Went to the abandoned PA Turnpike tunnels today (Sideling tunnel if you want to visit this specific one). Beautiful day. Good times. We went last year around this time so I guess it's an annual trip now.
We went last year during an utterly fucked time. There wasn't really anyone there so it was just us walking through this echoey windy void, a straight mile of near pitch black. It was helpful in the way that sometimes the thing you're doing is what you're also doing in general.
It was meaningful then, and now for different reasons.
Today it was pretty and warm and Covid has everyone looking for anything to do so there were people biking through it and some teens w/ skateboards and fireworks way off in the dark w/ their shouts and music echoing and washing down the tunnel like some very clunky ambient track
Passing them in the long dark corridor lit only by small flashlights and phones was, and I apologize for the gamerspeak here, like passing someone's ghost in a Souls game. Same world, but not. Everyone just making their way through in their little groups.
At one point this guy rolled up. We said hey. He said hello, paused a bit, and said "welcome to dystopia" and pedaled off into the dark.
I turned to Bethany and said you know of we wrote that in a game people would rightly drag us for it.
It's an utterly uncanny place where it feels like normal location just gets suspended. How often do you walk down a giant crumbling hallway under a mountain in the dark for a little over a mile, only to emerge to this. It's all dream spacey. But it's out there as we speak.
and I mean that literally right now it's 10:30PM and that tunnel is there in the dark of the woods with a mile of wind blowing through it, while you're sitting wherever you are
Good day
With the legit tragic loss of Centralia's irreplaceable abandoned highway this year it was bittersweet to see this painted right near the start today, on the far end where we parked. Long live.
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