The Quarry

I hiked over the hill from the house to the radio tower, on my way to the quarry. As many times as I had trodden this path, I had rarely done it alone. Mom and Dad hadn’t let us come back here on our own when we were kids. Too dangerous. But once we started getting older, they’d let me and my brother go play there, as long as we were together and promised not to play near the edge.

I crossed the driveway up to the radio tower and continued across the other side, where the embankment got suddenly steep and left a gap under the barbed wire fence. I crawled under it as I climbed up the other side. My feet slid slightly on the wet fall leaves, but I scampered up the incline without getting the knees of my jeans dirty.

I was in the glade now. Tall pine trees towered on either side as I weaved my way through the forest until I came out on the old road. I thought of it as a road, anyhow. It was more just a flat clear area that meandered through the woods, and would have been wide enough for a vehicle at one time, before trees had fallen over the path and new shrubs had popped up in the middle. But most of the shrubs were kept down by the thick layer of wet leaves that carpeted the forest floor here.

I followed the abandoned road through the forest until the trees began to thin, and I could see the edge. I left the road then and walked to the cliff to peek over the side. It had been a source of endless wonder to me since I was young what an abandoned quarry was doing here in the middle of the woods, just a few properties away from my childhood home. None of the research I did online ever turned up any records, and none of the locals my parents had asked seemed to know much either. It wasn’t really a big enough quarry to draw attention, and it seemed to have been abandoned decades previously, leaving plenty of time for junipers and pine trees to take hold in the cracks along the walls and in the scree piles along the bottom. Plus it was far enough back that you couldn’t even see it from the road, especially since the trees grew right in the old road entrance.

Staring down into the quarry now, I realized I couldn’t see the bottom. There was a thick blanket of fog shrouding the quarry floor. I was surprised. There were usually a few good sized puddles in the quarry, but I wouldn’t have thought there would have been enough moisture for it to be foggy. I had been to the quarry in all kinds of weather before, and had never seen a fog in the bottoms previously. It gave everything a mysterious quiet. I looked around on the cliff face, and back into the forest at my back. There was no fog anywhere up here, just in the bottoms. I wished my brother were there with me to see how spectacular it looked, shrouded in cloud.

I turned back to the abandoned roadway to take me to a better spot to climb down. I couldn’t wait to walk down in the bottoms and experience the fogged over quarry up close. It was like something out of a storybook, and I was giddy to go exploring. I came to the usual spot and walked through the trees to peek over again. This part of the quarry was full of fog too. It was like a sheet of it had settled over the whole brim of the place. I found my usual path down along a pile of gravel that pushed up against cliff edge where I stood. I slid down, hearing the rocks sliding beneath my feet and listening to them echo as they tumbled down ahead of me.

As I descended, the temperature fell and it grew much dimmer. Even though it was the middle of the day, once I slipped below the shroud, I could no longer see the sun, and it gave the quarry a kind of timeless feeling, like I could stay there for days only to re-emerge the moment I left.

The fog down here was strange. I got off the gravel pile and stood on the flat limestone surface of the bottom. It seemed thicker around the edges, and it clung to the rock piles and walls especially. The stillness and odd lighting made everything seem eerie. It was beautiful.

I wandered through the quarry, checking out all the nooks and crannies. I walked through the part where the quarry narrows and dead ends, through the scraggly overhanging juniper trees whose roots clutched at the bare rocks and boulders, seeking a soil that wasn’t there. And the mist made everything that was familiar seem new and strange in ways I hadn’t seen before.

As I walked back toward the gravel pile I had climbed down on, I came across a pile of boulders where the fog seemed especially thick. Oddly thick. Not wispy and cloud-like at all really, but a milky white that seemed almost solid. I stopped and stared for a moment, and it felt like the fog stared back. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. My mind went to all manner of fairy tales and fantasy monsters that lurk in such places…wraiths and dementors and who knows what else. But I have always prided myself on being a rational person. There’s no such thing as monsters. I’ve been to this quarry a hundred times, it’s just a pile of rocks.

I approached the boulder pile slowly. And as I got close, I reached out. I don’t know what I was expecting. I guess I just wanted to prove to myself that my slight fear response was unfounded and that there was nothing to be wary of. But as my hand reached into the fog, it grew cold. Unnaturally cold, like going into a bucket of ice. I gasped and suddenly the fog swirled upward over the tops of the boulders into a tall pillar, but there was no wind to sway even the small hairs that hung down in my face. I jerked my hand away and turned on my heel and ran. I scrambled up the gravel pile faster than I would have thought possible for how loose it was, and was back into the forest before I even had a chance to process my reaction.

I kept running, throwing glances behind me. I only slowed when the quarry was no longer in sight. There was no fog in the woods. It was a beautiful, sunny day. I stood there, panting, my heart racing. I felt foolish. But I didn’t turn around to go back.