There are no drawbridges in Drawbridge, CA
A disclaimer reminding you not to follow in my footsteps unless, well, literally.
I could tell you I woke up two days ago to a text from my best friend, calling me to our next adventure. But this blog is my life — a story with characters — while these characters often do wild and crazy things, they do not often do these things conveniently.
I will instead tell you about my Friday, which began with me waking up (early for me) at nine forty-five. My day continued, featuring myself, in bed, awake, ’til noon. I then received a text from my best friend. We’re going to refer to him as Tommy, because I often wish he was deaf, dumb, and blind.
The text: “I challenge you to an adventure duel”.
I accepted, then asked for the terms, because I prioritize adventures over smart choices.
The duel turned out to be a simple one. As his summer is in Columbus, OH, and my summer is in San Francisco, CA, we had to adventure apart, but beat each other at it.
The Terms:
Attempt the better adventure (extra points for daytime)
Attempt the better photo (extra points for nighttime)
And so I set myself to researching my next move. We’ll have to skip forward in time so as not to divulge my process, but for the curious: it involves a public library, nautical charts, SOund Navigation And Ranging.
A skip in time
I had decided to hike out to Drawbridge, CA — a nearby ghost town.
Hubris is a funny thing. Humor me and imagine yourself, a warm-blooded human, planning a long hike to an abandoned location. You’re an experienced explorer, so you believe yourself when you tell you that it’ll be okay not to bring a water bottle on the hike because it is cloudy.
But! After a quick drive to the East Bay, I arrived at the open space preserve — my first destination. For those unversed in California (like myself), the open space preserves are just national parks, wildlife preserves, conservation land — created in an effort to, I don’t know, keep some open space away from the tech companies.
This particular open space preserve interested me because a railroad runs through it. This railroad interested me because I was about to run through it.
But before I got to the railroad I had to hike out onto the water, only interrupted by an entire flock of geese sitting across my path. Forced to walk through them, I found myself fantasizing about the best way to fistfight an entire flock of geese.
The answer is of course to punch them straight on, because an attempt to hit a goose out of the air from the side would clearly be too hard to aim precisely; better to let go of the flashy kill-shot and try to win with pure size.
After parting the flock, I was confronted by the Trial of the Train. If I wanted to explore anything, I had two miles of active train tracks to follow. Normally I’d like to bypass that, but the tracks cut straight through open water, with no alternate route. And seeing as my reconnaissance team was competing against me, I was flying blind as a goose with two black eyes.
When operating without proper intelligence, I find the best solution is to take my time. Ideally this would involve a separate trip to scout out beforehand, but I was here to win; there was no time to spare. So I instead waited out an hour of trains, timing them with stopwatch and notebook: two trains came, once per hour, within ten minutes of each other. Easy.
As I ran along the tracks, I sent a message updating Tommy: “A note for future Luke and Tommy: when running on railroad tracks, boots will be necessary”.
He replied with a picture of himself also running on railroad tracks, reminding me that I had a competition to win.
Now, I knew that I had a window of about forty minutes between trains, and had set alarms going off to warn me of the next one. But I had to get to the site of the town precisely within that window, as there was nothing but water on both sides of the tracks; one early locomotive would force me into a quick dip.
I mentioned that Drawbridge, CA is a ghost town. I didn’t mention why I wanted to go there. Drawbridge was abandoned in the twenties, and the eponymous drawbridges taken out. The buildings left behind have been sinking into the ground ever since.
My play here was to win on the strength of my photos, and the danger of the visit itself (knowing that Drawbridge wouldn’t be the most grandiose of sites).
Although, I will say (biasedly) that Ohio wasn’t about to beat out NorCal, even with Tommy’s help.
In defense of Drawbridge: it’s a pretty cool town. I’ve been to several ghost towns in my life, and this one is a solid contender for most interesting. Because I’ve been to so many ghost towns, I wasn’t really surprised or impressed by the sight, but if you really had followed literally in my footsteps, I guarantee you would have been.
As I ran up the railroad tracks, I started to see wooden roofs rising above the tall grass on the right and left, with a deep watery ditch in between me and any exploration. Luckily for me, there was enough debris for a makeshift bridge.
The buildings themselves had sunk past their floor, forcing me to crouch in most, but there was evidence of the visitors before me:
A sill adorned with candles in a pentagram, next to a hastily scribbled illuminati sign.
A long passage of graffiti that moved my sweaty soul, “One day our lives will consist of this. One day our home will be occupied by someone else/something else. Buildings will become just matter, therefore now is the time to create what our future holds. Who will you choose? Where will you be? What will you make of this”. If you want my reply, you’ll have to find it yourself.
A hole cut in a wall to spy on the house next door; a move that couldn’t possibly register on the creep scale.
So it definitely wasn’t boring.
The only times I came close to death on this particular trip follow.
The first came in the form of a surprise third train that hour. I happened to be on the tracks between buildings, and looked left to see a single headlight growing larger. I assure you the way I fell into the muddy water while scrambling down the bank was handled very efficiently.
The second came in the form of this blurry demon guarding a doorway I forgot to check:
On my thirsty hike back down the tracks I was spotted by a friendly birdwatcher whom I convinced to check out Drawbridge for himself, but it was otherwise uneventful. Once back on the trail, I sent some funk music up through my earbuds, happily finger-gunning my fellow hikers until I arrived at the two-day-old Dasani left in my car. It didn’t survive.
Oh, and I won, by the way.
