Walk for a Visceral Experience

I wrote recently about going for a walk down my street to find a quarry and then being rudely run-off by a very large truck. Out for a "visceral experience", I think I called it.

The walk started down my street, towards the freeway we call Mopac, an abbreviation my good friend Norm might recognize from railroading (the Missouri-Pacific). The thing that struck me as I took this picture was how populated the area is while leaving me totally isolated. People everywhere, enclosed in plastic, metal, and glass. Nobody sharing my air.



This next picture is from the direct other side of the overpass. Our Cap-Metro stop (light-rail) is up on the left.



This next picture is just past the railroad light and crossing from the picture above. It's also the spot where they made me. The security guys on the other side of the fence are actually in the frame, behind the tree. They followed close by for a time, then they sped off to the edge of their protective fence, and watched me from a distance.



This is further up the street, right at the edge of where they stopped following me. The fence ends at a dirt road just past the trailer. Off in the distance is a string of railroad cars.



After a while, I remembered I hadn't taking any scale shots, so here's another, only slightly past the last set of train cars. Up ahead there's another set. This area is where the train tracks veered from the street. Visible is a large dumptruck left of center, just beyond a rocky fence that had been erected to block any view of the scar that is called a quarry. It slowly drove in circles, keeping an eye on me.



While ultimately I didn't get to the quarry, I did have a great trip; I had lots of fun, got a little scared for a second, and even got some inspiration. I'd wanted to run around the inside of the quarry to get inspired for a story I'm working on. Instead, I got this picture to chronicle another visual show I witnessed.



It took up a large portion of one side of my vision. An eery sound of machinery, clanking, crunching, pulverizing...industry. A real etheral sound wafted from seven-thousand feet away--the quarry being digested and growing simultaneously.

This next picture is of my last stand area. I hadn't seen any signs spouting trespassing notes, so I had pressed on. By the time I reached the other side of the bridge over the street in this picture, I could hear one of those large trucks motoring.



It came into view over the trees from the right. I could tell that just beyond the fence beyond the bridge on the left was an entrance to the quarry. The rumbling truck cleared the trees and the sound finally hit my chest. I stopped.

A truck that you need a ladder to get to the driver seat, that kind of truck, started changing directions. I followed suit. Spinning on the balls of my feet, I walked slowly in the opposite direction, resisting the urge to run. The sound of the truck grew louder. It soon roared.

It was probably just panic, because when I turned the truck wasn't barreling down, ready to squash me like it sounded. He had gone through the fence that I was plannng on breaching.

When I looked back again, he'd just turned around and returned to whence he came. Just backing me off. It worked.

I didn't take the truck's picture...I thought about how my explanation, the truth, that "I'm just a writer and blogger out for pictures and inspiration for a novel and blog post" would sound.

It probably would have been okay if I'd had my TWIC card.