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urban exploring and urban foraging

Listening to:	a/c white noise
Reading:	believing brain
Weather:	83, sunny, less humid

This weather's been a bitch, finally a little break today. 90's and high humidity and 70's at night for 2 weeks. Relentless. I don't tend to bitch too much about the weather, but dang, y'all.

Haven't been doing as much walking and wandering because of it. The black raspberry season was more comfortable than usual, got plenty in then. But since then I've been wussing out in a/c most of the daylight hours.

My last roadtrip to downtown Wheeling for work inspired me back to an old interest of mine: sniffing around old, abandoned buildings. There's plenty of possibility for that in Wheeling, so much big, beautiful architecture and industrial stuff from the 100 years ago prosperity, which was followed in the 70's by the fall of the steel industry and the economic downturn from which Wheeling has never recovered. Truly stunning stuff just waiting to get explored.

I watched a doc about "Urban Exploring," this very notion of digging around clandestinely and illegally in old abandoned structures. There is a moral code proposed and apparently often followed by organized UE enthusiasts. A take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but dusty footprints kind of approach. Keep your locations on the downlow, don't advertise. Be cool, take some calculated risks for good benefits but don't be stupid.

Fascinating. But what really rocks is the photography. Just google "urban exploring" and start checking out images, holy shit.

On a somewhat related note, you know I've always been into foraging, and I started ruminating more and more on this the past 2 or 3 yrs. Now I find on the fabulous interwebs that there's a whole dang "urban foraging" movement, too. Though my foraging tends to be way more rural than urban (as does my exploring), there's plenty to be learned and enjoyed checking out this urban foraging thing. In that vein, I noticed a fruit tree in the Aldi parking lot yesterday (didn't shop, just parked there to get onto the railtrail for a very brief walk) and got closer to see pears. I grabbed a couple within reach (even though the best ones are always up a few inches past the fingertips!) and put them on my counter to ripen. Looking forward to juicy sweet bites of free fruit here in a few days.

permalink posted by cat 1:34 PM

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