I'm not sure what it is about old abandoned places that baits me so easily. These places become playgrounds for all sorts of people and critters. Nature revels in its ruin as well, popping life through every crevasse it can find, blowing top soil steadily onto its surfaces to make sure new growth can occur.
I have hunted down many an abandoned buildings in Philly, slipping through the bent bars across the windows in order to clammer around the cluttered insides of old industry, once booming with voices and mechanic sounds and now ghosted just enough for the imagination to run wild.
This is the abandoned Pier 14 that juts out into the Delaware River within walking distance of my house. I have been coming out here for years with friends (always with friends, mom, don't worry, never by myself) to see the evolution of the tags on the walls, figure out where new trees have sprung up, which trees have died, which ones got pegs nailed into them for easier climbing... Something is always different in this familiar place.
Squirrel Ninja was eager to get down there this week with me and do the old surveying. We spent a few hours wandering around, seeing how fast we could climb the old trees, advising each other not to climb some of the old faithfuls for various reasons, and gazing over the Delaware at our city's scape. This is home.
The barge
Emma, Mandy and I explored an old abandoned barge off a trail in Maine for similar instinctual reasons. And we took some pics.
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