QUOTE : Once, for example, on a train going across Canada, I began talking to a man everyone was avoiding because he was weaving and slurring his speech as if drunk. It turned out that he was recovering from a stroke. He had been an engineer on the same line we were riding, and long into the night he revealed to me the history beneath every mile of track: Pile O’Bones Creek, named for the thousands of buffalo skeletons left there by Indian hunters; the legend of Big Jack, a Swedish track-layer who could lift 500-pound steel rails; a conductor named McDonald who kept a rabbit as his traveling companion. As the morning sun began to tint the horizon, he grabbed my hand and looked into my eyes. “Thanks for listening. Most people wouldn’t bother.” He didn’t have to thank me. The pleasure had been all mine.