Nowhere Roads
Oct. 25th, 2003 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynToday I dropped my car off at Sears around 1 in the afternoon for a repair job. The brakes were making scrapey noises, and since I'd had my last brake work done there, it seemed wise to see if any of it was under warranty. Turns out it was the cylinders leaking and the rear brake pads wanting replacement. It'll cost around $260.
The thing is that three cars were ahead of me to have their brakes serviced, so I was faced with a dilemma: wait in the mall until nearly 8 PM, or find some way of getting home sans car. I thought about this for a while, and I looked at the knitting I had brought, and thought: I would really rather get the stuff to knit a very hefty sweater. I would really rather get what I need to knit that coat. And they do not sell that stuff here.
In Alaska, I walked everywhere.
The mall is three miles from my house. Perhaps a bit more. The city of Fairbanks was a couple miles across, and the hostel was at the very opposite edge from the downtown. I had, as on my vacation, more time to spend than money - so I chose to walk. But not home straightaway, not yet. No, I walked from the mall to the local Many Many Shops Highway. If you've ever been to New Jersey you know the sort - two lanes in each direction, speed limit around 50 miles an hour, traffic lights every so often, no concessions whatsoever to the idea that someone might want to cross on foot or walk alongside the road without hiding behind trees. I stopped at the first set of stores on said highway and got myself something to drink while I pondered exactly how badly I wanted this yarn. After all, I did not know exactly how far I had just walked, or how far I had yet to go. I had left my celphone in the car by mistake, and so had no timepiece on my person. No idea of time at all, until I stopped moving... not to mention that I had given blood yesterday and was feeling wiped already.
But one large Italian soda later, and a little bit of reading the latest Fox Trot cartoon collection, and I was off. Through parking lots and wooded spaces just at the edges of parking lots, mind you. Not near the highway. There were car dealerships a-plenty between me and my goal and if that meant I could use their parking lots as my way of passage, so be it. Safer that way.
The first store I went to did not have the yarn I wanted (super polar weight is hard to find), but did have size 13 needles and size 10 circulars. Given that 13's are only a millimeter smaller than size 15's, I was not about to bust my butt to unearth another pair. I got my needles and my yarn holders, and went to another craft store in the same shopping area. Alas, they had the right brand of yarn, but not in my colour; I went from there empty-handed. I finally chose to walk to a third store, which lay on the same street as the mall but several miles distant, and there- ah, at last, there I found the yarn I wanted. Coincidentally, it says on the band that it knits up to the exact size that my pattern called for on the size needles I had bought. Given that the original pattern said the gauge used was tighter than super polar weight yarn said to use on the skein band, I considered this a sign from God. I bought three skeins (I will likely need ten, but I did not know at the time how much car repair would cost) and went away happy.
It was 4:20 when I left that place. I expected that I'd get home before dinner, because my father generally goes to 5 PM Mass and Mom would not have dinner made until he came back. I had no real urgency; like I said, it was an Alaska situation. More time than money. I walked alongside a road with no sidewalks, and hardly any kerbs. I read roadside historical markers I had never been able to see from the car. I found a farmstead that's been operational since the 1750's; it provided wheat to the COntinental Army in the winter of 1779. I found a rifle range in a place I had thought was nothing but public land. I found storm drains printed with ornamental leaping fish and a warning not to throw trash in the drain since it emptied into the river.
And I found a Nowhere Road.
You may have seen these, somewhere, sometime. A province, state, town, or county builds a road, thinking to connect this thoroughfare with that thoroughfare. Something stops them - zoning laws, changing traffic patterns, what have you. The road is built, painted, fenced; it's good enough to travel on by car, but it's... not connected. Electric company maintenance vehicles use it, maybe, or people who have to haul dead deer off the highway below. It goes from nowhere, to nowhere. It's a Nowhere Road.
This Nowhere Road is visible from two directions. I've always wondered how to get to it. It's a bridge that runs over a short leg of interstate, and it's called Triborough Road. I can see it from the bridge that I take over the highway on the way to work every day, and I can see it from the bridge that runs over the highway at the border of the town next to my own. I've never actually been on it, so when I reached the bridge in the next town, I thought for a while. There were tracks of maintenance vehicles running alongside the highway, and I knew that the highway eventually reached the Passaic River. If I went that way I might well reach the bridge - and even if it were fenced off, I could find a cut in the fence along the highway and follow that until I came to the river. From the river I knew how to get home. So I went...
I found a vast open space, all swamp grass and scrubby bushes, where the huge electrical pylons stand. I found mystery laddering - pilings sunk into the ground, with wooden tracks laid out along them, running from empty space to empty space. One came right up to an electrical tower. One did not. Maybe they were used to cross the space by the electric company when there was flooding? Who knew... there were no signs, no 'keep off', no nothing. There were deer tracks, and not much more. I fumbled my way through the grassy places - no swamp soil, thank God - and up the hill that led to...
... a road all stones and pebbles, which suddenly turned into cement without warning. ANd there it lay. Triborough Road - grey-white asphalt, running a few hundred yards over the interstate, then turning into pebbles and stones again. There was no road on one end; there was no road on the other. Only this one bit.
It was covered in graffiti and broken glass, but all of it was old. As if the teenagers responsible had gotten bored and given up on the place long ago. I crossed the highway on that road, wondering what they'd meant to make of it, what they'd planned to do with it; I found nothing. Only, perhaps, a little hint... veering off from the stones, in a place with vehicle tracks that might've been new or might've been old, was a long curving concrete kerb. And the stones there were quite fresh. It ran all the way down and around as if it had once been meant to be a cloverleaf exit for that part of the highway, but the stones came to a dead stop at a vast grassy hill of reddish clay. I think perhaps that soil had been moved there as part of highway construction, and left there when the road was never completed. I do not know.
From there, though I could not see the cars, I could still hear the highway breathing. There was a fence - chicken wire - running parallel to the highway. I suppose it's meant to keep people and deer from wandering onto the road, but it had no signs saying 'no trespassing' or 'danger', so I do not know. I followed the fence, for it ran parallel to the highway. There were no roads here, no vehicle tracks, and no footprints either. Oh, human spoor aplenty - mostly discarded beer cans and in one spot a few hanging black bags that I think were some kind of target once - but no footprints.
How long it took to go from there to the next road I do not know, but as I spotted houses through the trees, I came across a bone. Now, being a paranoid by nature, my first thought was 'oh God it's some poor murder victim'. It was a pelvis, I could tell that- and it had a thigh bone attached, which instantly dispelled my fear. No human thigh bone looks like that. And now that I'd had more than half a second to look, it didn't resemble a human pelvis either. I thought perhaps someone had discarded the results of a pig roast, but no... most of the rest of the skeleton was there. It was a deer, a whitetail buck - the skull still intact, one-antlered, and many of the other bones still present. The lower legs were missing, but the skull had nearly all its teeth. It was fascinating, and beautiful, and it called to mind something I had been trying to keep in my thoughts a bit as a sort of way to properly appreciate transient things: remember that all creatures are mortal and that you, too, must die.
He had not died of bone-breaking trauma, this buck. I did not see what looked like cracked ribs - there were ribs present, and all the ones I saw were whole. Perhaps the raccoons and vultures carried off the others. I do not know. The thigh bone was intact, and the pelvis too. I saw vertebrae; you'd think they'd have snapped if he'd been hit by something. But he was fifty yards or more from the road, lying sort of parallel to it. He was facing the fence that barred passage to the highway, and his bones had not been scattered. He had died a long time ago, by the look of him, since there wasn't a speck of flesh anywhere on the bones. Perhaps illness; perhaps a stray bullet that went sour; perhaps... who knew? I spent a moment there out of respect to his bones, and then went on.
I made it home from the crafts store around six. My mom is currently making pizza downstairs for dinner. All is, I think, well. Transient, as all things are - but well.
The thing is that three cars were ahead of me to have their brakes serviced, so I was faced with a dilemma: wait in the mall until nearly 8 PM, or find some way of getting home sans car. I thought about this for a while, and I looked at the knitting I had brought, and thought: I would really rather get the stuff to knit a very hefty sweater. I would really rather get what I need to knit that coat. And they do not sell that stuff here.
In Alaska, I walked everywhere.
The mall is three miles from my house. Perhaps a bit more. The city of Fairbanks was a couple miles across, and the hostel was at the very opposite edge from the downtown. I had, as on my vacation, more time to spend than money - so I chose to walk. But not home straightaway, not yet. No, I walked from the mall to the local Many Many Shops Highway. If you've ever been to New Jersey you know the sort - two lanes in each direction, speed limit around 50 miles an hour, traffic lights every so often, no concessions whatsoever to the idea that someone might want to cross on foot or walk alongside the road without hiding behind trees. I stopped at the first set of stores on said highway and got myself something to drink while I pondered exactly how badly I wanted this yarn. After all, I did not know exactly how far I had just walked, or how far I had yet to go. I had left my celphone in the car by mistake, and so had no timepiece on my person. No idea of time at all, until I stopped moving... not to mention that I had given blood yesterday and was feeling wiped already.
But one large Italian soda later, and a little bit of reading the latest Fox Trot cartoon collection, and I was off. Through parking lots and wooded spaces just at the edges of parking lots, mind you. Not near the highway. There were car dealerships a-plenty between me and my goal and if that meant I could use their parking lots as my way of passage, so be it. Safer that way.
The first store I went to did not have the yarn I wanted (super polar weight is hard to find), but did have size 13 needles and size 10 circulars. Given that 13's are only a millimeter smaller than size 15's, I was not about to bust my butt to unearth another pair. I got my needles and my yarn holders, and went to another craft store in the same shopping area. Alas, they had the right brand of yarn, but not in my colour; I went from there empty-handed. I finally chose to walk to a third store, which lay on the same street as the mall but several miles distant, and there- ah, at last, there I found the yarn I wanted. Coincidentally, it says on the band that it knits up to the exact size that my pattern called for on the size needles I had bought. Given that the original pattern said the gauge used was tighter than super polar weight yarn said to use on the skein band, I considered this a sign from God. I bought three skeins (I will likely need ten, but I did not know at the time how much car repair would cost) and went away happy.
It was 4:20 when I left that place. I expected that I'd get home before dinner, because my father generally goes to 5 PM Mass and Mom would not have dinner made until he came back. I had no real urgency; like I said, it was an Alaska situation. More time than money. I walked alongside a road with no sidewalks, and hardly any kerbs. I read roadside historical markers I had never been able to see from the car. I found a farmstead that's been operational since the 1750's; it provided wheat to the COntinental Army in the winter of 1779. I found a rifle range in a place I had thought was nothing but public land. I found storm drains printed with ornamental leaping fish and a warning not to throw trash in the drain since it emptied into the river.
And I found a Nowhere Road.
You may have seen these, somewhere, sometime. A province, state, town, or county builds a road, thinking to connect this thoroughfare with that thoroughfare. Something stops them - zoning laws, changing traffic patterns, what have you. The road is built, painted, fenced; it's good enough to travel on by car, but it's... not connected. Electric company maintenance vehicles use it, maybe, or people who have to haul dead deer off the highway below. It goes from nowhere, to nowhere. It's a Nowhere Road.
This Nowhere Road is visible from two directions. I've always wondered how to get to it. It's a bridge that runs over a short leg of interstate, and it's called Triborough Road. I can see it from the bridge that I take over the highway on the way to work every day, and I can see it from the bridge that runs over the highway at the border of the town next to my own. I've never actually been on it, so when I reached the bridge in the next town, I thought for a while. There were tracks of maintenance vehicles running alongside the highway, and I knew that the highway eventually reached the Passaic River. If I went that way I might well reach the bridge - and even if it were fenced off, I could find a cut in the fence along the highway and follow that until I came to the river. From the river I knew how to get home. So I went...
I found a vast open space, all swamp grass and scrubby bushes, where the huge electrical pylons stand. I found mystery laddering - pilings sunk into the ground, with wooden tracks laid out along them, running from empty space to empty space. One came right up to an electrical tower. One did not. Maybe they were used to cross the space by the electric company when there was flooding? Who knew... there were no signs, no 'keep off', no nothing. There were deer tracks, and not much more. I fumbled my way through the grassy places - no swamp soil, thank God - and up the hill that led to...
... a road all stones and pebbles, which suddenly turned into cement without warning. ANd there it lay. Triborough Road - grey-white asphalt, running a few hundred yards over the interstate, then turning into pebbles and stones again. There was no road on one end; there was no road on the other. Only this one bit.
It was covered in graffiti and broken glass, but all of it was old. As if the teenagers responsible had gotten bored and given up on the place long ago. I crossed the highway on that road, wondering what they'd meant to make of it, what they'd planned to do with it; I found nothing. Only, perhaps, a little hint... veering off from the stones, in a place with vehicle tracks that might've been new or might've been old, was a long curving concrete kerb. And the stones there were quite fresh. It ran all the way down and around as if it had once been meant to be a cloverleaf exit for that part of the highway, but the stones came to a dead stop at a vast grassy hill of reddish clay. I think perhaps that soil had been moved there as part of highway construction, and left there when the road was never completed. I do not know.
From there, though I could not see the cars, I could still hear the highway breathing. There was a fence - chicken wire - running parallel to the highway. I suppose it's meant to keep people and deer from wandering onto the road, but it had no signs saying 'no trespassing' or 'danger', so I do not know. I followed the fence, for it ran parallel to the highway. There were no roads here, no vehicle tracks, and no footprints either. Oh, human spoor aplenty - mostly discarded beer cans and in one spot a few hanging black bags that I think were some kind of target once - but no footprints.
How long it took to go from there to the next road I do not know, but as I spotted houses through the trees, I came across a bone. Now, being a paranoid by nature, my first thought was 'oh God it's some poor murder victim'. It was a pelvis, I could tell that- and it had a thigh bone attached, which instantly dispelled my fear. No human thigh bone looks like that. And now that I'd had more than half a second to look, it didn't resemble a human pelvis either. I thought perhaps someone had discarded the results of a pig roast, but no... most of the rest of the skeleton was there. It was a deer, a whitetail buck - the skull still intact, one-antlered, and many of the other bones still present. The lower legs were missing, but the skull had nearly all its teeth. It was fascinating, and beautiful, and it called to mind something I had been trying to keep in my thoughts a bit as a sort of way to properly appreciate transient things: remember that all creatures are mortal and that you, too, must die.
He had not died of bone-breaking trauma, this buck. I did not see what looked like cracked ribs - there were ribs present, and all the ones I saw were whole. Perhaps the raccoons and vultures carried off the others. I do not know. The thigh bone was intact, and the pelvis too. I saw vertebrae; you'd think they'd have snapped if he'd been hit by something. But he was fifty yards or more from the road, lying sort of parallel to it. He was facing the fence that barred passage to the highway, and his bones had not been scattered. He had died a long time ago, by the look of him, since there wasn't a speck of flesh anywhere on the bones. Perhaps illness; perhaps a stray bullet that went sour; perhaps... who knew? I spent a moment there out of respect to his bones, and then went on.
I made it home from the crafts store around six. My mom is currently making pizza downstairs for dinner. All is, I think, well. Transient, as all things are - but well.
