Ghost Town

Last morning.  Piano in a new window

A little light trespassing.

Tiptoed around crunching leaves, underneath the sounds of life that came from other places around the lakeshore.

The most impressive ruin yet, a mansion.  Just before pushing shoot, the camera that showed half battery announced out of battery and went out.

Touché.

Creeping up to the front, looking inside two sets of glass doors showed a ghostly reflection.  Inside was still, the carpet was bright magenta, like new.

Rounding the house there were two torn work gloves several feet apart sinking into the soil.

The backyard was huge, surrounded by a low stone wall.  Like one of the many trees within the stone circle, a 12 foot lamp post was covered in vines.  Just below the narrow patio that hugged the overhang of the huge house, a 5 inch section of something’s leg bone, sawed cleanly at one end with no bite marks, rested neatly next to a tiny sapphire-flowered plant.

A hush, that felt tangible in the warm humidity, clung to the space.

More ruins of hotels along the shore.

Started to feel sorry for the apple pie lady who overcharged the previous day.  She was born in this town.  There were no lights in the empty café.  Her silhouette’s head looked downward.

Slumping wooden chairs self-embroidering in moss.

The paths between the dead spaces led by ferns.

A barrier of pipes, crumbling sheds, corroded barrels, upstart trees. A ladder.

Past the obstructions a black spiral staircase 5 stories up.

From the second story could see into the gated area warded with barbed wire and a warning label yellow, with red outline.  Inside was a patio all to itself, with grooves and a series of rectangular openings that fell into some deep place.

Freeze along the spine of the staircase, hearing something crashing through the forest.

A car, two miles away, sounds, in the silent sunken dome, like an airplane.

Hungry but far from town now, and might never be back.  Took the ending of the camera as what was supposed to happen.  The opportunity in crisis was giving places to explore that could not be showed, that would keep the detail of their secrets between us.

The unknown has two doors.  One being fear.  The other, also, likewise.

Through one the unknown is an enemy, through the second, it is fulfilment, something expansive, infinite in its possibility, and elusive.

That evening jogged east out of town, up, up, and through a mile long dark tunnel.  A solitary journey to the other side.

On the other side the road began to sweep down and into the valley where layers of alternating hills plunged, becoming ever more faint.  The road was a green gorge, with trees fifty feet high on either side crowding to hide the world.  The fences lining the winding path made it feel like Jurassic Park (just with bears instead of dinosaurs).

Eventually came to the next town, and walked it out in the flats wondering if the knees would hold up for the steeper return trip.  A massive wall of rock sticking into the lake turned the town into a harbor.

(Passing by the cliff on the way North the next day, back to the town with the most beautiful name.)

That night got unexpectedly and unnecessarily drunk with another guest at the lodge.