Urban Exploration and the Journey of the Self

I admit, I fell prey to the bug that was sweeping 20- to 30-somethings all over Detroit that caused otherwise law-abiding citizens (speeding tickets and public intoxication aside) to break into other people's property. I like to rationalize my brief foray into criminal activity with how much it taught me about a city I hardly knew but came to love. Walking into a building that has been absent of life for long periods of time can be simultaneously haunting and magical, a kind of Kasper Friedrich-brand of sublime that celebrates the beauty in decay, the dark poetry of man-made structures slowly worming their way to dust. Sitting sometimes alone amidst a modern-day ruin filled with light and growth, I often considered how like the living thing these monuments to man's industry are, how much a metaphor for the dying body they become, moldering away in the rotting casket of a city. We humans become the fly, the ant, and the rooting seed becomes the bacteria, nibbling away, returning matter to energy, copper piping becoming air conditioner sinew, antique fixtures becoming someone's much needed cash. All this may be why I have no readership.

Obviously, I digress. The urban exploration fever isn't isolated to Detroit as evinced by sites such as Infiltration and the plethora of talented photographers on Flickr who have broken into all the same places (and more!) that I have, but who documented it far better. Rest assured, somewhere in the world right now, eager suburbanites are pulling back broken boards over the windows of some crumbling behemoth with hearts full of entitlement and tinged with fear. Wait. Did I say "entitlement?" That's right, I'm going to get preachy on your asses.

But not before photos:

First, there is the Packard Plant on the East side of Detroit. Commissioned in 1903 and built by the ubiquitous (in Detroit, at least) Albert Kahn^[1], the factory fell into disrepair after its closure in 1956^[2] and appeared that a portion of it was being used as storage until fairly recently.




Our friend, in a desperate attempt to see as many of Detroit's abandoned beauties before heading to San Francisco, put an ad out on craigslist for exploration buddies. We had gone on several sorties with him, usually just the few of us, but, when we joined him this particular time, we met an enormous group of exploration virgins who stuck out in the neighborhood like a glowing white hipster sore thumb. They came completely unprepared, some in sandals, and turned out to be a much larger liability than going in alone might have been. By the time we visited Packard, we were tried and true explorers, and so we found ourselves giving stern lectures to everyone as soon as we were all safely inside the walls of the building. Some important things we've learned that no one else should learn the hard way:

1. Use the buddy system
2. Wear close-toed shoes, with thick soles
3. Bring a backpack
4. Bring a flashlight
5. Bring extra batteries
6. Bring a cell phone (with a charge)
7. Bring a basic first aid kit
8. Bring gloves (work or latex or both)
9. Bring a respirator or at least a cloth face mask
10. Bring water and food if you can't go more than a few hours without eating
11. Let someone on the outside know where you'll be and when you're expecting to return
12. Don't park outside the building
13. Don't be a dick and hasten the destruction of the building
14. Don't set fires
15. Don't disturb any people (or their belongings) who might call that building home
16. Use the hiking rules of "pack it in/pack it out"
17. Don't take souvenirs
18. Be respectful of the people who live next to the buildings

Now that we've gotten that out of the way...

Second, we visited the Roosevelt Warehouse (aka the DPS Warehouse) on Michigan in Southwest Detroit.



Walking into this building was, at first, disappointing because the first floor is largely empty and, at the time we went, the basement was flooded and frozen. We thought we were in for an empty space when we climbed the stairs to the second floor and discovered piles upon piles of school supplies. When we went to the building, we didn't know what it was, only that it was connected to the train station (below) by an underground tunnel that we had tried to manage previously. Looking at all of the supplies, it became apparent it was a warehouse for a school but not knowing anything behind it made it, perhaps, more special. The wonderment that comes with discovery was pure, the feeble mind trying to piece together the complete picture of an experience before your own. What I was unable to capture, because my camera batteries died (how I learned Rule #5 above), was the astounding third floor. Though the racks of late 1960s school books were amusing (in content and artwork) and their sheer volume overwhelming, my breath caught in my throat when I turned a corner to witness a section of collapsed ceiling that had been completely reclaimed by the urban wilds. Such a thing was beautiful enough to trigger an emotional response that would make Stendahl proud.

Sweet Juniper ^[3](whom I linked to earlier and who has photographs of that third floor) is the only easy source for the history of the building which is, in short, that it was built as the city post office, then purchased by the school system before it succumbed to fire in March 1987. The fire is certainly apparent when you visit the building and the piles of disintegrating school supplies makes for an exceptionally heartbreaking experience. While we were living in Southwest, there were two fires that I was aware of, though they were small which did more damage to the building in the time since we've been there. The changes in what we saw (in early 2005) and what Sweet Juniper documented (in late 2007) in the two and a half years between our respective visits was staggering and I suspect that, while some of the damage is the inevitable force of reclamation, much other of it is by people just like us who wanted to see it with their very own eyes, to feel the complete 360-degree phenomenon.

Lastly, for the pièce de résistance, we also had the opportunity to visit the Michigan Central Station.



I originally likened visiting this building first of all of the abandoned buildings in Detroit to losing my virginity to a porn star, meaning that nothing would ever compare in intensity and joy but, in truth, of all of the buildings we've been in, they are uniquely beautiful and so color our memories of a city we've come to adore with every fiber of our being. And here is where I pull out the soapbox.

See, we participated in this urban exploration because we wanted to know the city, we wanted to understand, and I think that, on many levels, that's why predominantly white kids from the suburbs of cities around the globe like to spend their bright Sunday afternoons in places that everyone else has rejected. The funny thing that happened, once we moved into the city and became involved in its everyday life, was that we stopped going to those places. Living between two abandoned houses in Southwest Detroit and working with the homeless and drug addicted in the city, I came to a fuller understanding of all that abandoned structures are, all that they mean, and the manifold roles that they play in a community and stopped seeing them as this disregarded thing that existed simply so I could conquer it.

Three situations changed my perspective and quenched forever my desire to enter another abandoned building.

The first situation was simply living between two abandoned houses and being a part of the daily vigil to prevent them from being vandalized and burned. While I fall on the very far left of the general US population when it comes to issues of squatting, property rights and theft, I didn't want to feel physically vulnerable in the place that I lived, be it from fire or assault. And, being a part of the community (meaning, I knew all of my neighbors and similarly cared about their well-being, as well as knew some of the people who might make those houses a home and cared about those neighbors, too), wanted to prevent the kind of fear and instability that can deteriorate the sometimes delicate infrastructure of that community. Timid growth in a depressed area can be immediately eroded by happenstance or carelessness or outright maliciousness and I loved my neighborhood and my city enough to not see it suffer because some people might be of the notion that certain members of our society are allowed to trespass and make silly while others are not.

Secondly, as a social service provider in the city, I came to understand the greater political and social issues associated with building abandonment, race and class. My neighbors taught me that abandoned buildings can be shooting parlors, shelters, hideouts, storage units, homes, rape sites, and tombs. One of my clients died in an abandoned building, an association that many people who have lived in the city their whole lives share. To many people in Detroit, abandoned buildings are a constant reminder of oppression, poverty and pain which is only worsened when the people on the other side of that wall of suburbia come in at will like some colonialist expedition to view the noble savages and their vicious jungle habitat. That seems harsh and I certainly don't mean to offend, either with my metaphor or with my criticism, but I think it's necessary to illustrate a point because I think that urban exploration and colonialism come from the same place, albeit on a decidedly different scale, and that is a place of entitlement. There are people in the world who look at the wonders it furnishes and believe that, because those wonders exist, they must exist to be conquered (or at least viewed). And then there are the people who are trod upon in the conquest who may well be like the former if they had the means. A fair amount of our earth's bounty has been razed or consumed in the pursuit of conquest and that need-for-the-panoramic-in-the-flesh experience.

Lastly (although this happened early on in my exploration), I got caught by the police in one of the buildings. The getting caught isn't actually what did it for me, it seemed an inevitability over a long enough span of time. No, what made me think was what happened after we got caught. I was at the Fisher Body 21, participating in a photo shoot that ran into the night. I should say, many of my aforementioned rules were learned that night. As we were all shivering in the snow, the police officers berating us with not-so-hyperbolic stories of junkies, murderers, and wayward white kids, one of the officers took me aside. They had picked up all of our licenses and were threatening to tow our cars when we first exited the building and I quickly learned that the only reason I was singled out was because I was the only city of Detroit resident in the bunch. From that point forward, I was someone apart. The officers spoke to me in a much gentler way and, on the whole, treated me like I was one of them which I found curious at the time. Later I realized it was because those officers knew that, by living in the city every day, I should have developed a certain level of common sense and respect for the ways of the mean streets that they couldn't be certain my companions shared.

I'm not saying that no one should explore abandoned buildings or that those people that do are all entitled white kids from the suburbs (despite my fervent generalizations to the contrary in my post, I realize) but I am saying that we should be aware of the impact our every exploration has on the planet and on other cultures (or communities) in addition to the impact we hope it will have on us. From someone who fights her own issues of entitlement and burning thirst for exploration to any others out there, sometimes maybe a photograph should suffice.

[1] - Detroit News

[2] - Wikipedia

[3] - Sweet Juniper

Read more after the jump.

Stumble Upon

Since we moved back up to New England, I've had an abundance of time on my hands. When that time can be spent without ever having to leave the bed, more's the better (particularly when you've spent the last 48 hours on death's door from what appears to be food poisoning). Now, I'm not exactly an early adopter when it comes to teh intarwebs. Though I frequently hear about things pretty early on, I'm steadfastly resistant to fads, making me often refuse to adopt something just because it's the cool thing to do. I know, I'm a luddite.

Anyway, I finally jumped on the social news site bandwagon and started following sites like Stumble Upon, Mixx, Reddit and, the sausage party that is Digg.

I was "stumbling" around this early morning, my sleep interrupted by sleeping for much of that aforementioned food poisoning episode, and happened upon a great article about off-beat hotels around the world.

I'd heard of the Ice Hotel and the Capsule Hotel before but I had no idea you could actually stay in the fairy caves in Turkey. In the absence of real adventures of my own at the moment, I have to feed my wanderlust with reading about other people's marvelous adventures.

Read more after the jump.

Red Hill: Grand Views From the Top!

My husband and I were facing an exceptionally small bank account and an enormous cross-country move when I tuned in to a local radio station one afternoon. Instead of the latest in alternative rock, I heard the DJs talking about a contest they were running and marveling at the fact that, after two weeks of clues, no one had found the prize. Twice per week, during the morning program, they would read clues as to the location of a special ticket and, as each clue passed without solution, the prize grew. By the time I tuned in, the ticket was worth a cool two thousand dollars.

I fell immediately prey to the excitement and, thinking myself a clever sort of girl, thought that I could certainly figure everything out before my fellow competitors. I listened carefully to where the previous clues were posted and stopped by one of the participating stores on the way home to quickly scribble down the rhyming couplets that comprised the clues. Then I rushed home and began furiously unlocking each of the riddles, dissecting their double meanings and every nuance. Soon, I realized, the ticket was hidden somewhere in Center Harbor, New Hampshire.

The morning of the next clue, I was crouched with my ear to the speaker, trembling in anticipation, pencil at the ready. I had to work that day and was dog sitting for a friend but I calculated that I could make a run to Center Harbor with the dog immediately after work and have at least an hour and a half before dark fell to search. The moment the clock struck 6, I locked the door to the shop, picked up my husband, and ran to my friend's house to get the dog. Then we drove as fast as we could to the place I had become convinced held the winning ticket, Red Hill.

Every landmark we passed seem to confirm my suspicions: the bells of the church, the town pound, the cemetery, the bicycle sign. The time was nearly 7pm when we rumbled to a stop in the tiny gravel parking lot. Like pilgrims toward a shrine, we climbed the path to the top, passing a marker proclaiming the spot where Henry David Thoreau stopped to rest. When we reached the top, the sun was setting so we searched in a panic around the few sheds and fire tower, looking for an indication that a prize had been hidden there. As the light faded, we finally stopped to appreciate the view which was quickly becoming clouded and dim as a storm rolled in across the Lakes Region. In the dark, we descended the hill, without a flashlight or water or any idea if the way we were following was truly correct. The dog, a brave and confident golden retriever named Ruby, seemed to know the way and seemed just as anxious as we were to get back to the car in one piece. Somehow, we found our vehicle, kissing the hood of the car in thanks, and then we drove home in an exhausted and disappointed silence.

As soon as we got home, I started researching the mountain and its trails and I stumbled upon something called a letterbox that was hidden at the top. After reading everything I could about the box and discussing it with an equally excited Remy, we decided to go back at first light to find it. Again we climbed, my muscles burning from ass to ankle, my heaving breathing attracting mosquitoes. The excitement in my ears drowned out my body's protest as we worked our way up to the top, over unique volcanic rock, past slithering snakes and camouflaged frogs.

Once we had made the summit, I pulled out my compass and set about finding my treasure with the seriousness of a pirate. I stood on a geodetic mark and sighted 100 degrees, 22 paces and then another, sighted 110 degrees, 18 paces, 80 degrees and 20 paces. My heart pounded in my chest as I scrambled down the huge rock and, getting down on all fours, peeked underneath until I found it. A letterbox! My virginal letterbox! In my excitement, I spread out the contents of the box on the dewey leaves: an eraser stamp of the Red Hill fire tower, a red stamp pad, a little artist sketch book and a pencil. I pulled out my own log book and stamp and pad that I had made the night before and traded stamps with them. I checked the box three times, flipping through every scrap of paper, looking for the prize but it was nowhere to be found. Somehow, the discovery of a new hobby was consolation enough for two days' worth of effort. I nearly skipped to the bottom of the hill. Before heading down, however, we actually stopped to take in the breathtaking view from the top of the mountain. Standing in the fire tower on a clear day, you can see nearly all of central New Hampshire, or so it seems. We were rendered speechless by the vista.

A few days later, the radio station made their next and final announcement of a clue. We were already en route to Center Sandwich when they broadcast the last riddle. Since our adventures on Red Hill, we had researched more of the area and thought that we had found another likely hiding place for the golden ticket, Chamberlain-Reynolds Memorial Forest. Unfortunately, hundreds of other people had the same idea and we found the park teeming with every possible assortment of people looking for the prize. We developed a sort of camaraderie as we explored, greeting one another and conveying news of false tickets and updates from the radio station to one another. In the end, a college student found the prize in the cemetery, ignoring a red herring the DJs had planted days earlier that steered people away from the very spot.

The week of effort did little to help fund our move but it did give us a lasting impression of the state we were leaving as well as the opportunity to experience it in an entirely unique way. My memory of New Hampshire will forever be linked to the grand views I had from the top of Red Hill.

Read more after the jump.

Maine & Me ideas

Since we've moved to Maine, we've been living fairly close to the bone and haven't had a lot of opportunity to explore our new state. In an attempt to curb the pulsating wanderlust I feel every time I look out the window, I started picking up books from the local library (free! - there isn't even a late fee) that cover Maine. My mother actually recommended Maine & Me by Elizabeth Peavey because she thought the sorts of insane adventures Elizabeth frequently found herself thrust into were precisely the things I would do.

Please don't tell my mother this, but she was right.

Some notable things that I intend to do as soon as I get the chance:

Hiking Monhegan Island - Now, I'm not really a hiker but I have been known to climb a rock or two in search of stunning views. Monhegan is a summer home to rusticators and artists which might make it worth avoiding but the island's trails promise perilous ledges and a place called Lobster Cove which plays heavily in The Secret Life of Lobsters.

An Audubon Adventure - Truth be told, I wanted to do one of the Hog Island residential sessions as Elizabeth did in her book but I discovered, when looking for it, that all programs will be suspended there for 2009 while they revamp everything. I did, however, discover a moonlight snowshoeing adventure in January that looks exciting so I suppose there is certainly more to do through the Maine Audubon Society than I expected. Or I can feed my inner octogenarian and do one of a variety of bird identification workshops.

High Stakes Bingo - I never had a honeymoon when I got married but I think in some parallel universe playing high stakes bingo at the Sockalexis Bingo Palace for a weekend would have been the trip I always wanted. I have a perverse love of kitsch, of tacky, of that slice of Americana from whence neon signs, beehive hairdo's, and sharkskin pants come. My heart leaps at the thought of playing bingo in a smoke-filled casino all day with RV enthusiasts and smoking pensioners.

Moose Safari - When it comes to animals that make me go all squidgy and squeal like a toddler, moose rank fairly high on the list (behind tubeworms, squid, jellyfish, octopus and lobsters, of course). Every time I travel a back road in NH or Maine in Autumn, I pant in anticipation at seeing a moose. Nothing would make me happier than to be waylaid by one such stubborn, immovable beast. Wouldn't you know it that you can pay someone to aid you in your every moose-encountering desire? Elizabeth used Dan Legere to float over pond to her moose-sighting.

Learn To Be An Archaeologist - There is still a part of me that regrets giving up archaeology as a major in college, principles be damned. For everyone who loves Indiana Jones or ever dreamed of unearthing some long-lost meaningful something, the Popham Colony will allow you to pay them so that you can pretend for a week or two in September. Their website is woefully out of date so I'm not entirely sure it is still a viable opportunity but, as next fall approaches, I'll be digging a little deeper (all puns intended!) in order to find out.

Bioluminescent Night Paddle! - This is the one that makes me clap my hands and jump up and down. I absolutely CANNOT WAIT for winter to be over so I can take this 2 hour night time kayaking tour of Castine Harbor where paddlers get to view dinoflagellates (WITH THEIR VERY OWN EYES! - can you hear me clapping?).

South Solon Meetinghouse - Not far from Skowhegan, an area that is home to a summer art program I hope to apply to this year or next, is a meetinghouse (so called because such buildings were used for just about every form of community gathering you can imagine) that is completely covered in frescoes. The fact that Skowhegan teaches fresco technique as part of its curriculum is no doubt at the root of this simultaneously strange and magnificent treasure.

Pittston Farm and Other Things to Do While in the North Woods - Apparently, Pittston Farm is THE place to eat in the North Woods. The North Woods is an enormous part of Maine that is largely uninhabited. One cannot really imagine what "largely uninhabited" means unless they have traveled through or lived in places like North Dakota or Utah. Or the North Woods. The roads are maintained since the area has been used for logging but that doesn't mean that it is a flat and unremarkable wasteland. Far from it, as I understand it from reading Elizabeth's book, and Pittston Farm is one of a few gathering points for visitors to the area who go there for snowmobiling, hunting, fishing or just to enjoy the great untouched outdoors. I'll admit, the North Woods scares me just a little bit but, from reading their website, they're going green so I suppose I can face my fears to support not only a local institution but an ecologically responsible one, at that. Other suggestions from M&M is the Ambajejus Boom House on Ambajejus Lake, R
aymond's Country Store in North Carry, and hiking Mt. Kineo on Moosehead Lake.

A Weekend at the Rangeley Inn - Alright, so what I said about the North Woods actually applies to most of Maine. Rangeley, which is near the NH and Canadian borders, is equally remote. The Inn, however, is 100% cushy lodge and looks like it would make for a relaxing weekend get away. While up that way, I can make a visit over to Louise Dickinson Rich's historic home on Carry Road.

And, FINALLY, Mackworth Island - Located a stone's throw from Portland is the island home of the Baxter School for the Deaf. Mackworth has a short (1.25 mile) trail around its outskirts but what makes me want to visit, apart from the fact that it makes for a very easy exploratory trip, is the Percival Baxter Pet Cemetery. The Cemetery is the home to Mr. Baxter's beloved pets and its upkeep was a contingency of the gifting of the island to the state of Maine. As a lover of animals, particularly her own, I feel compelled to pay homage to someone who so loved his furry companions that he would make a permanent home for them.

Read more after the jump.