An Adventure
Today, I went on an adventure. I went on a walk with my brother to a place I've never walked alone. We walked through a foreign neighborhood, behind a newspaper office, beside a freight railroad track, across a plot of open land, and we ran through the indoor parking garage of our closed library. The journey was thrilling.
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| Our journey |
What made our adventure even more thrilling to me, beside the abundance of new places we visited, is the independence I felt. Surprising that I've hardly walked on the stretch of land that leads parallel to the railroad track from behind the newspaper office, leading all the way to the Great Mall, though this exciting place is so close to where I live, less than a block away.
My 20-minute rebellious journey with my brother today made me remember other "adventurous" places on Main Street, where I live.
The first I have mentioned, a roughly 5000 square meter open piece of land in front of a railroad track nestled between the library and Milpitas Post. When I was 10, I assisted in collecting signatures for a petition to prevent the land from being used as a site for new apartments. The land is owned by a small committee, and is designated to become a local park, as it has been for at least the past six years. I do not know when construction will begin. Nowadays, the land is almost always unoccupied and full of tall grass. One can wander through the land freely, as there are no boundaries and the far end of the land is distant enough to remain usually unseen by oncoming traffic.
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| Open Land Beside Milpitas Library |
If the railroad track behind this land is followed northward, it leads to a small complex of office buildings, an RV parking lot and the building housing train controls for the nearby railroad track. Short cut green grass occupies most empty space. Even more delightful. I found out on a recent walk with my dad that the grass is part of a small park situated within the parking lot, and that there is an pretty, inconspicuous little creek that is heard before it is seen where duckies swim. A whole creek.
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| Office Complex and Creek |
If one travels back south to the land beside the library, and keeps traveling on the road behind the library, they will reach a very empty, private one-lane road. This is a popular site for homeless residence, likely because its endpoints (one being near the back of the library as mentioned) are obscure, and thus receives little traffic.
Roughly half a kilometer from its start, the road comes to a close near a quiet, tan office building. At this point, beside the building, a set of five parallel railroad tracks begin, some empty, others with stopped freight trains. These railroad tracks are parallel to Main Street, on the side of the lane heading North, but behind the stores, car dealership, and high-rise apartment buildings. Just on the other side of these buildings and establishments is a road that is no stranger to me, a road I've walked often when playing Ingress or Pokemon Go and been driven upon daily on our way to school.
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| Path along railroads from Milpitas Library to Great Mall |
Another couple of the hidden gems of Main street are a weathered, unmaintained open plot of land with a broken mailbox opposite to an obsolete gas station from the 1950s and a deserted house behind a family pet store underneath the deck of which stray cats socialize (a deserted house!). There's also a multistory parking garage across from the library. This garage, though it is rarely full, is not so infrequently visited as, for example, the open land beside the library, but surely going up the stairs and exploring the area would be a nice treat.
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| Deserted house where cats live |
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| Unmaintained, empty land |
I recently found out that there is a path to my friends house going across the railroad tracks that is less than a half kilometer (0.3 mile, just a 2-3 minute run). But by car, the journey is three times longer, and takes double the time than can be run, due to busy traffic.
It would sure be an adventure to explore these places with a neighborhood friend on a summer evening. Some are so surprisingly empty, yet full of exploration. Heck, even my brother was visibly thrilled when we ran together. Until then, it's a dream waiting to be fulfilled.
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