More Junk to Photograph

The light was overcast this morning, perfect for taking photos, so I called Dad and he agreed to join me on a little outing. We drove over near a geocache we had done last fall, and where we had seen some really nice graffiti. I drove and took a road I had never even seen before, which got us right to the trailhead behind the Badger Home. I was pleased.

We set off down the trail, which runs parallel to the river and some railroad tracks on the north and a huge mountain of garbage on the south. Just beyond the hill of garbage is Doyne Park Golf Course. It's almost like they bulldozed a bunch of buildings out of the way north towards the river, then built the nice slab of greensward on the leftovers up top, leaving a forested-over hill of detritus to spill down towards the river. Between the hill and the river is our trail. Our side of the trail, below the garbage ledge and away from the sun, is an amazing collage of old bricks, cement slabs, twisted metal and trash, laced through with indestructible garlic mustard, buckthorn and the trunks of resilient trees that have stood their rocky, littered ground. The photos don't really look that bad, but when you're standing there, in it, I suppose it's a testimony to how nature will overcome, literally, in the end. There are large sheets of rusted metal (my favorite) that have become one with the trees, trunks growing through and around them, encasing them in bark. There was a pile of younger trunks and branches in the midst of which I noticed a metal pipe. It blended in perfectly with the living limbs touching it.

I got a few photos of nice rusty remnants before we found the bridge which would take us across the river and to the railroad tracks, beyond which is the perfect tagger's canvas - a large, white warehouse, gleaming with brilliantly colored graffiti. Finding a chainlink fence and gate locked on the other side of the bridge, we snuck around a narrow passageway between the end of the bridge rail and the gate. Doing this required stepping around the fencepost on about a four-inch strip on concrete, clinging to the chainlink to swing around over the river about 25 feet below to the safe ground on the other side. I didn't mind doing it, but found it made me nervous to watch my Dad after me. We got out and began to walk back in the direction we had come along the trail, except now we were on the north side of the river and following the railroad tracks. Looking up, Dad noted a road right alongside the warehouse. It appeared to go straight out to State Street, where traffic was skipping along. I guess we could have just drove in that way and parked a few feet from the building, but then we wouldn't have had such a nice hike along the trash trail.

We were walking toward the graffiti when a truck came driving right down the tracks with its headlights on. I thought we were going to get yelled at for being back there, but the driver just waved as he passed by. We found wonderful piles of rusty metal track parts on our way to the warehouse. Then there was the graffiti itself, so large, complex and, to me, indecipherable. The smaller, simpler words are easy to read, but the larger, highly stylized mottos escape me. Who does these things? They're really very well done. I collected a bunch of spray can lids and took a photo of that, too.

After we had our fill of shooting, we headed back to the bridge and crossed over to the trail once more. On our way out we met a family: a mom and about four kids, and their pet boxer, Diamond. The first young child to reach me looked up eagerly and said, "Someone left their underpants in here." Somehow, we had missed the underpants, but I found a perfectly usable teaspoon and my dad found one orange golf ball to add to his collection.