When I Come To It

Sunday afternoon I drove Josie to Ballard, expecting to spend the two hours of her rollerderby practice holed up in a cafe somewhere writing an article for the PTSA newsletter. But when I dropped her off at the warehouse practice space, I realized the rain had stopped and blue sky was peeking through... And that the PTSA newsletter would have to wait. I grabbed the camera and an umbrella and set out on foot, planning to see how far I could get before the rain began again.

I walked from the waterfront warehouses to the historic district, threaded my way through the Farmers Market, turned west past the hipster bars and record stores on Market Street, and headed for the locks. Groups of pale, bedraggled people clogged the sidewalks, most of them, like me, blinking confusedly at the sun.

I walked past the Lockspot Cafe, with the empty red phone booth out front. I walked through the Carl S. English, Jr. Botanical Gardens until I got to the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks. I crossed over the narrow walkways that span the locks, past the dam and the fish ladder, and out along the opposite shore -- it's Magnolia over there, I think -- toward Puget Sound. Up ahead, between me and the open water, I saw a railroad trestle silhouetted against the sky. I wondered idly what the view would be like from up there.

Then I wondered (slightly less idly) if maybe I could cross back that way instead of retracing my steps across the locks... I walked on, looking for a way to get up there (still idly, mostly) and trying to judge if there'd be a way down on the other side. I passed under the trestle without seeing any obvious approach. But there was a trail leading into the woods just west of the bridge, which I took.

It wasn't much of a trail, honestly: the woods were kind of sparse, and the mud was pretty deep in places, and before too long the path dumped me out into a random cul-de-sac -- but there were trees around me, and little buds on the bushes, and that secret tranquility that comes over you when you find yourself in the middle of the woods in the middle of the city.  On the whole it was certainly preferable to the sidewalk. And on the way back I decided to cut through the woods and see if I could get over to the railroad tracks. I wanted to see what the trestle looked like up close.

The first (and last) railroad trestle I ever walked across was in the Crum Woods twenty years ago during an all-night collegiate adventure that has grown hazy in my mind, while remaining firmly embedded in the fiber of my being. There must have been histrionic signage posted there as well, but it was too dark to read the fine print -- or maybe we were just too young and dumb to believe it. I remembered Morgan demonstrating how you could feel a train coming by the vibration in the rails long before you could hear it. I knelt down and gripped one of the rails at my feet: I couldn't feel anything. I stepped past the sign; the view was fantastic.

It was mighty tempting to keep going: to walk out over the water, under that iron lattice, and find a way -- there must be a way -- back down to civilization on the other side. Rollerderby practice would be over soon; it was time to head back to the warehouse, one way or another.

As I stood there hesitating, a man in an orange vest appeared at the far end of the trestle. He made his way along the tracks to the gray shed on the right; it seemed to take him a long time. I imagined myself trying to sneak past his look-out perch. I was pretty sure he'd already spotted me.

Maybe another time, I thought. I scrambled back down the slope and back under the trestle. I turned to take a picture of it...

And then the train came.




Everybody's got a running list in their head somewhere of unfinished journeys, unanswered questions, doubts to settle, fears not faced, roads not taken. I haven't read War and Peace, for instance, or learned to unicycle. I've never gone to Paris, or Greece, or Graceland. I haven't installed a dozen brass Doc Marten footprints in the sidewalk on Broadway (you know, where all those dance steps are), with random numbers and arrows squiggling everywhere, and labeled it "MOSH PIT."  But I haven't given up on the idea that I will someday.

I know some of the things on my list will never happen: I'll lose interest, or the window of opportunity will close, or they'll just be too damn hard and I'll reluctantly concede defeat. Some items I'll be content to experience vicariously (reffing for rollerderby), but other second-hand accounts may only feed my desire to do the activity myself (skydiving). Some experiences I can imagine so vividly (before or after the fact) that I'm never quite sure if they really happened or not.

But I'm always following up on one of the crazy things on my list in one way or another -- though it often feels like baby steps rather than a full court press. It took me nearly two years to follow the Chief Sealth Trail to its end, once my curiosity had been piqued: Where on earth does this crazy, curvy, hillocky path go? Every couple of weeks I'd go for a walk under the power lines, slowly making my way further south along Beacon Hill. And every time I crested one of those ridges, I'd stand there, panting, with the wires humming over my head, and look down. And there would be another sweeping view of grassy mounds with the path curving between them (this is where they put all the dirt they dug out of Beacon Hill to make the light rail tunnel). And off in the distance would be another ridge.

And it would be time to go home.

Then one afternoon over Thanksgiving I drove to the hill I'd reached the weekend before and walked the last leg of the journey. The Chief Sealth Trail itself officially petered out just above Kubota Garden, but the wide grassy swath under the power lines continued over another ridge. I huffed up the boggy slope, through tall grass laced with brambles, past a pen of goats and a barking dog and a mysterious installation of wooden pilings.

And there, outside a substation on the edge of Renton, I found this:

So you see, one day maybe I will walk across that trestle. I could spend the next rollerderby practice scoping out the other side, making sure there's a safe way down. I could hang around a while watching for trains, getting a sense of their frequency, velocity, and predictability. I might take some measurements, make some calculations: How far is it from one end to the other? How fast can I walk on those wooden ties? If a train leaves Magnolia at 3:11 pm going 35 mph, what time will it pass the last possible exit route on the north side? (I'm not sure what to do about Mr. Orange Vest. Maybe I could talk him into giving me a guided tour: "Excuse me, sir, I'm writing a story for a very local online publication...") 

In other words: if my idle interest develops into true determination, I'll get out there somehow. It's the kind of thing that might fall under my own somewhat melodramatic definition of what it means to "STAY ALIVE!"

Of course, it could be that I'll decide it's too dangerous. Or I may feel like the fear-to-joy ratio is simply too high: even the most stunning view is difficult to appreciate if you're thinking the whole time about getting caught, or stuck -- or worse. Maybe in the end I'll decide that one railroad trestle crossing is enough for this lifetime.

It could go either way, I think.

Stay tuned.