Halls of the Dark Muse

I went on a little adventure. There is this little creek that runs between a trailer park and a school. And it used to be completely open. There was a fence on the trailer park side but there was no fence between the school and the creek and so in the summer I used to walk my dog through the creek and then we would go up and cut through the school and go home.

Then a fence was put up between the school and the creek and on the other end there is a fence, so once you walked to the end of the creek you would have to turn around and go back out the other way. But just recently the other end got fenced in so there was no way to accesses the creek.

But well around here fences and gates tend not to last very long because people get annoyed when places they used to have accesses too are denied them. So today when I was out walking I noticed that the chain and lock that was on the gate was now missing and the gate was open and I had my camera with me and so I thought I would take a walk and went back through the creek. At first I could here all the frogs. I always enjoy the sound of frogs, but as soon as I began to walk they all started to hush up. And it is all over grown in tall weedy grasses and shaded by the trees that grow along the side of it.

It is a peaceful little spot most of the time and I always enjoyed it back there and it is kind of funny because even though it is right in the middle of civilization. On one side you can see the back of the trailer park and on the other side you can see the school, it still can have a bit of an eerie feeling to it. You can hear the crackle and snapping of branches and there is this one tree that had branches that rub together so it squeaks in the wind, and the place has its own feeling of a sort of solitude. And whenever I go back there I never encounter anyone else though I know that is the kind of place where kids from the trailer park hangs out, or minors go to smoke and drink or people will have a joint.

But when I was walking back there through the tall grass I think I got bit a couple of times by robber flies because I felt something at first I thought it was a mosquito but then I thought I saw a fly buzzing around and then I started to think about ticks because I know we have them around here. I have picked them off my cats a few times, but I am use to trudging through the wilderness and I like an adventure so I kept going.

And I got to this cool little section that was kind of scary, because it was this little ditch where water ran off and there were just these really tall weeds surround on either side, so you could not really see where you were stepping as you moved through the grass and just followed the track of the ditch because on either side of it was this slope that you could not really walk on. But then there was this big thorny wild artichoke plant in the middle of the ditch so I had to climb out of it because I did not want to walk through the plant.

Of course I also kept thinking about if when I turned to head back I found the gate had been closed and locked because it was not suppose to be open in the first place, and then I would have to try and find a good place to climb the fence because there was no way out of the creek, except to walk out through one of the drainage pipes which are all pitch black inside. A part of me regrets that I skipped out on my opportunity to walk through one of those pipes. There was a group of kids that during lunch were all going to go through the pipes and I tagged along with them but then ditched out when we got to the mouth of the pipe and went back. I feel like I am missing out on something. I still want to travel the pipes but I am not sure I would want to go alone. I need a partner in crime.

But as it turned out the gate was still open when I returned.