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D. C. Jesse Burkhardt

Hood River, OR

D. C. JESSE BURKHARDT is a professional writer, editor, and photographer. For the past 16 years, he has served as the editor of a community newspaper in the Columbia River Gorge. Burkhardt is also the author of five photojournalistic boo... view more

D. C. JESSE BURKHARDT is a professional writer, editor, and photographer. For the past 16 years, he has served as the editor of a community newspaper in the Columbia River Gorge.

Burkhardt is also the author of five photojournalistic books on American railroads: "The Ann Arbor Railroad" (2005), "Railroads of the Columbia River Gorge" (2004), "Freight Weather" (2001), "Rolling Dreams" (1997), and "Backwoods Railroads: Branchlines and Shortlines of Western Oregon" (1994), as well as two travel-adventures: "The Crowbar Hotel" in 2009 and "Travelogue From an Unruly Youth" in 2007.

Burkhardt is a University of Oregon graduate (1981). He is a member of the National Newspaper Association; the White Salmon Arts Council in White Salmon, Washington; the Oregon Historical Society; and a former member of the Teamsters Union (but once a Teamster, always a Teamster) from his time working at a Del Monte plant in Salem, Oregon. (That plant, like too many others, is now closed.) Burkhardt, who has an 11-year-old daughter, married his lifelong sweetheart after a wild and miraculous journey (for the full story, please see "Travelogue From an Unruly Youth").

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Burkhardt said it was the Vietnam draft lottery ~ when he came in at #19 ~ that started his journey to that other world. With only a year before being drafted, he said there was no reason to keep himself safe after that; no reason to nix any risks after that. So he began to travel, no nix, looking for freedom and passion on the endless tracks across a continent.

He found his transport on the steel rails of North America. The war ended, but at some moment ~ indistinguishable from any other ~ his intention and the conditions on some freight train came together and he crossed over. After that he crossed over again and again, and each time he came back he brought images of the mythic world, and he wrote them down. Now, the journey of initiation long past, his affection for the freight train remains. He chronicles its ways and means, its habits, its health.

When I heard him utter this single word, I heard an invocation aimed at the world of heroes: “Freight!”