Wild Trains!

We're a reading family so I'm always on the lookout for good books. Really good books can be life changing. I found one of this caliber three or four years ago at the thrift store. It's entitled How To Train A Train written by Jason Carter Eaton and illustrated by John Rocco.

Wow. We never knew there were wild trains. We had to go looking for them. Of course, once you know they're out there their tracks are pretty easy to spot. Our valley is full of them!

They're very active at dawn. We can spot their steam plumes from the porch as they chuff along the creeks just after sunrise. We've found paths through the underbrush in the woods that we're pretty sure were made by wild trains.

We heard one whistle once. True thing! I would swear in a court of law that we heard a train whistle. I have NO idea what else could have made the noise since we have no tracks near us and it was clearly a train whistle.

On one notable occasion, we passed by an apple tree that had just been knocked over by a wild train so it could eat all the apples. We knew it was a wild train by the wheel prints in the dirt.

When our son's engines, Milo and Birthday Train, started giving us baby trains we raised them in the house until they chose to move out to The Fort (a clearing under a tree near the house) one morning. We couldn't leave them huddling cold and hungry in the rain and snow, so we made them a shelter and a camp out there.

Now the Wild Trains visit the Baby Trains often to enjoy a meal and wrestle. They're watching the house to decide whether one of them wants to allow itself to be trapped. They're certainly taking their sweet time about it, though. We've tried everything we can think of to draw them in.

We've left out coal and pancakes. We've played music and sung songs that they might enjoy. He covered the whole porch with lavender spray and put a lavender flower bouquet on the table one night. He says that wild trains love the scent of lavender. Unfortunately, the wind shifted and it didn't work. We'll probably keep trying. It's up to him.

I know, I know. One day there will probably be a reckoning. But until then, I will continue to look for Wild Trains with him. There is Magic in the world and it needs to be believed in to be seen.

When he looks me in the eye and demands an answer, I will look right back at him and state with a clean conscience:

"I truly believe with all my heart that somewhere- somewhere -in this Universe,

the Wild Trains run."