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HIDDEN IN SUBURBIA:
A PHOTO-ESSAY ABOUT LATHAM, NEW YORK
AND ITS ENVIRONS

NEW: Hidden in Suburbia II: Back to the Woods 2008 Brief Update! May, 2007 Hidden in Suburbia (Part I) I live in a nice area called Latham, New York, middle to upper-middle class for the most part, well-kempt homes in properly manicured and landscaped settings, good schools, good investment value in property, all the things one generally expects in the nicer bits of suburbia. If you draw a circle with a radius of about two and half miles around my house, you will also see that there are lots of woods. This makes the neighborhoods look nice, with backdrops of green and nice, tidy (from a distance) "forever wild" areas separating one neighborhood from another. Now . . . those who have read this site for a long time (mainly through the poetry project) will know that I have a deep fascination with woods. Not forests, mind you: forests are the untamed, wild places where nature is still, for the most part, in charge, and where urban, exurban and suburban development are still ages, years and/or miles and miles away. So I'm not talking about forests, I'm talking about woods. Woods are the bits of forest that are left when development comes to town, stands of trees immediately adjacent to suburban civilization, the dark places where all the things that suburban civilization doesn't want to think about go to die. Or to thrive, depending on what flavor they are. It's shocking to find a piece of trash in a pristine forest. In suburban woods, though you expect to find trash. People dump in there late at night, so they don't have to drive all the way to the landfill. Kids steal stuff and take it out there to hide it, then forget about it. Teenagers smoke, drink, make out, break bottles and blow things up in the woods, leaving a variety of interesting detritus. The woods are the places where suburbia's darkness lurks in wait, like something from a David Lynch movie. But it's not the specters and spirits of the woods that interest me, really, as much as it the stuff you find back there, and how the community sort of turns its collective consciousness away from it all. It may be right behind your house, but if it's in the woods, then it's okay, as long as it stays there and you don't have to look at it if you don't want to. But I like looking at it. That's what I've been doing most of the time while out riding my new mountain bike the past couple of months. I don't care about the well manicured bike trails . . . I'm riding through muck, mud, weeds and woods looking for the things that no one else wants to. For instance . . . right at the edge of one of the newer, nicer developments near my house, you find this peaceful, pastoral, suburban tableau: Still life with Rusted Construction Equipment. If I turn around 180 degrees from the spot where I took this picture, I can see four nice, expensive houses, the views from their backyard including these fabulous pieces of construction equipment as they slowly, yet inexorably, become one with nature. Going maybe a quarter of a mile deeper into the woods past the Road Grader Graveyard, you find one of the more spectacular, yet seemingly completely undocumented local natural landmarks, a massive, deep, steep and amazingly well hidden gorge that wends its way (in two forks) from Swatling Road and Haswell Road in Latham down to near the intersection of Route 2 and Boght Road in Watervliet. I have been to state parks that advertise natural attractions that are less impressive than this one . . . but despite my research, I have yet to even find a name for the creek that carved this impressive natural feature. (The problem with it being so well hidden is that it's very hard to find a decent vantage point from which to photograph it that gives you sense of its scale. I shot three pictures today, but none of them did it justice. I'll keep trying though). The Great Gorge of Goopy (hey, no one else seems to have named it, so I get to call it what I want) is home to lots of small fish, frogs, turtles and snakes. Also, the abandoned corpse of an old Arctic Cat snowmobile: Snowmobile Carcass, Great Gorge of Goopy (Documentary View) Snowmobile Carcass, Great Gorge of Goopy (Artistic View) Now, this next item is the most fabulous thing I have yet encountered back in the woods near my house, but it's another thing that's hard to capture photographically. About mid-way down the Great Gorge of Goopy, two or three turns after the Swatling and Haswell forks come together to make the larger, deeper and windier part of the gorge, there is a large earthenwork berm that crosses the gorge, with a path across the top of it. Clearly, at some point in the area's history, the Gorge was dammed for presumably industrial or agricultural purposes. Or maybe even flood control downstream. I have seen topographic maps from as recently as 1980 that show a lake immediately upstream of the berm. But there is no lake there now, just a deep hole, mucky and muddy at the bottom, then with a ring of large stones above the muck (presumably placed there at some point in the past to define the planned deep water mark of the lake), then with lots of broken trees and other flotsam piled up at the next level. And right smack in the middle of the place where the lake used to be . . . there is a tower . . . Castle Goopy . . . (actually, I think it was probably a pump station, designed to keep the water at a certain level by opening or closing sluicegates under the berm . . . but I think it sounds cooler to think of it as . . . Castle Goopy . . . ) Terrible Picture of Castle Goopy, Great Gorge of Goopy, Taken from atop Goopy Earthwork Berm The picture doesn't do it justice, I know. I didn't feel like climbing down to the Tower today (I've done it a couple of times in the past month, and it's a pretty slow and muddy slog, no matter how you try to get to it), and had the sun at my back as I shot it from on top of the berm trail today. Next time I'm back there, I'll get closer and get better shots. You can't really get a sense of scale from this picture. The tower is probably 30 feet tall, I would estimate. A large structure at the bottom of a deep chasm. If anyone knows anything about what it was and how long it's been there, I'd love to know. I'm still researching. Sometimes things in suburbia are hidden right where you can see them, if you only looked. Right in front of the K-Mart on Route 2 is a plaque on a stone . . . dedicated to a Muslim-American pilot who emergency crash landed his plane in the K-Mart's parking lot in 1994, placed by a Girl Scout troop who honored him for not crashing his plane somewhere else and killing lots of people. It becomes particularly poignant given the perception that September 11th later gave the association of the words "Muslim" and "Pilot". Very Sweet Memorial Plaque, Shot at Odd Angle to Reduce Glare My last stop on my way back home this afternoon was the haunted looking farmhouse that overlooks the neighborhood's favorite roadside ice cream parlor . . . Haunted Farmhouse, Old Chocolate Sprinkles Farm From there, a quick loop up through the woods to the field behind Katelin's old elementary school, then a zip across its soccer field into our back yard. Home again in suburbia, where everything is nice and neat. Today's shots were all taken in a 45 minute bike ride. And there are plenty, plenty more weird and wonderful things to be seen if I go 45 minutes in just about any other direction from my house. I'll be taking my camera with me when I ride for the next little while, shooting the things no one else likes to look at. Wait 'til you see the Mordor in Latham shots . . . Hidden in Suburbia (Part II) So . . . I went for another ride today. Total time on bike: one hour and twenty-five minutes. I was never more than two and a half miles away from my pleasant suburban home. But, despite that, I still got pretty darn close to the heart of Suburban Mordor . . . Mordor's outer perimeters are marked with brackish lakes and heaps of cinders. As you get closer, you encounter a landscape marked with slag piles. The road to Minas Morgul. The Ruins of Osgiliath. The slopes of Mount Doom. Right around the time I shot this last picture, I was spotted by Sentinels in a Mordor Incorporated Pickup Truck and told to beat it before they called the Uruk Hai to hunt me down and gut me like a perch. I told you it was hard to get into Mordor. But there were some other things to see on the way home, so it wasn't a complete bust as Hidden Suburban Photo Adventures go. Nazgul shipping container rolling out of Cirith Ungol, covered with Orc grafitti. (This train was actually moving as I snapped this shot, so I'm kind of amazed at how clear it is). Something terrible happened here. Roadside Rest Area. The shed belongs to Jim. The dog house is for rent. The Saddest Farm in America. When I come by here early in the morning on weekends, there is almost always an old, old, old, very stooped old man watering this plot. By hand. With a watering can. True story. Makes my lip tremble every time I pass. Hidden in Suburbia (Part III) I didn't plan to ride today when I got home. It was really hot and humid, and I'd been outside for a good chunk of the day at work, and I just wanted to sit in the air conditioning. But then a little thunderstorm rolled through and cooled things off, and I started feeling guilty about a really slovenly, lazy weekend, so I grabbed the bike gear and hit the woods for a short jaunt. My first target is an item closer to my house than any other yet photographed. If I look closely at the right angle from my kitchen window, I can just see the top of . . . The Attractive Nuisance (a.k.a. Abandoned Grain Silo) The trail to the silo was excessively overgrown, and surprisingly damp. So damp, in fact, that I sunk too deep in the soft soil to be able to keep my bike moving forward. So I dismounted, lifted the bike out of the muck, and slogged to higher ground. Which was covered with nettles and sticker bushes. Around this time, I remembered that I had forgotten to put on any bug spray. The mosquitoes began feasting, as I beat a hasty retreat out of the woods, carrying my bike on my shoulder and trying to move quickly through the now thigh deep brambles. I eventually got back to the road, with legs a bit less pretty than they'd been when I left it . . . Have I mentioned that I'm extremely allergic to poison ivy? At this point, I decided that the rest of today's hidden in suburbia featurette would have to focus on roadside ecology, not deep wood ecology. With that revised plan of action, I was off to see what I could find . . . A Bed of Flowers Elvis, and everyone else, has left the building. Dear Mister Postman. Really . . . you don't need to keep leaving us a phone book. Honest. There are two good haunted houses right across the "street" (and I use that word loosely, since it's actually a gravel path) from each other, both within view of Route 2, although I bet 99.94% of the people who drove that highway in the last year didn't notice them. Which one do you prefer? Haunted House Number One Haunted House Number Two Personally, I think I'm going to go with Number One. It has some extra classy features . . . Haunted Hammock Hidden in Suburbia (Part IV) Let's recap the premise, quick, for newcomers: all pictures in the "Hidden in Suburbia" series are taken within 2.5 miles of my house, which is located in a fairly affluent neighborhood in suburbia. The point of the series? You'd be amazed at what's in your neighborhood, if you looked hard enough for it. Alright . . . on with the show. Today I found the best secret hidden party place in the woods yet. It was like riding through the 100 Acre Woods, tra la la, and coming upon Christopher Robin's Crack Den. Pooh's Party Chair Eeyore has to sit in the swamp. Oh, bother. I also snuck into the place where trains go to die. It's like the Elephant's Graveyard, only with more barbed wire to avoid. Pardon me, Pooh, was that the Chattanooga Choo Choo? Hmmm . . . so you say you want to hide a train, huh? Once upon a time, I was modern. Oh, bother. Where there are dead trains, there are always dead train-related buildings nearby. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, how much longer 'til you fall? Retail and Office space. Cheap. And, lastly, lest it seem that the only thing I'm interested in is the horrific and the haunted, I should also note that within 2.5 miles of my house are several religious communities and convents. Most of which have numerous shrines on their grounds, which can be nice to stumble upon, too, when you're out milling around in suburbia, eyes open wide. Shrine at St. Colman's. Pieta at St. Joseph's of Carondelet Provincial House Finally, someone asked me by e-mail if I was having to do a lot of trespassing to get these pictures. For the record: The staff and management of Flexible Tetragrammaton do not condone tresspassing or unlawful entry. If you get caught somewhere you're not supposed to be, you're on your own. Don't claim this site as inspiration. Hidden in Suburbia (Part V) I went for a longer ride today, spending most of my time outside the 2.5 mile radius that defines my shooting zone for "Hidden in Suburbia" purposes. I did get a few pictures on the way out and back, though. Most of these should probably properly be called "Hidden in Plain View in Suburbia". They're things you see all the time, but don't go up and look at. You know you live in suburbia when . . . your town's most recognizable feature is its water tower. When good real estate goes bad . . . this is one of the busiest intersections in Latham. When good real estate goes bad, 'round the back side of the sub shack formerly known as Sammy's. Shrine at St. Joseph's House, a Little Sisters of the Poor retirement center. Hidden in Suburbia (Part VI) Hints from Heloise: Abandoned Road Signs Make Great Window Treatments! Do Not Do, uh . . . Something Alone Again. Naturally. (You probably can't see it, but the name on the stone is "Smith"). When Perpetual Care Goes Wrong, Part One. When Perpetural Care Goes Wrong, Part Two. Who cares about perpetual care when you've got the biggest monument? Mrs. Claus? I am sorry to tell you this, but there has been a terrible accident . . . Hidden in Suburbia (Part VII): The Great Gorge of Goopy Special Feature My bike's still in the shop, so it occured to me that today might be a good day to hike the full length of the Great Gorge of Goopy (see the first Hidden in Suburbia report), a deep watershed that drains one of the largest unbroken wooded areas in this part of Latham. The bike is great for getting down to the gorge via the various paths that cross it, but it becomes a liability when hiking down in the gorge itself. So I got up this morning, grabbed my camera and headed east on Haswell Road towards the beginning of the Great Gorge of Goopy. (And, again, if anyone knows what it's really called, I'd love to know. I've looked at topo maps and other documents and never found a name for the creek that made this gorge. It seems hard to believe that no one ever gave it a name). I had actually written a poem during the poetry project last year about the bridge that marks the beginning of the gorge. It was called, nicely enough . . . Bridge (2004, #142) I've driven over that little bridge at least a couple thousand times. Seen trash by the road side, at the foot of the "no dumping" sign. Knew there was water below it, a drainage creek that ran from behind our old neighborhood, then flowed down to the Hudson. Never paid it any mind, it didn't have anything to offer me, nothing there to see. I walked over the little bridge today, (first time ever), and peeked over the side, expecting to see trash and weeds and mud, but instead, and much to my surprise, I saw a beautiful little sedimentary cliff, folded and uplifted. At its foot, wild day lilies lined the creek, yellow and orange. A peaceful scene, hidden, unknown. I smiled, and walked on, its secret safe with me: you've got to find it, see? So, uh, I guess I lied in that poem. Its secret is no longer safe with me. Here's the view from that bridge, and the beginning of today's "Hidden in Suburbia" special featurette. Great Gorge of Goopy headwaters, visible from Haswell Road. Upstream of here, the creek passes directly behind our old house in the Spring Meadows area, then drains a swampy area south of Alternate Route 7. It's harder to get down to the creek bed than it should have been, due to a lot of overgrown construction waste piled along the road. There are surprisingly no trails that parallel the creek, only occasional ones that cross it. I spent most of my time walking in the water, except when it got too deep to do so. Like here, where this floating barrel gently spun in its own little eddy pool. The first active tributary flowing down into the gorge as the walls get steeper and the creek bed gets deeper. This creek drains the area behind the Archmont Knolls development. We revisit our friend, Arctic Cat, from the first Hidden in Suburbia report. The biggest cross trail down to the gorge is near here. The last thing that some poor deer ever saw, probably. Don't hike this trail during hunting season, please. The blind will be better camoflaged then, I expect. The biggest tributary of River Goopy, this one runs up to Swatling Road, and then via several under-road tunnels back to near the Blue Creek School. It has its own gorge in some areas. I've ridden parts of it, but may walk it and shoot it someday as well. I should note that I have seen old topo maps that show a large lake where I am standing to shoot this picture. First view of Castle Goopy, from a ridge in a tight crossbow turn of the creek. Behind the Castle is the berm that created the former lake. Castle Goopy was, I believe, the top of its drainage system. Castle Goopy up close. All the water in the creek drains down the drain at bottom right, although from the sedimentary deposits and flotsam, it is clear that Castle Goopy has been (and may sometimes still be?) completely submerged. The area around the tower is supersaturated muck. I sank more than ankle deep into it. For perspective, when I stand next to the tower and reach up, I can just reach the bottom of the lower window on the left hand side. This thing is big. Climb up the berm on the Castle Goopy side, then down a steep scree on the opposite side, and you come to the outflow pipe where Lake Goopy evidently onced drained. I leave it to the suburban spelunkers to explore the connection. From this point forward, I am in parts of the Gorge I have never seen before. Above Castle Goopy, the creek bed is all made of fragmented pieces of shale and slate. Below it, it appears there was some man made effort to create and maintain the creek bed, as the rocks are almost all artificially squared off. A new friend for Arctic Cat. The deepest parts of the gorge occur where two very tight oxbox turns in the creek are close to eating their way through the remaining rock, leaving tall, thin faces of shale with water down both sides. At this point, power lines cross the creek. I am standing on one of the shale spires here: the powerlines are obviously high above me, and you can just see the water in the gorge below me. It's hard to get a sense of depth from a photo, but this is a deep chasm here. The trees near the center of the frame are full sized, big old trees. Not bushes, as they look in the picture. After the oxbox/slate/powerline junction, the creek begins to straighten out again. This is looking up the wall, standing on a rock in the water, as the wall begins to get shorter. The walls of the gorge come down to surface level fairly quickly at one point, revealing a shallow, lily-covered pond. No crossing this way. The singing of bullfrogs and insects was amazingly loud as I stood here in the oozing muck. Ah . . . this explains the pond! It's another dam, this one probably more contemporary than the one by Castle Goopy, since it's not just an earthwork, but a pressed concrete job. The community's young people display their artistic talents on the downstream side of the dam. This waterpipe accompanied me for most of the rest of the walk. It appears to have taken water from above the spillway down to somewhere in Watervliet. There is dramatically more industrial and construction waste downstream of the second dam. Another friend for Arctic Cat. This old iron wheel and spring chassis looks like an early 20th century relic, if not something older. I may have to go back and dig and see what's beneath that wheel. Civilization encroaches rapidly. After one last twist in the gorge, the walls drop to surface level, and houses appear on each side, their backyards abutting the creek itself. The people who live here seem to use the creekbed as the place where they throw things they don't want anymore. The ignominous end of the Great Gorge of Goopy, as the water enters this tunnel, travels beneath the streets of Watervliet and eventually drains into the Hudson River. After snapping the last picture, I realized that there wasn't really any good, unobtrusive way to get out of the gorge without backtracking a long way. And I never backtrack if I can avoid it. So I did a quick crouch commando spring across someone's backyard, hopped a fence, ran up their driveway and then looked all casual as I walked down the road, covered in mud and sweat, with my legs and arms bleeding a fair amount from sticker and bramble damage. But that's the best part of suburban exploring, I guess . . . the incongruity between the nice houses and the dark, forgotten places behind them. Total hiking time, about two hours and twenty five minutes. When I finished, I got an Ice Cream Sandwich from the Stewart's on Route Two in Watervliet, and called and asked Marcia to give me a ride home. A nicely strenuous little suburban adventure. Hidden in Suburbia (Part VIII) I got my bike back from the shop yesterday so took it out for a spin this morning. It was all clean and shiny looking, and all the mechanicals were purring nicely, so I decided not to immediately take it into the woods to beat it up and despoil it on its first day back in action. So today's Hidden in Suburbia featurette is sort of the opposite of the last one: no hard slogging required for any of these pictures, as all of these items would qualify as "roadside attractions" (by which I mean, none of them are more than 10 feet away from a currently paved and traveled road). One thing that I've noticed about this area is that we collectively tend to take the region's rather extraordinary history for granted. For instance, as a child in the South, I learned all about the Erie Canal (and was impressed that its name was but one letter removed from mine), sang the song about the Mule named Sal, low bridge, everybody down, from Ah-ah-albany to Bu-huff-ah-ah-lo. Within two and half miles of my house now, there are half a dozen (that I know of, there may be more) of the original Erie Canal locks, all of them well land-locked by now, surrounded by houses and building and businesses. Some of them are marked with little historical markers, but some of them . . . . well, they're just sort of there, and people drive and walk by and through them all the time without really looking at them, or thinking "Wow! This was considered the greatest engineering feat of the early 19th Century!" Erie Canal Lock, View One Erie Canal Lock, View Two These very old pilings were clearly man made. I'm guessing they might have supported a loading dock of some sort? I go back and forth in my mind on what this was: either a tollhouse or a pump house (I can't get in close enough to see what's inside without drawing undue attention to myself). If anyone knows, as always, tips are welcome. Hey baby . . . hang out here often? (I wonder about the fact that her face is smashed, she's missing a hand, but her exposed breast is perfect and well maintained. Hmmm . . . ) In the end, nature always wins. Hey! Has anyone seen Arctic Cat lately? Calling Public Works . . . calling Public Works . . . it seems nature is winning again here. A nice little fixer upper, first time home. With air conditioning . . . . . . and a garage. And, um, some piles of gravel. A good investment for the handyman. Hidden in Suburbia (Part IX) Shorter ride today, as I had to help Katelin pack and head up for her second two-week session at camp. I headed again towards the more developed parts of my suburb, along the Route 9 Corridor, and didn't take many pictures. One thing I see a lot of riding around Latham is old cemetaries. This area has been inhabited for a long, long time, long before Sam's Club and Lowe's arrived. You see them in housing developments, little plots with fences around them tucked out of the way in the woods next to the McMansions or Condo Barns. You see them along some of the older roads in the town, paved two lanes now that 250 years ago were no doubt carrying traffic along the exact same routes, just at a much slower pace. I've posted a few unusual cemetary shots, but found one today that takes the cake . . . Look! It's a beautiful little family cemetary on a hill, with grand trees, a well-cared for lawn, flags placed recently, clearly a place that still means something important to someone. I wonder what we see if we walk around to the other side of this cute little cemetary? We see that it sits in the middle of a parking lot behind a strip mall. The strip mall literally appears to have been build around the cemetary, with loading docks and wings encircling the sacred grounds on three sides, and the reinforcement for the half of the hill that was removed to make a parking lot on the fourth side. Another angle of Our Lady of Perpetual Parking Cemetary. This is a cool old ambulance, marked as once having belonged to "Summit Fire Department". The coolest thing about it, though, is that it is a Cadillac. It is, literally, the Cadillac of Ambulances. I can imagine how many people rode in the back on their way to the hospital, suddenly pulling the oxygen masks from their faces and exclaiming "Boy! What a smooth and quiet ride! Like butter! Tell me . . . is this a Caddy, by any chance?" Ouch (Hidden in Suburbia, Part X) I went for a ride today in a wooded area that I hadn't explored yet. The trail I was following was pretty good at its head: well packed, pretty level, dry, not a lot of branches across it. I rounded a bend in the trail, and found what appeared to be the remnants of a shelter that someone had made in the woods: I snapped the shot, and rode on down the trail. The foliage coverage across the path started to thicken as the trail dropped down into a little ravine. I could see that there was some mud at the bottom of the ravine, so I kept my speed up so I would have enough forward momentum to get through it without it sticking to my tires and stopping me. I misjudged just how deep the mud was, though. About a third of the radius of my tire, as it turned out, which meant that my front wheel stopped cold as soon as it hit it, and all of my forward momentum carried me over the handlebars and into the opposite bank of the ravine. It was pretty soft, fortunately, and there were no rocks there, but it did jar my right hand, elbow and shoulder hard, and while I got my head back far enough to keep from planting my face, the sudden stopping caused my jaw to snap forward in a weird and painful way. The jaw and shoulder are the things that are still hurting now, a couple of hours later. Hopefully just something mildly strained. So, anyway, that was all of the pictures for today. I followed the trail until I came to the backside of a new apartment development going up on Route 2 and cut back onto paved roads to head back home. More pictures next time. Hidden in Suburbia (Part XI) When you fall of your bike, you're supposed to get right back up and ride it again, right? Right! I stayed away from deep gullies and hard trails today, though, since my right shoulder (which is the good one, for those who know my orthopedic history) is still pretty sore and stiff. I spent some time, instead, along the old Erie Canal bed, riding past other abandoned and largely forgotten locks. Erie Canal Lock (looking South) The same Erie Canal Lock (looking North) Sal walked here. The dry bed of an abandoned 19th Century canal can make an excellent late night campfire and drinking spot, apparently. Oh! And then I saw a sight that made my heart beat with warm fuzziness and good feelings . . . It's the Saddest Farm in America again! Wow! Look how nice the corn looks! Hopefully it's not because it's feeding on the little old man with the watering can, who is now dead in the middle in the field. I also went water tower hunting today. The Latham main tower gets all the attention with its gaudy red and white checkerboard pattern. But let's give a little love to the other nice water towers, keeping it real on the down low. Then back on the road to home, with some Action Jackson shots to pass the time. And a parting shot for the day, and I think for this photo essay in general, courtesy a helpful grafitti artist . . . Fall approaches, so perhaps next summer, I will return with Lost in Suburbia II. If you have any landmarks you'd like me to shoot, let me know. LEAVE THE WOODS!