Recently I spent a blissful several hours walking the grounds of the deserted institution formerly known as the South Carolina State Lunatic Asylum.
Established 1822.
Its deteriorating cupola faces everyone driving eastward on Elmwood to where it makes a "T" with Bull Street.
Turn left and in no time you're at Palmetto Health Richland. Turn right and say Aunt Sally and you're in downtown Columbia. Stay straight and you're less than a hundred yards from (now empty) mental wards. The terminus, as it were.
In fact, the land on which the old asylum sits is the largest in-town tract of developable real estate on the eastern seaboard.
One hundred seventy-eight acres. Some under broken glass.
And for one hundred seventy-six years, it was home to tens of thousands whose mental state rendered them unable to function in society.
Sounds like Washington, District of a different Columbia.
Going nowhere. Well -- no place anybody in their right mind wants to go.
In recent years however, investors have floated ambitious plans for the crumbling property, none of which lofty visions have thus far come to fruition.
So there it sits at the mercy of the elements, not to mention the second law of thermodynamics. Waiting for deliverance as countless souls have done within its environs.
It seemed appropriate for me to head my automobile toward the asylum grounds to take pictures. Things have been crazy at my house.
I sought solitude combined with moderate exercise enhanced by a mild creative buzz. And as so often has been the case in cemeteries, I found it.
As you might imagine, this defunct property is massive, creepy, eerie, haunting in its Stephen King-ish brand of decay, dereliction, and acute abandonment.
Someday I'd like to gain entrance to Babcock -- the main hospital building -- as others have done, and take photos of the heartbreaking detritus to be found there.
But on Saturday, owning the keys to no kingdom, I was obliged to content myself with drive-walking the acres looking for poignant outdoor photographic subjects.
It was hot so I wore a hat. Enthusiastic cicadas droned in the trees and overgrowth but otherwise it was wonderfully silent.
The voices are all gone and so are the eyes, but there were times I felt watched and I heard -- well. Not voices. I'm not there yet.
But it is at times as though, if you listen, you can hear memories.
They speak to you. Pay attention, I said to myself.
The sky was impressive enough, though perhaps not as dramatic as I would have preferred.
Ultimately the saving grace turned out to be that my heart was in it.
And as always when that is the case, the clouds occasionally parted to reveal something special.
As I wended home to my family -- whom I've convinced I'm sane -- I snapped one more from the car window going westward on I-26.
Yes, I was careful. Eyes on the road.
Enjoy your life and look to the skies not only this weekend, but always.
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Happy Friday
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