A few days ago, back when it was warm, sunny and unseasonably nice for this time of year in Minnesota, I took a long walk down by the railroad tracks. If ever there were such things as ley-lines, then rail-road tracks would certainly qualify as man-made ones. It was good to walk along the rails and to just let my mind & feet wander along the curving and sloping steel as it stretched onwards and onwards towards both ends of my personal horizon. The rails were old, battered and rusty, but servicable and still very much in-use. As I took photos, I also picked-up trash in one plastic bag as I collected rusty scraps for the scanner in another.
It was a good walk. Quiet. Alone. I found deer tracks in the dried mud beneath an overpass. I found a harshly tumbled bit of blue glass that had become rounded and smoothed from its travels as gravel. A hawk flew overhead in search of rabbits or mice. Red Wing Blackbirds serenaded their potential mates in the small slough on the otherside of the tracks. I walked along, picking up trash, collecting rusty-bits and taking some photos here and there, mostly at random, with no real thought beyond letting the camera see whatever it would and reveal whatever it could.
There are spirits in the concrete and steel that runs through, under, over and all around our landscapes and cities — and that concrete and steel runs out past the urban boundaries and inner-ring counties to the country and the places were trees grow thick like I remember from the good and unspoiled parts of my childhood. The rails whisper their stories in the sunlight and I walk along listening, picking up clues and tokens, as I let them lead me onwards, ever onwards into the bright light and the cool wind, and I remember things that were long forgotten, buried and lost under the accumulated debris of this urban exile. I miss those trees, but more than that I miss the way I felt running through them, barefoot and alone and breathing in the scent of fresh grasses, newly budded sumac, and the unmistakable smells of the marshes waking up to Spring.
I am counting down my days of urban captivity.
