A Trip to Alte Salem Kirche

"Cathedral towers over the fields. Rotten photo. I took it through the car window after we'd been driving all day, the car still moving. I've only kept it because I remember taking it, remember the feeling of coming in over the fields and towards somewhere I sort of knew. It doesn't actually matter you can't see the towers, I know they're there. That's what I like about this one. That I took it for me. Just for me." --Janice Galloway, Foreign Parts

Stephanie and Amanté
Amanté and Stephanie

driving through the fading daylight of an Indiana landscape.

We're sort of in Evansville still, Evansville according to Google, but I saw the county line back on the highway. Maybe these side roads twisted and turned back that far east as we drove through the gathering dusk, uncertain. My sense of direction stopped following along ten minutes ago. Off our personal maps now, we're chasing something I read about on an Internet forum once. We are somewhere neither of us has ever been, heading toward something neither of us has ever seen.

Ahead, the street curves down into a hollow canopied by trees so dense, the pavement is cast into premature night. I feel my pulse throb slightly, pick up pace.

"So we're definitely going to get hacked to pieces by a guy with an ax out here, right?" Amanté asks.

"Definitely. There's definitely a guy with an ax just waiting for some young people to wander by all the way the hell out here." We're only kidding, of course we are, but I can feel the adrenaline slowly trickling into my veins. Buzzing the way it does before a big storm.

We drive past an unmarked drive that disappears around a curve and possibly leads to our destination. There's a mailbox, which is pretty unexpected. Not even a very old mailbox. It looks so clean and modern that it jars with the backdrop. So we keep straight, squinting into the woods as we pass, but the thick growth is full of late evening shadows and gives away nothing.

"That was the place," Amanté says after a moment.

"It must be..." I falter.

"No, it is. Look." He motions skyward, to where a moldering steeple peeks above the treeline beside us.

There are no suspicious neighbors, no other cars to rush us as his truck circles back. Just this deserted road and the dirt path waiting ahead for us.

As we turn in, the headlights hit a cross. A makeshift cross, devised of haphazardly broken boards and nailed to the gnarled trunk of a tree. Maybe it's a sign for curious travelers like us. Or people who have nowhere else to go. Here in the last strains of daylight, it feels menacing.

But we
            creep
                   forward
                              through
                                        the
                                           trees
                                                                                                                                                 until

the                
church fills          
our view to the       
right, spire dark      
against the deepening sky.

And a fire.

The building rests in a small hill clearing, descending quickly to woods on every side. Google said there was a campground buried somewhere in the weald behind the church, but seeing a campfire so near is unsettling. And there's a trailer beside the fire pit, a dilapidated thing stretching along the forest's edge. Some kind of office for the campsite? Someone's hunting shack? Someone's home? An abandoned structure where local homeless bed down? Meth lab? I'm too unnerved by this unexpected sign of life to study my surroundings carefully, risk making eye contact with someone who might not like it.

Amanté slowly turns the truck around in plain sight of anyone who might be near the fire. He has to, there's no other space to do it and we can't risk backing into a tree in this unfamiliar landscape, it's not even his truck. I pass the time wondering if we're about to be shot at. Finally, we're aimed back toward the main road, separated by the hill from the glow of the firelight. I'm chattering because I'm nervous, chattering with no real idea what I'm saying, only I know I mention that some people have gone inside the building, I've seen photos. Amanté puts the truck in park and jumps out, leaving the door wide to check the padlock on the church entrance that hovers a few feet above the ruin of stone steps. I scan our surroundings like it might be a trap, like I think someone might be sneaking up on us.

And then we're back on the road, deer playing in the dim fields beside us. They stop to stare as we pass.

Nothing's as intimidating in the daylight of the morning that follows. The sky is as gray as the church, with a rain so soft, it might be a trick of the imagination.



I stick to the front of the church, letting it obscure me from anyone beyond, and poke cautiously around in my dress while Amanté sets up the camera. I turn too quickly and catch sight of us in a reflection, nearly have a heart attack. Twice.





After he takes his pictures, I steal back toward the collapsing remains of a house half-hidden among the trees at the same edge of the property as the trailer. Which is when I see something strikingly red in the midst of all those dull browns and greens. Someone's jacket, hood up.

They are facing away from me, looking toward the trailer. They don't know I'm behind them. Before they can turn around, I retreat quietly back to my side of the church. There are no KEEP OUT signs, nothing to warn us that there's NO TRESPASSING or that we're on PRIVATE PROPERTY. All the same, I don't want to rub anyone the wrong way. Or startle them by appearing behind them silently.

Instead, I slowly circle the structure in the other direction, taking in the details.

Most of the glass at ground-level is broken, but when I lever onto my tiptoes to look through jagged panes, I nearly gasp at the vivid blue that comes into view. Stained glass windows on the opposite wall--trailer-side--are completely intact and daylight is streaming through them gorgeously. I back away and try to take pictures on my phone, windows through windows, but it doesn't look right.



And I think I've found the main entrance, a gaping hole that probably once housed double-doors, obscured behind a thicket of trees and bramble in what I first took for a ditch. We could just walk right in. I'm not taking my chances in those bushes, not with my legs bare, but if we wanted to.

There isn't much else to see from the outside. I decide that since we're about to leave anyway, I don't care, so I head toward the house that's falling in on itself and try to get as close as possible, just to see in. Upon closer inspection, a patch near what used to be a door reveals itself to be a sign prohibiting hunting. It probably swung freely from the farmhouse once, but has long since rusted over so thickly that it's corroded into the structure. This is all I can really tell. There's too much tall grass surrounding it, with large shards of broken glass spread around, and I'm aware that probably someone is watching us from the trailer. So we leave.



As we sit at the light to turn back onto the highway, something wells in my throat and I hold it there. While I wait for it to ebb, I snap a photo. The western periphery of my hometown under a sky blue-gray like an ocean. Cars going about their weekday business. A deer sign that I always joke is a flying deer crossing, which literally no one has ever laughed at, not a single time, not even me. The radio is playing "Crawlersout" and Amanté is absently tapping the wheel in time, watching the traffic. It doesn't matter that there's nothing significant whatsoever about this shot, that you don't know where we were or who was with me or how the music sounded in that moment. I know it when I look at the photo. That's what I like about this one. That I took it for me. Just for me.