Wood and Snow

Miles past the Pawnee Grasslands, there is a town where the sun sets red and no one is around to watch it. A town of fences and dirt, snow and quiet. Last weekend I visited this time capsule, back out to the eastern plains where the skies are always bird’s eye blue and the prairie always yellow.

Even before I made it to the town, nestled safely in no man’s land, I realized I had come to another world. Like I hadn’t been really seeing anything before, suddenly I had gone through a portal to the wild, where semis hurdled down muddy dirt roads and dead crops peeked up from swathes of bitter snow. Other than the trucks, there was no one here, as perfect as I could’ve imagined it. 

Stepping out of the car to the cold air, one of the first things I saw was this yellow house, repainted a couple years back. 

Off to the right was another house and what looked like a mechanic’s shop, with a man just getting ready to leave town for the night, not bothered by the outoftowners who drove two hours for old wood. I strolled around the dirt corner and came to a red brick shop. Every now and then when I come to a new type of abandonment, I feel a sense of fulfillment. Fulfillment, strong with the pile of red bricks and large KEEP OUT plastered on boards. 

I found my way in through the collapsed building and inside the store. Inside was dark. Comfortingly dark. I was greeted by the scurry of an upset pigeon, flapping disturbingly close to my face. It’s always the damn birds. 

The storefront windows had been vacant for many years. The floors, though old boards, were cushy in their carpets of torn insulation. Again, I felt a great sense of fulfillment, not taking pictures but just being here. Being back here, in the dim and musty that I had so dearly missed. I carefully shuffled further inside the store, surprised. It was bigger than I thought it was gonna be. Past a dusty black machine I came to the storeroom, rays of light peeking through from the setting sun. Made my way back out, where the sun made the beams above look like they were on fire. 

I walked into a part of the shop filled with bottles and jars, a welcome curiosity. I turned around to see a wall of peeling paint. Finally! Up to that point, I had seen so many excellent shots of peeling paint, so many in fact that I had no doubt they are one of the most clichéd shots, but I had never mastered the peeling paint myself. One small step for mankind, one large step for my portfolio.

A door in the jar room lead me to stairs winding up. I had no idea such a small place even had an upstairs, another hidden treasure in the winter’s late day. The stairs were cramped and I could feel them sigh under my feet. I gave myself a small measure of comfort in knowing that if they did break and I did fall, it wouldn’t be that long of a fall and I probably wouldn’t break anything. Probably.

The upstairs was mostly empty, in contrast to the claustrophobic density of the downstairs. Whoever ran the shop likely lived on the upstairs level. I was struck as I vaulted over a fallen door and came to the upstairs kitchen area. Even with the sagging floorboards, this felt like home. Felt like a place you could have a cuppa or a couple cuppas. A place you could sit down a long while and rest your bones, weary from a day in the fields.

 I walked back down the tired stairs and back outside, knowing there was still more to be seen. I jogged happily through the snow, fingers beginning to freeze but my heart race increasing. Up the hill was the old church where birds screamed at my approach, unwilling to stay above the structure's roof for one shot capturing the motion of flight. Fucking birds.

 There wasn’t too much to be seen at the church and there was still more I wanted to see before the sun left, so I branched off to my left to a muddy snow path. The sun was even more intense than it had been before I went in the shop, and even though we were so far out, I could still see the mountains proud in the distance.  

An open gate lead up to the most easily identifiable feature of the town, its black watertower. Beyond that were the remains of the schoolhouse, gray concrete slab of stairs going nowhere. Beyond that the world could have ended for all I knew. It was colder then, even though the sun seemed to be omnipresent. Turning back to leave town, the whole sky dimmed to red.

There was no one there at that point but my dad and I. I’ve seen a fair number of sunsets in my short life, but none quite like that one. It whispered through the dead prairie grass and blownout windows, turning half of everything intense and everything else to shadow. I stood before the old house one last time, thinking to myself in that moment, no one gets to see this. I’m seeing the most beautiful thing and no one ever even knows that it’s happening right here, in this town, every night. 

 I took a couple more shots and then headed back to the car, cheeks rosy and panting from the hike up to the watertower in heavy snow. Driving the many miles back home, I didn’t even have time to glance in my rearview mirror as the ghost town blinked out of consciousness one last time. 

The Coldest Venture

It was probably a bad day to go anywhere. So my dad and I went somewhere. Way out there, maybe a little further than we had been before. The skies morphed the closer we got to our location, until they unleashed an unexpected hellstorm blizzard down upon us. We hadn’t expected any snow, but this was no-man’s-land, and the same rules don’t apply here. 

 

Whenever I think of “places to hide the bodies”, this location comes into mind. In the fields along the way, you could bury someone here and no one would ever find them, not in a hundred years. Not, that, uh, I have any bodies to bury or anything.

 

This was one of those towns that clung onto life just hard enough to survive, but not without casualties. It suffered the total loss of its Main Street, leaving behind only a warm, alluring café and little houses burdening themselves from the cold. Long after the businesses have left, the homes remain.

 

 

We didn’t have to worry about seeing a single angry townsperson. There was nary a soul in the streets, no one foolish enough to brave the blizzard, no one but us.

 

And you could feel that cold, stinging absence of heat the minute you stepped out of the confines of the vehicle and out onto the deserted streets. Going past the gas station, I headed for the small tin shed to make a grievous error.

This shed hadn’t been used in years, right? Surely, none of the machinery would still be running, and I make it a habit to pull levers and push light switches inside abandonments, because it triggers some primal urge in my brain. Maybe because I’m still waiting for that one day when I’ll find an abandonment that still has the power connected (they do exist).

I found a box that contained an “On” and “Off” switch, currently facing down, in the “Off” position. I had to fix that, and gleefully smiling, pushed it upwards. Farm machinery held in a different part of the shed roared to life, and I mean that in every sense of the word, echoing as the only sound down the barren road.

 

 

I quickly fixed my error right after shitting my pants, and very inauspiciously jumped down and out of the shed. My dad, near the shed, turned around, just as terrified as I was. I explained to him what happened and we walked on our merry way (although he probably called me a doofus first). A beacon of light was ahead: An occupied café, still open despite the weather, a lighthouse beacon on the dreary day. We didn’t go in, but it remained as a symbol of hope in the emptiness.

 

We passed cracked, splintered windmills held aloft but barely running as our hands froze in the dim and calm, snowflakes torrentially drifting to the muddy grounds.  I came to the main attraction: a wooden gas station, littered on the inside with boxes that had Texaco labels, damp but still in good condition.

My dad journeyed back to the car while I pressed on, seeing little yellow lights on inside the houses, and still there was but silence.

 

Finally, hands beginning to numb, feeling actual pain from the discomfort, I ran back to the car. The drive had taken more than an hour, the actual exploration, ten minutes.  

 

 

I turned the heat on full-blast and we were off once more through those lost, vacant lands. Later, when I would post these pictures online, they would get the “warmest” reception of any abandonment pictures I’ve posted to this day (although my photography has significantly improved since then). They evoked an archaic coldness, made people shiver, and many said it reminded them of Silent Hill. It had been a bitterly frigid trip, and such a short one, but in the end the struggles we go through when abandonmenting all become worth it.