Wasteland

Every town has a patch of wasteland, I’m certain of it – most have more than one.  They seem almost criminally unloved – nobody really bothers to go there, for some reason , save the occasional dog walker, letting their dog crap over someone else’s paradise, or even more rarely, young lovers looking for solitude.  But dog walkers in a town like mine are rare enough, and as for young lovers: well, they’d be hard pushed to find any sort of beauty up on the wasteland, my wasteland, so, for the most part it’s given a wide berth. This, of course, suits me down to a tee.

It’s over on the slightly grimmer side of town. Not “the wrong side of the tracks”, by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly not the kind of place anyone really wants to spend their time hanging around on, unless they can really help it. That said, I’ve never really had any trouble, and I daresay I’ve spent as much time there as anyone. Some well meaning soul, back in the mists of time, put a small metal fence around the outside – whether to keep people out, or keep the native flora and fauna in, I don’t know. But essentially all the now dirty and faded fence does is keep the ground separate from the rest of town, and the rest of the world, for that matter.  Some of it’s on the flat, but there’s a hill over at one side, where you can look down over the town, for what it’s worth: the old paper mill, the harsh artificial light of the supermarket, the flare of someone’s cigarette lighter. The road curves past, the drivers moving at a relentless pace, almost as if they have something to do, and somewhere to go. There’s a strange, desolate beauty in watching their headlights and taillights rushing past, on a cold winter’s night, with a hint of drizzle in the wind: you can lose yourself int he rush to escape. But it’s to escape that I go to the wasteland in the first place: to pretend I’m somewhere else: you can feel alone, and, indeed do anything, there, especially where the weak looking line of trees blocks me from sight of the road. The wasteland has seen everything: every romantic encounter, the first time I tried smoking, every stolen joint: even the first time I got legless on the demon drink. I feel at times that it grows with me, that for every experience I have there, it gains something in turn, until it’s too full of memories for it to be pleasant to stay there.
 
The ground under my feet is slightly stunted, and certainly not the rich, lush green of a suburban lawn, but it feels that much more honest for it: very much self dependant, and all the tougher for it. Sure, there’s rubbish – and in a two-bit town like mine, where isn’t there? – But it all seems slightly old, and aged... it certainly doesn’t worry me to the extent that the fresh rubbish that litters proper parks does. Every day, it’s picked up, and every day it’s replaced. It always looks fresh, shining out of the grass and shrubbery, like a fresh, open wound. The faded cola cans and low budget crisp packets aren’t really unsightly, but suggest to me an old scar: the relics of former victories and bittersweet memories. The majority of the rubbish has been blown up to the edges of the fence, to be lost and choked in the long grass that grows around the edge. There are a few cigarette stubs underfoot as well, along with (presumably) cannabis roaches, but that still doesn’t stop me from feeling like it’s mine, and mine alone. There are a few sad looking trees as well: not exactly twisted, like in a second-rate Victorian horror story, but instead windswept, and with the same hint of wildness that is universal to the wasteland.  Yet, strangely, it’s the tiny, dark river that makes me happiest. Small, and shallow, the polluted river seems like the only true constant: I’ve seen the grass cut, people collect the rubbish – yet the river stays the same. It’s murky, as I imagine the run-off from a power station to be, completely devoid of any sort of animal life, but somehow it makes me happy to see it.

There’s something unique about the feeling when you’re alone, near the top of the hill, especially at night. In a story, the stars would be winking down, but that doesn’t happen in a town like mine, with the sodium gaze of the streetlamps illuminating everything in the hateful orange glow. It’s certainly darker, up on my wasteland (yes, it’s mine), but it’s a more natural, warmer darkness than in the town. There’s the grey roar of the road, which comforts me in the strange way that any white noise is comforting, almost like the feeling under water: pressing around you, but warming at the same time.  It’s the anonymity that protects it: nobody knows it’s there, and most people wouldn’t give it a second look. It’s a constant, a positive constant, in a town that is consistently and depressing repetitive. It'll outlive me, and I fear, even hope, that everything will be the same when my children are (hopefully) leaving - it says more about the town's personaltiy that anythign else every could.