Underground Landscape - Tristin Nyce

 Tristin Nyce

Prof. Schnell

Honors Intro to Cultural Geography

12 November 2024

Underground Landscape

            Only 30 minutes down a mostly straight path from Kutztown University, sits my home in East Greenville, Pennsylvania. I have lived in the same house my entire life until moving to Kutztown University, thus there are many intricate landscapes I have come to know and love that would go amiss to almost anyone else simply driving by. One of these landscapes that has stayed consistent is the train tracks just a few steps from my house. These train tracks run through my entire town and are not just a familiar landmark, but a way of transportation and even simple leisure at times.

            There are two common ways to get to these train tracks, which is only one part of what makes it an underground landscape. The first way is to climb up the side of a short bridge looming over a street just one quick turn off the one I live on. The other is to walk through a field and past a factory that, to be completely honest, I am still unaware of its exact use after 19 years of living in sight of it. There is no clear entrance or exact path to access these tracks as these methods have been made up by members of the community over the years of the track’s existence.

            With how often these tracks are used to hang about in peace or as a shortcut to the local Walmart, you would think they are maybe inactive or abandoned and okay to walk on. This is far from the case. These train tracks are active to this day, and while they may not be necessarily busy, it is indeed illegal to roam on them. However, the discrete nature of the train tracks and the aged tradition of walking on them has simply become a part of living in my hometown and being a kid in my hometown even more so. Trains rarely go through the tracks and police are rarely in sight of the tracks whatsoever. This underground nature of these tracks is what has allowed me to save myself hours of walking over my many trips to Walmart, climb on top of dormant and graffiti-ridden trains, and have some of the most peaceful and in-depth conversations with some of my best friends to this day