Issue 08
URBAN ATROPHY
By Caleb Neelon
“Forgive us our trespasses,” goes the Lord’s Prayer, “as we forgive those who trespass against us.” To be perfectly Christian about it, the actions of longtime friends Dan Haga and Dan Ayers are still an offense, though not a sin. Dan and Dan, together known as the Urban Atrophy crew, are urban explorers, drawn to the abandoned buildings and structures comprising the blank areas of city maps. Operating out of their base in the Baltimore area, they cover hundreds of miles in search of disused hospitals, asylums, prisons, power plants, tunnels, and even missile silos. Cameras in hand, Dan and Dan are expert trespassers.
There is, of course, a right way to explore. “The common saying in the urban exploration world is ‘Take only photographs and leave no more than footprints,’ and it pretty much sums up how to go about urban exploration,” Haga explains. “We have strong ethics against things like vandalism, graffiti, and theft. We like to leave a location exactly how we found it for the next person to see, and that is what other explorers respect.”
Getting there is a good chunk of the fun. “Once,” says Haga, “I charted a two-mile hike, which we followed by compass, that brought us to a wall of barbed-wire fences that we had to climb to get access to an old missile launch site and silo. Most places involve dodging some sort of security.” Dan and Dan would probably have an easier (if spookier) time of it exploring sites at night, but their photography calls for daylight. Even so, some of their best finds occur in deep, abandoned corners where the sun has never shone. “One of my most memorable experiences,” Haga recalls, “was very recently, when I stumbled upon what looked like graves in the basement of an old hospital. Mound after mound of dirt and lines of white crosses on top of a concrete floor. There were stories of a creek uncovering some of the bodies in the cemetery at this place, so possibly the bodies were moved to the basement. They’ve definitely been there a long time.”
Like any good pursuit, urban exploration is an addictive one. Haga and his wife share a home with Ayers, and from there they plan future adventures using satellite photos from the Internet and historic building registries. Their criteria for good exploration sites include: access – the more difficult, the more rewarding; the current condition of the structure – preferably untouched, and even better if there are lots of papers, belongings, and other relics left on site; and the overall architecture – huge interiors of brickwork and hand-shaped plaster are good, plywood and drywall bad. Haga recently came upon a kayak, with which he plans to explore Baltimore’s harbor and the city’s storm drain system. But even a kayak won’t help him accomplish his dream explorations, which include the remains of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., a former mental institution whose noted inpatients included poet Ezra Pound. Dan explains that the hospital is “coveted by explorers and extremely difficult to access: it being the future home of the Department of Defense and the U.S. Coast Guard means it is very secure.” The Urban Atrophy crew also has some overseas dreams—the Holy Grail in their sights being the exclusion zone of Chernobyl. We’re looking forward to the photos.