Report
︎
The car beeps as he locks it behind him. Jingling keys in hand, he slowly begins his walk uphill. An eerie silence supplements the obscurity of the dimly lit path. He walks past two buggies, the only two with signs that read "Out of Order". With no easier means, he keeps walking on the gravel path as it rumbles beneath him. The course begins to warp around a colossal mountain, which he can only see faintly. He listens to the rustling grass that cascades down a stepped landform. He had walked there before, not only yesterday but years before, when the land mass was bare and an expeditiously growing aggregation of waste. It did not look that anymore, it did not smell like that anymore, and it did not sound like that anymore. The landscape has been transformed into a quilt of brown and green, a visual testament to an alteration of the natural order.
He comes to a halt as he listens to the stillness being engulfed by a dump truck. The rumbling of the gravel path rises to a crescendo and stops. "Get in", he hears. Pushing the food wrappers onto the floor, he sits on the passenger seat. They mumble over the radio's static as they drive past a leachate. The headlights illuminate the murky green water splashing on sandstone encrusted in moss. Sitting on an edge that meets mossy rock, stacks of pipes, temporary fencing, dismantled train tracks and concrete debris.
As they finally arrive at the gates, a swell of stringent machinery tears through the quietness. Spotlights finally uncloak his surroundings, and he is met with an array of bobcats, backhoes and trucks. He realises he is early and sits in a loaded truck as he watches the curing windrow turners. They slowly move through mounds of compost, turning and aerating it. He watches them as the machinery clinks as it moves until it is time to leave. A medley of trucks, along with his, makes its way towards the station.
When they arrive, he approaches the platform and watches them load the carriages. The tumult finally comes to a decrescendo and is abruptly met by a screech as they disembark. As he listens to the unvarying clacks of the train, he glimpses into the flat, infinite terrain. Hardly and barely, he can make out the etching of agricultural patterns. Scars that inform human intervention. Roads and motorways dissect this vastness. A connection between the urban and rural.
They arrive at the platform. He gets off and watches them unload the compost. Mindlessly counting the bags as they are unloaded, he is reminded of a more vibrant time, from exactly where he is now, not too long ago.