The Newtown Pentacle

Thursday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Glorious! Believe it or not, places like this are what I was dreaming about during all of those months of medical downtime. This post continues with photos captured on a recent walk which started in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville. This part of the city is located on the triangular peninsula formed by the confluence of Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers. Downtown, where the big office buildings are, is found at the very tippy tip of that triangle. The area I was walking through in these posts is about six to seven miles east of there, and found along the northern side of the ‘golden triangle,’ where the Allegheny River flows.

One scuttled back a few blocks from the waterfront as it became increasingly difficult to get past a series of ‘No Trespassing’ warnings and ubiquitous fence lines. I found a set of train tracks, which seemed to be at least semi active, as evidenced by shiny metal wear patterns breaking through layers of corrosion and rust. I’m informed that these are all Allegheny Valley Rail Road (AVRR) rights of way in modernity.

Saying all that, didn’t see a train at all moving through. Like I said the other day about AVRR: ‘white whale.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Your humble narrator is really trying to ‘lean into it’ at the moment. Rebuilding strength and endurance in my legs and hips after suffering the long hermitage caused by the shattered ankle is my priority. Status on that situation is as follows – I’m walking a LOT slower than I used to, need to have a quick sit down periodically, and fatigue sets in a lot quicker than formerly. This walk ultimately blew open my outer distance range, clocking in at about six and half miles. Given that two weeks ago I was jumping with joy at having conquered five miles… progress.

The goal is to be able to reliably walk twenty miles by June. May is going to hurt a bit, I think. I’m already planning the ten mile threshold’s walk. By August, I plan on resuming the full schedule of one long walk of 10-15 miles and two short walks of about 5 miles each per week.

There was quite a bit of activity going on just out of frame, but it mainly involved utility workers, auto mechanics, and various warehouse operations. Most of the buildings in this ‘IBZ’ seemed occupied, but other than a few cars in the parking lots it was just me, all alone and wandering about on foot. It all seemed quite apocalyptic, but there was a feature rich environment.

Lots of ‘what’s that thing over there’ going on while scuttling along.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

My path through this area followed the rail tracks, and this route would eventually lead me to a named street called ‘Railroad Street.’ I’m of the opinion, which was formed along Newtown Creek’s ‘Railroad Avenue’ in Blissville, that every city in America worth a damn has a ‘Railroad Avenue’ or ‘street’ in it. Here’s the one in Vermont’s Burlington.

One continued on in a generally westerly direction back towards downtown. The plan for the rest of the day was to make it downtown and then catch the ‘T’ light rail back to HQ. Saying that, I still had a couple of hours of walking ahead of me. Given that I’m moving as slowly as I do now, that meant I was just getting started on this walk.

What? You don’t dream about experiencing perfect solitude in a fairly post apocalyptic landscape? To one such as myself, it’s nepenthe.

Come with, see more? Back tomorrow.

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“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.