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Show 88 He talks about it like it's some kind of promised land, a magical discovery unknown to society at large. After a while he says there is nothing he can say about Helper that will give me the right idea, so he should just be quiet until I see it myself. And he is. It's just the zip of my track and the blurry white lines on the highway until we get there. We stop at the only restaurant in Helper we can find because I'm hungry. There is nothing except for coffee, an apple and a banana for a vegan like Blake to order in a place like that, but he doesn't complain. He seems to like the sound of a fork being placed on a wooden table, the tones and colors of the coffee as he watches it pour from the pot through the dim restaurant light into his dark brown mug. The train station is just a place with train tracks and parked trains-no other markers. He tells me to park the track several hundred yards away because the trail that leads to the tracks is too narrow for it. We walk that trail and cross through a field of weeds until we get to the rusty tracks. The railroad ties feel thick and dull under my feet. The sun is falling and the railroad tracks and broken bottles to the side of them are bright. Soon we come to a place where there are a lot of trains that look like they haven't moved in a long time. Blake says some of them never really moved and that this is a playground for graffiti artists. There is a dilapidated cement structure not far away for practice as well. We have to walk through a swamp that comes out of nowhere to get there. The abandoned cement is sinking into the wet ground. There is a pond nearby and a |