I’d decided on an Amtrak train expedition from Los Angeles to New Mexico well before running across a story titled Low Stress and Last-Minute Travel May Have Boosted Amtrak’s Ridership. But when I read that “[s]everal travelers said they chose the train to lower stress during the holidays. They didn’t want to drive and didn’t want to deal with packed and chaotic airports,” I instantly felt like a member of this oxymoronic subset of people.

Can last-minute and low stress really go hand in hand? In Guatemala, it certainly can. Hopping on a lancha to zip across Lake Atitalan for a day of hiking and hot-springs soaking – last minute, low stress. Making a game-day decision to rent mountain bikes and do a cycling safari in the savannah at the base of Mount Kenya – last minute, low stress (even when a mother elephant and her calf cross your path). But last-minute and low stress don’t often find their place together when it comes to travel in the US – particularly essential (non-vacation) travel.

I needed to get to Santa Fe from Santa Monica to pick up my dog, who had been wintering at my mother and stepfather’s house since Thanksgiving. I’d spent about 48 hours on planes over the holidays, and the thought of getting on another one was giving me agita. I was also in need of a good chunk of alone time – just me, my iPod, the mesas and canyons of the Southwest, and the fabulous new velvety eyeshade I’d recently invested in.

The train trip from Southern California to Northern New Mexico is 18 hours long, and about half of those take place at night. If I hadn’t just flown all the way to Southeast Asia and back, I might’ve balked – and in the past, I have. I’ve considered making this trip by train many times, but it’s always been too hard to justify taking the 18-hour route when a two-hour flight exists. This is the first time the train has won out – the first time I let myself believe in the concept of last-minute, low stress for this type of trip.

I started my journey taking the bus from Santa Monica to downtown LA’s Union Station during rush hour, a portion of the trip I expected would be definitively not-low stress. But somehow, there was no traffic – and by that I really do mean zero traffic. It had rained earlier that day, and as the bus chugged east on the freeway, pockets of fluffy white clouds hovered between the folds of the mountains and valleys most people forget exist in Los Angeles. The sky was a steely grey, the mountains a deep green, and these cotton-ball clouds were like a pair of arms waving in the distance – “Remember us, the wilderness of LA?” Point number one for low stress.

Even less stressful was that the bus arrived at the train station 45 minutes early, giving me plenty of time to grab a sandwich. I walked to the tracks to board the train about 30 minutes before departure. I braced myself to find the train doors still closed or to get hassled by a ticket agent. The poking, prodding, man-handling that now defines the pre-boarding experience at airports had put me on edge, along with the fact that I haven’t had a particularly relaxing boarding experiences on other trains (notably Amtrak from Penn Station, where gate number is posted minutes before the train departs and it’s a mad dash, New York –style, to get to the track). But this wasn’t that. A helpful ticket guy guided me onto the train, and I took my very large reclining seat with an NBA-players’ amount of leg room.

A couple of hours into the journey, and no stress. My plan was working. So far.

And then, I noticed that a shifty-looking guy I’d seen earlier in the station was seated behind mine. “If you could keep me in your prayers the next couple of days, I’d really appreciate it,” he said (not quietly) into the phone. Then he giggled a manic staccato laugh and launched into a detailed, emotional description of the child-custody battle he was involved in. I felt empathetic – but I was also concerned for my own peace of mind. Would this go on for 18 hours? My seatmate and I glanced at each other, eyebrows raised, as Shifty continued his conversation. The stress-free bubble had burst.

I flagged down the conductor and asked I if might be able to switch seats. “Soon,” he told me. Not soon enough, I thought. “Mom. Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom,” Shifty cried, the tenor of his voice growing more urgent, panicky, emotional. This 40-something-year-old guy was clearly having a crisis. He talked of being proud of his sobriety – then disappeared momentarily and returned with a half-drunk bottle of Corona. If it hadn’t been for references to being hospitalized for alcohol poisoning, getting frisked because he holds a medical marijuana card, and my own instincts that this guy was unstable, I would’ve politely asked him to keep his voice down and reminded him there were 30 other people in the train car trying to do something other than listen to his weepy, increasingly slurred pleas to his mother.

Then a competing soundtrack started up: A couple of guys wearing puffy hooded jackets turned on their MP3 player, without bothering with headphones. The combination of rap music and nervous breakdown was anything but relaxing. It was confirmed: Low-stress travel was not possible when I wasn’t in an exotic land. Shooting across the Southwest, being lulled in by the motion of the train and the stark desert scenery. A bit of quiet time. Not going to happen.

But as the night went on, the MP3 guys de-trained, and I switched to a seat across the aisle from Shifty. It was getting late, so I popped in my earplugs and covered my eyes with the eyeshade. The one benefit to Shifty’s loquaciousness was that I knew exactly when he’d be getting off the train – he had a court date in Flagstaff, and we were scheduled to stop in Flagstaff at about 5am.

Sure enough, by the time I woke up in the morning, Shifty’s seat was empty. And the relaxing portion of the trip began. Big time.

The soothing baritone voice of Chris, the guy who runs the Snack Car, beckoned to me over the intercom system. He extended an invitation to us passengers to come down for breakfast. I bought a hot egg, ham, and cheese and a coffee, and took a seat in the lounge car in a chair that’s essentially Amtrak’s version of a Lazy Boy. This car had floor-to-ceiling windows and skylights. I sipped my coffee and looked out at the scenery, watching snow-covered mesas, buttes, mountains, and plains go by. The snow left exposed patches of ochre dirt, swatches of golden scrub grass, the orange sides of sandstone spires. Sitting in this glass bubble was like being inside an oil painting of the Southwest. The only distraction – and it wasn’t an unwelcome one – came from two older guys talking about environmental issues. Hearing about sandhill crane habitat beats custody-dispute talk any day.

I had awoken in eastern Arizona, but soon we passed a sandstone monolith and a big yellow sign welcoming us to New Mexico. After that we made a stop in Gallup, home to the Southwestern jewelry trade. That was the last real patch of civilization for hours. West of Gallup, a mechanical problem waylaid us for almost an hour in the middle of what continued to feel like living art — I watched tendrils of snow blow across a vast plain dotted with chamisa, juniper, and other tumbleweed-waiting-to-happen.

When we continued, I lounged with my feet up, the gigantic sky and gently contoured landscape lulling me into a state of complete calm. Even the occasional scrap-metal yard or pile of garbage looked picturesque from this vantage point and with a dusting of snow.

As we chugged east, the landscape morphed into that of East Africa – golden dirt and shrubs, piles of black volcanic rock, green bushes, hills rising up from the valley floor. Sparse vegetation, a lone bush here, a cluster of shrubs there, small gulleys and washouts. There was no snow, and the sun shone bright and harsh. Electricity lines, modern engineering feats like bridges, and the occasional frost-crusted stream were the only giveaways that we were actually in central New Mexico. Maybe it was the feeling of being transported to another country, maybe it was the relief I felt from Shifty’s departure, or maybe this Amtrak train ride from Los Angeles to Santa Fe was actually in itself fulfilling the traveler’s holy grail. Last minute. No security pat-downs. No stress. Sweet.

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