*WARNING*
Boring picture heavy entry. Will take ages to load.

Yes. Today I want on my expedition. To my childhood wilderness. To look for ponds and rowboats and trains and magic. So I'm going to share some boring pictures that will take forever to load. Because I'm a swell guy like that.

As you will no doubt remember I had scouted out this location a couple of days ago. Now my main goal was to find that old pond that I remember so fondly. And I knew that this pond would be located just about at the end of the wilderness. Meaning that if I went all the way down to the entrance then I'd have to trek all the way back up through the place to get to the pond. So instead of doing that I just climbed the hill that surrounds it all and braved some thick bushes. And voila. That saved me lots of time. And I found myself in the middle of nowhere.

It's a pretty cool place. Imagine two rather large roads. Highways almost. And then imagine that there's a stretch of forest and bush flanked by high hills in between the roads. You can always hear the hum of the cars on either side but you can't see anything but vegetation. And sometimes the skyscrapers in the distance. Wonderful.

And the first thing I came across was.. the pond.

There it was. Bigger than I remembered. Which is funny because normally the things you remember from your childhood are supposed to be smaller, right? Because you grow.

Hmm. No rowboat though. I wonder if it did sink or if someone just took it away. I don't know. But there were two ducks there instead. They seemed extremely unimpressed with my presence. They ruled that pond. Is it a pond? It's not a lake right? Ah whatever.

It was very peaceful. Right in the middle of it all. The car noise wasn't too loud. Just a constant background sound. It was very calm actually. Only bird noises.

So I spent some time walking around the pond and then I moved on. Walking through the trees. Listening to all the dead leaves under my feet. Finding things. Lots of little campsites and places where people have tried making tree houses and such.

I was nervous. It's right next to the big ghetto. It's the perfect place to be ambushed. Seriously. It's not too smart walking around there on your own. What with the crime and the general state of the world. But I'm brave.

I found two of these bikes. Both burnt and rusted and whatever. Maybe they're from the old motorcross field. I found that too. I don't remember seeing people ride motorcross bikes there but I remember the sounds. The gassing up. Dirtbikes. I think it was a practice field.

Sometimes I would feel like the explorer making my way through the wilderness.

And sometimes I would feel like an elven prince at one with nature. Escapism at its best.

The whole place was much more dense then I recall. More trees. More bushes. More thick vegetation. Well thick when you consider that there's a highway right on the other side of the hill. It's not like I was lost in a jungle in Panama.

And then I found the road.

The path I used to take when I went shopping in City Vest. The ghetto mall. See if I didn't cross this wilderness I would have to take a long trek up one road and down another to get to the mall. So instead I'd cross the wilderness of course. Like a lot of people did. And still do. This place is the perfect place for young hoodlums to ambush shoppers. And when I got to the top of the path today I saw someone coming towards me. My heart jumped. I thought that it would be it. The end. I was dead. But then the person came out in the open and I saw that it was just some 25-30 year old guy. Not some 15 year old gang member with a switchblade. It was just a guy who had been shopping and took the same shortcut path as I have done so many times. Phew.

And there was civilization again.

Yup. I thought that I'd pretty much seen it all by now. The train car was probably gone. And I headed home. But my curiosity got the better of me and I went back in. And I found it.

It was still there. Just as I remembered it. With missing walls and charcoal floor. Only thing missing was the porn pages hanging on the walls.

Like a skeleton from a dead train that just gave up and stopped running

Look. DSB. De Danske Stats Baner. Or something like that. The Danish railway company.

And in case anyone wants to sit down there's a nice chair too. Although with the porn gone I'm sure the train doesn't see much business anymore.

In case you can't tell (and I do apologize for the poor picture quality as always) that's a door lying there at the end. A door from a house somewhere. Fascinating.

It's almost spooky. But nothing spooks me. And I didn't get ambushed. And I walked home feeling almost happy. Calm and peaceful. It's nice to have a patch of nature right there. Smack in the middle of everything. And it's wild. It's not a park. It's not kept. It's overgrowing overflowing over everything. Only the shortcut path is really used. The rest is just for the few and the brave. And me. Hee.

And later I had some fun with some other pictures but let's not get into that. I getter bet to deb. Better get to bed. Night all.

Everybody should have some wilderness.

EDIT: Oooh. Queen Margrethe of Denmark signed my guestbook. Happy birthday your majesty! I'm sorry I didn't get you anything but maybe I'll send you some giggle balls some time soon. Okay, now I'm really off.

np: zwan - endless summer (020407)