loving where family settled does not require calling it home.

And sometimes the universe gives you a place at a sports complex where absolutely nothing is required of you.

You sit.

You listen.

You breathe.

You receive.

And you simply be.

I Was Writing My Way Across America

Looking back, I understand something else.

I was not merely traveling across America.

I was documenting what America was asking me to think about.

The Marines' Memorial became writing. The California Zephyr became writing. Provo became writing. Allegan became writing. Questions about citizenship, constitutional democracy, institutions, equality, belonging and generational responsibility traveled with me and found their way into the H1927LLC IP Library.

Even the journey toward the September 20 International Day of Peace gathering began before I reached Washington.

The writing did not wait for the trip to end.

It happened because I was moving.

The rails gave me distance from one place and proximity to another. The windows gave me time to think. The people gave me stories. Nature gave me silence.

Somewhere within all of that, I kept writing.

Maybe that is what this journey was ultimately about.

Not simply crossing America.

Learning how to see it.

Until Then

My Rail Pass gave me ten segments to use in thirty days.

I used seven of them crossing America.

But somewhere along those rails, I stopped counting segments.

I started counting people. Conversations. Mountains. Rivers. Meals shared around tables. Unexpected friendships. Quiet mornings. Time with my mother. A white Jeep. A bench at a sports complex. And those moments when the universe seemed to be saying that I did not always need to be going somewhere to be moving forward.

For now, the suitcase has stopped rolling.

I am in Washington, DC.

Not at a final destination, but at another beginning.

Where will Amtrak take me next?

I don't know.

And after crossing America by rail, I have finally learned that I don't always need to.

Until then.