Culvert Ops II: Under Warehouses

“You know,” he said, his voice echoing off the flat concrete surfaces encasing us, “You are probably the strangest person I’ve ever worked with.”

I laugh and continue to line up a photo in the darkness. As I held my breath to take the long exposured shot, I wondered what’s so strange about venturing into a dank drainage tunnel during your lunch hour to kneel in two inches of water and one inch of algae just to capture a few pictures. “Well,” I concluded silently by the time the camera shutter closed, “what’s strange about that is probably that I don’t find it strange at all.”

As promised in the original Culvert Ops post, my network admin, who I shall refer to as Trixalot, and I returned to the cavernous tunnel. I had no idea where it could lead and was dying to explore. And a few of you have recently expressed your lingering curiosity as well…so it was clearly time to do some urban spelunking.

As we walked down the angled concrete culvert toward the dark opening, I swear I felt thirteen again. I found myself laughing as my feet slipped into the water and caught myself ducking slightly to avoid being seen by the various employees of the warehouses on either side of the ditch. Sadly, I was not as ninja-like as I thought.

“Whatcha doing?” asked a voice from my right, just 20 feet from the entrance.

“Um…taking some pictures,” I answered vaguely while waving my camera in his general direction. I was hoping that would satisfy the man with the cigarette long enough for us to escape into the darkness.

“Well I can see that,” he responded…not accepting my brush off.

“Just want to get a few pictures of the inside of that tunnel.” I just kept on marching. Not to be antisocial…but I didn’t want to risk a conversation that might wind its way toward “I don’t think you should be going in there.”

“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully. “Guess you gotta be creative to get interesting pictures.”

I agreed with an “uh-huh” and didn’t explain that the camera was mostly for my web readers. I’d have been going into that tunnel one way or the other. I mean…it’s a hole in the ground…how can you not be curious where it leads?

As we entered the damp space, the temperature dropped instantly and the cool humidity clung to my skin. The sounds of dripping water and chirping birds surrounded us in a web of echoes. I didn’t look back to see if Smoke Break Guy was still watching.

About thirty feet in we found an access chute leading up to a manhole cover. I guess the service folks who occasionally go down there don’t like using the front door for some reason. A steady drip from the surface above made photographing up the chute a bit messy…but the otherwise flat walls gave me little else to point the camera at so I kept at it.

The occasional bird zipped past our heads, most likely protecting nest that we were never able to locate. There were countless little pipes leading into the tunnel from the sides. I suppose there could have been nests in some of them…but I hope not. I can only assume the pipes are occasionally gushing water…which wouldn’t be quite the environment Mamma Bird was expecting when she built her nest.

One especially large side pipe emptied into the system. It was plenty big enough to crawl through, but I thought better of it since I couldn’t see anything down there that might give me hope of it opening into a larger space. But don’t think I wasn’t tempted.

For my first few pictures, I tried to keep myself as dry as possible. I squatted instead of kneeling. I avoided brushing against the damp walls. However, I quickly realized the long exposure times required for such lighting needed more than my unsteady hand. I wished for a tripod but had only a monopod to lend stability. I started leaning hard against the walls and kneeling directly into the water.

Trixalot waited behind me, shining the flashlights about in a search for rats, snakes or any other living things that could threaten to crawl or chew on us, but nothing attacked.

Our progress was slow as I attempted shot after shot, but eventually the slow curve of the tunnel took us away from the glow of daylight behind us. Sadly, almost as quickly as the light faded behind, light became visible ahead. It seemed the tunnel simply formed a long S-curve to cut between the warehouses above and probably dumped out behind them.

Another curve brought full daylight streaming in and soon we stood triumphantly at the other side. Concrete behind us…wooded creek before us. It wasn’t the exciting destination I had been hoping for…but then again, I’m not exactly sure what more I could have hoped for.

We turned around and slogged our way back through the tunnel. By the time we reached the original open-air culvert, my shoes were too wet to hold traction on the concrete slope. I almost wished Smoke Break Guy were there to wonder again at my sanity as I waded through the center of the sometimes foot and a half deep drainage. Trixalot…having forgotten to bring shorts for the excursion, opted to climb out of the culvert rather than follow me.

We had successfully charted the water’s path through the tunnel. Trixalot said that was sufficient for his daily adventure and headed back to the office. I figured I was already soaked and in full exploration mode, so I opted to see what waited upstream from our office. Only forty feet or so down, the concrete disappeared…replaced by creek bed, tangled vines, and stagnant pools of mucky water that I had no interest in wading through even in my pre-funkified condition. I pushed as far as I was comfortable, unable to climb without risking the camera and was able to snap one good shot of an abandoned bridge through the twisted foliage. It was overgrown and forgotten and I have no idea why it was abandoned nor why it was even built in the first place. But it made for a mysterious conclusion to my journey.

I returned to my office, changed back into my dress slacks and sat my wet clothes outside the warehouse to bake in the sun before taking a business call. As I chatted with Experian’s tech support group about a glitch on their website, I considered Trixalot’s claim. I don’t know where I fit on the continuum of workplace weirdness…but I was pretty sure the friendly IT guy I was talking to had not just returned from an underground lunchtime photo shoot.



(All photos can be clicked for larger versions)