Forgive Us Our Trespasses
An abandoned quarry in an undisclosed location
An abandoned quarry is an invitation. It scratches that itch of the human desire to explore. It has the bonus of not being well marked, so finding one feels like a genuine discovery (even if you found it on Google Maps first). Abandoned quarries have that peaceful, creepy, post-apocalyptic quality to them, like a broken-down house on a country road.
The quarry pictured above has the deluxe features of being pretty well hidden despite being close to “civilization”. And it’s only accessible (these days) by bicycle, so the chances of getting caught are slim.
Michael and I started coming to this quarry during the pandemic and have been back four or five times since so far. As someone without a backyard, it’s the perfect place to ride out, make a nice campfire, and have a cookout. We’ve had a lot of fun introducing more and more of our friends to this hidden gem. We hope to come back this summer for a dip in the lake and maybe even some cliff diving.
It’s funny when you find something like this, your mind lets you believe you are the only people in the world who know about it. That desire to claim uncharted territory can draw a straight line back to Westward Expansion and lots of other unsavory conquests, but it’s there all the same. Being in a place untouched makes you feel special, somehow. That feeling evaporates when you see the trash left behind by the last thrill-seekers. Or run into some sheepish looking fishers enjoying their “private” watering hole.
This quarry is such a beautiful place. It’s a shame it’s not a public park. It being filled with people might dampen allure of risk inherent in trespassing, but I’m of the opinion that all lands should be open to the public.
Michael loves telling anyone who will listen about the “right to roam”. It’s a concept in the United Kingdom and many other northern European countries in which the public has the freedom to explore and recreate on any land, public or privately owned, as long as they do nothing disruptive or harmful (hunting, logging, making a fire, driving off-road vehicles, etc). I wish that were true here.
I love this quotation by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which he wrote in 1754 in Discourse on Inequality:
“The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,” and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
Not that I don’t believe in land ownership, but I don’t think that private individuals, corporations, or governments should be able to use land ownership to keep people out (save a few exceptions). Public lands are an inherent good for society. This is obvious to anyone who has lived in the western United States, where vast swaths of land belong to all of us. The culture in the west differs from the eastern US, and I believe access to the outdoors is one of the primary reasons. (Of course, while the west may have their shit figured out with land access, the water laws out there are pretty messed up. We easterners are definitely winning on the water rights side of things. But that’s a topic for another time.)
I find it interesting that trespassing plays a prominent role in the Lord’s Prayer. As a child who didn’t attend church, I mostly heard the Lord’s Prayer at funerals. But I attended an unusually large number of funerals as a kid for a year or two crucial to my development. The first time, it baffled me that everyone was saying the same words together. How did they know what to say? But as I learned the words over time, I wondered at their meaning. “Forgive us our trespasses” is not about the act of trespassing on lands per se, but more a stand-in for sins of all kinds. Though it implies trespassing is an inherently forgivable sin.
And as we all know, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
