A Lumber Yard.

An abandoned lumber yard. I found myself down by the weathered file cabinets and brick walls stained in graffiti. I wasn't alone. We don't go to these sort of places alone, now do we? I had a friend. A great friend. Who pushes every limit to meet any challenge. If you give her lemons, she won't make lemonade. She'll dig deeper, probably photograph them, and turn those lemons into the greatest fruit to have hit Times Square. Epic.

Anyway, the lumber yard. I felt like I was ten years old and passing by the house with the ferocious dog and nose-pinching scent. But even when your ten, that day eventually comes when you need to find out more; hop the neighbors fence and bring out that pair of binoculars you saved for this very moment.

We've come a long way since those days. Binoculars are now cameras, with zoom lenses nonetheless. And "sneaking in" becomes "trespassing." Bigger words, legendary concepts. It was the creepiest place I'd ever been, at least in broad daylight.

What looked like a shattered radio, rested in the dirt, it's contents strewn like a broken piece of jewelry. For some odd reason, I felt like an old jazz melody with a heavy trumpet could have been playing. Our steps were small, as if each toe were pressing one piano key after another.

The buildings settled in the precocious air, releasing echoes of creeks and undefinable cracks into the sky. They hit my ears like a long-awaited sigh, the kind of sigh you'd hear in a bedroom at the end of a nursing home corridor. We navigated the property; the warehouse, the front desk, and studied its detail. Old packaging labels lay tangled in the shrubs as torn mattresses and campfire remnants gave way to more recent life.

The silence was overwhelming.

It's incredible when a location like that can trigger your most primitive emotions. It is abandoned. That's the first thing that comes to mind. But is it sweeter to be abandoned than to be replaced? I've tried to pick a side here, but to tell you the truth I find myself struggling between the pros and cons. It's puzzling, really.

Good luck with that one.