Ways to Enter an Abandoned Mill
Once, the mills made paper. And then, decaying behind the floodwall, the mills just sat and waited. But a paper mill was not the first place I entered
simply for the thrill.
The first was a house growing just outside the neighborhood I was born in, one in a string of houses that had begun to sprout quick like mushrooms along my tree-stalked and stone-crossed hillside. I was a teenager.
I hated that invading house frame and I scuffed the dirt, kicked the earthmover, climbed monkey-style through the two-by-fours. Then the walls came up.
When the locks went on, I cracked the electronic code, 1-2-3-4. The garage door rolled open. I caught my breath.
Is it really this easy?
Again and again I went back to hear that illicit rumble, to enter, to lay on the freshly varnished floor. To hear the echoes, to feel the emptiness — it was my American dream. That access and aloneness were the most liberty I had known.
Eventually a family moved in. They might have changed the code but I never checked; I wasn't interested anymore. Inhabited, the house was like all the rest.
Now I'm the Paper Queen. I infiltrate a different kind of potential. I stash my headlamp in deep pocket jeans, slip on black bicycle gloves. I don a hood.
I spy the uninhabited mill decaying
behind the floodwall.
From the floodwall’s turret — I spy on her.
I pry into the building
memorize her potential.
Now I am an adult, a professional, an ivy-league graduate. I’ve run this activity by my attorney.
None of this means necessarily that I am not a criminal, I understand, or even that I’m not sometimes stupid. But knowledge helps construct an air of authority that allows me to proceed, with confidence, where I do not belong.
I aim to commit no crime and I never break, only enter.
When I swing my hips—
I’m walking that scene—
I never break but when I enter
I’m the Paper Queen.
I go into the Sherwood Forest of dark paper mills on the edge of the city, along the river bend and the floodwall. I see things. I am one of only a few who know about this thrill—
despite the many ways there are
to enter
an abandoned mill.
1.
Sometimes, it really is so easy. The building invites me inside.
She says, “I’m waiting.
You’ll never know
if you don’t try.”
The front door was unlocked so I was in and had closed the door so fast behind me, then paused to let my eyes adjust to the darkness.
The mill was big enough and dim enough to seem endless — all wide bays and boarded windows. Its disuse was palpable. The white noise of the building’s existence did not include voices or footsteps.
It may be an illusion that this is a room.
It is a canyon.
I am a crow in a canyon.
I was rooted in place. My own sounds slowly blended into all the rest — animals and ghosts.
It may be an illusion that this is a room.
Perhaps, I have opened the door and stepped
into the belly of a whale.
His ribs arced high above me, the colors all rotted brown and bloody black and bleached bones. I was unsure where to put my feet, disoriented by the room’s darkness after the sun-bright sky.
The building said, “I’m waiting”
so I stepped my way inside.
2.
As I swung my hips, I imagined what I would say to anyone who saw me spying around—
I just stumbled in here.
Sometimes, there was no easy code, no unlocked door. Buildings can appear impenetrable — the elements of weight, space and texture lock them down.
Take the bricks. They were laid double row into walls so thick that even where they crumbled there was still more surface. Bricks provide weight. The building is heavy and heavy things are hard to move into openness.
I am not a magician.
Space could be just as impenetrable. The upper windows were not boarded and many of them were missing panes. Some of the roof was vulnerable to the sky — but these openings were far overhead.
If only I could saunter in from above—
I was walking in the sky and
the roof was wide open
I imagined telling the owner.
The roof was wide open
I just stumbled in here.
I climbed iron rung ladders up the floodwall between the river and the mills, and walked along it like a castle wall. Flat bastions stood where water from the canal flowed back out to the river.
I made the climb to sit and look back in. To map the texture of a row of mills.
I am a crow on a cliff.
I spy on the mills decaying—
From the floodwall’s turret
I pry into the buildings.
The lower windows were pirate-style plywood — boards over loading dock cargo bays and collapsed-in places where there might be a way.
Some openings led nowhere. A crust of bay fell down into a hole, a dungeon. A dead end. I skirted anything with a dim reflection of oil slick some meters down.
If the weight and space conspired to keep me out, texture would lead me in.
A crack just in the back, low to the ground, not a window or a door but a gap in some larger boarded-up once-opening. A hole a couple of feet square and just enough to shimmy into.
Most times, that hole would go nowhere. A break in some boards that covered cinderblocks built strong from inside.
But I found the right one. An intimate way.
Head and arms first, fingertips gripped the cool cement as I hoisted myself up and in. My thigh scraped and I leveled and pulled,
pried myself in.
Crawling,
Face near the oil-stained and musty floor. I righted myself in a push back to standing.
The guts of the building were stone and less inclined to rot so close to the subterranean water crevice of the canal.
There was so much weight
to wade through.
3.
Later, plywood overlapping two sheets thick had been sliced right through with something sharp, creating a hole just big enough to stoop into. A hobbit door—
Who goeth?
Of course I am not the only one
who knows about the thrill—
given the many ways there are
to enter an abandoned mill.
This portal had not been there before.
All along, I knew people could be nearby. The raceways under some mills still made electricity and the historical commission toured others before approving their still yet-to-be-scheduled demise.
I’d found a mattress and other evidence of human presence, a small portable heat source and trash. One mill had yellow construction lights strung and although I never saw anyone there, the lights were always on. A mill closer to City Hall had graffiti in each window but the mills I preferred were unused in this way.
The cut-through plywood surprised me then, like the mattress that made me look over my shoulder a few more times than usual.
Who goeth?
Who goeth a borrowing, goeth a sorrowing—
Someone working was one thing. Someone who broke when they entered had also now slid in. I never break but I do enter.
It could be squatters or city kids sneaking around. But power tools? Perhaps thieves, there was copper in the guts if these buildings. It could be anything including a sneak up, brick-in-the-face knockdown (there were plenty of bricks), the darker part of my brain told me.
When I’m walking that scene
I quicken my step—
Put on some bravado
as the Paper Queen.
4.
One evening in City Center where the buildings are less derelict and just as empty. We peered into windows. We watched the progress of a small building that during daytime was being gutted and scrubbed.
The building said, “I’m waiting”
and I spied an easy way inside.
But my friend felt edgy
and asked me not to try.
For a long time I wondered if it was a lack of arrogance. Why not just decide that you belong, and step your way inside?
But it seems that my friend had been persuaded by the civilizing nature of human nearness. In the center of town, it’s neighborhood rules versus wild.
Sometimes the only way to go
is to pass the building by.
I was pretty sure that theory was true because other times, the tone was different. I let him force our way inside.
Boot against plywood — I did not make that kick myself.
If not going in is a subjective choice, so too breaking quickly becomes a clear intent—
I never break, only enter.
My world was smaller for my lack of force and I admit I was a hypocrite even in my resolve. I entered buildings through these illicit holes made by others. As long as I did not break them open myself.
The roof was wide open
I just stumbled in here.
I was only looking for liberty at first, and that teenage house had been mine for a mere moment. But I opened the door and stepped into an alternate
self.
When I walk that scene,
When I swing my hips—
There are many ways to enter
as the Paper Queen.
Alexis Fedorjaczenko has lived in an old paper mill, spent fifteen months camping the American west, and now makes home on a hilltop in Massachusetts. She holds an MFA from Western CT State University and a Master of Public Health degree from Yale University. Twitter: @ObjetAutre Instagram: @curious___cricket
