The Tomb of the Train at the end of the World

as if it were an escape plan for the end of the world, he slept quietly in the forest, never found.

in 1839, a group of crazy scientists fled to North America, built more than 80 giant mechanical centipedes in a dense forest, and vowed not to mention it to outsiders. After the death of the last scientist, these seemed to be escape plans for the end of the world, sleeping quietly in the forest, never discovered.

in that year, the steam era was slowly beginning.

the age of oil and electricity has not yet arrived.

time fast forward to the 21st century, and as I live in North America for the seventh year, I am vaguely tired of big cities-everyone is equally smart, humorous, enthusiastic, understanding, whether you are smart or confused. The other person will burst into a burst of laughter with precise control of time and volume at the right time.

all people and things are like overinflated soap bubbles, floating lightly in mid-air. No texture at all.

so in the late summer and early fall of 2015, I picked up Interstate 75, which runs through the large countryside in the central United States, all the way south from Michigan. I have no plan and no destination. I just know that I am very eager to get away from all this floating.

due to a lack of companions and lack of time, I drive from sunrise to sunset every day, and before nightfall, I find the most remote and strange-sounding town to rest.

these unknown towns often have only one main street, three or five coffee shops, several bars, a gas station, and a convenience store connected to the gas station.

there are no supermarkets, no McDonald's, no fashion stores, no Asians.

wherever you go, you will be looked at. When eating, whether you are sitting at the bar or in a single booth, someone will come to talk to you. All of them are overweight, all of them are drinking, all of them have strong accents, and all of them are curious about black hair and black eyes.

the hotel is still equipped with the most old-fashioned air conditioner, which drives like running a train. There is no self-service washing machine, dryer, go downstairs to ask the landlady, the landlady can not help but snatch your dirty clothes, carelessly holding your underwear, and her one-year-old son has just vomited the bib, throw it into the washing machine which is louder than the air conditioner.

it's hard to believe that this is in the most technologically advanced United States.

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it feels like being thrown back to the last century.

so when I trudged through the forest for two hours and saw groups lying in the canyon, crooked, rusty, static, lifeless, with more than 80 mechanical centipedes, I was not surprised at all.

it seems that this is the normal state of a small town.

Autumn 2015

Autumn 2015

stretched for several kilometers in the forest, these crowded, huge and slightly distorted human creations were completely incompatible with the surrounding trees.

not to mention the shrubs that have already grown into the car on both sides, and 8,000 spiders as big as my face.

feel that the next moment should jump out of the side of a few deer or a fox.

at the same time, I was carrying my tent, trying to find a dry place without broken glass to camp.

Why on earth these trains, which served in Massachusetts, Tennessee, Illinois, and Indiana, were transported thousands of miles to this unknown town in the south, and why they were left in the forest in the wind and rain? no one knows.

the people in the town only told me that the caretaker of the forest was a grumpy old man who liked to drink and had a shotgun. He often clamored that if he found someone entering the forest without permission, he must "show him something."

-I didn't know at that time that I would return to this town at Christmas a year later and meet the administrator's uncle. And he's not as scary as he's rumored to be.

at that time, however, to minimize the number of times I passed through the forest entrance, I had no choice but to camp in the depths of the forest.

Cold Wonderland at the end of the world

before camping, I imagined 10,000 kinds of discomfort, but I didn't think it was all on paper until it was put into practice. There is no open fire, the spider is big enough to tear open my calves, it is hot in the middle of the night and cold in the middle of the night, it is damp everywhere, and most importantly, there is no cell phone charging wire.

looking at the iPhone with 20% power left and intermittent signals, I felt that I was going to be abandoned by the world at that moment.

is not the endless desolation imagined?

because the forest is more lively at night than during the day.

if you put your ear to the ground, you can hear the sound of bugs crawling nearby, the sound of streams in the canyon a little farther away, the clattering of long-hoofed animals a little further away, the stretching sound of shrubs on the ground, and the sound of leaves swept by the wind dozens of meters above the ground.

next to dozens of abandoned human creations.

the time bar seems to have been dragged to thousands of years later-a future in which mankind has disappeared.

Nature reoccupies the earth. Animals are running on all the highways, and all the tall buildings are covered with climbing vines.

Christmas 2016, I went south again because I was in a bad mood. After more than a year, the town has not changed much, and most of the bars and hotels are closed.

carrying tent dry food has not yet entered the forest has been targeted, and then I realized that when I opened my backpack to set up camp, I was startled by the manager who suddenly appeared.

-this is probably one of the most dangerous situations in foreign expeditions:

intruding into an abandoned building that is forbidden, only to be bumped into by someone inside. This person is either a tramp who often lives here. Either a citizen who has a strong sense of responsibility will call the police to see a suspicious person, or he is already the administrator of this building.

Thank God this administrator has a lot of curiosity about an Asian face with a black head and black eyes.

2016: a wet and foggy Christmas morning

2016 Christmas

2016 Christmas morning

2016 Christmas

2016 Christmas

2016 Christmas

when I woke up the next morning, it was damp and foggy outside the tent. I couldn't tell whether it was cloudy or the sun had not yet risen, and everything was painted a light-dark color. I walked through the motorcycle to get a stream to wash my face on the other side of the canyon. The iron sheet of the locomotive was cold, the fog condensed into water flowing down the grooves on the surface of the car, and the fallen leaves that fell the night before were drenched to dark brown and slowly mixed with the soil.

looking up, I found that it began to rain sometime.

-- Almost as if the apocalypse has happened but no one knows.