Marsh View Path

buzzwig | 8/05/2007 10:37 pm | The Mad Biker Blog

I recently took a day to just explore on my bike as I love to do. I checked out the tracks near my apartment that cross Fair Oaks Ave. and proceed to go under Highway 30 (Aberg). I love forgotten urban spaces, and this is definitely one of them. There has to have been some kind of factory or warehouse there that was removed many years ago because there are still overgrown, concrete, loading-dock ramps for train cars to pull up to. There are some rusty old bin cars parked there with their warped steel ladders on the sides and faded graffiti with an assortment of metal, rubber and plastic bits of scrap in the bottoms left there from their very last haul. I rode up onto a abandoned loading-dock ramp to peer down inside at rusy gears and wiry things.

Google map to follow along

Continuing along toward the HWY 30 bridge I saw that someone had had themselves a fire recently. Remnants of the fuel for that fire lay in a blackened pile. This was just past where Commercial Ave. (S. side of 30) ends and the dirt path continues. Probably considered private property making me a trespasser. Oops.

This area makes you wary of what gang of wild dogs might saunter around the corner from the shadow of the bridge with foamy drool streaming from their tense jaws and attack you while you try to yell for help with no affect because there's no one around to hear you. The kind of place I used to hang out when I was a little kid, basically. Bleak and Industrial. After passing the tire and beer bottle laden fire pit and entering into the shadow of the HWY 30 bridge, imagine my surprise to see a very new, pleasant looking, paved bike path crossing under the road and over a quaint little bridge spanning Starkweather Creek. The space under this highway bridge is expansive. You could perform hamlet here entertaining a comfortable audience of a hundred or more in lawn chairs. Of course there are steel barrels under there for bums to set fires in for staying warm on cool autumn and winter nights. Or for garbage that you might wish to off load while riding the path I suppose. This was my introduction to the Marsh View Path.
I decided to explore the path and found that it is indeed the very path I've observed people riding while sitting in my dentist's office on Corportate Dr. getting my teeth buffed and staring out the big window. The spot where I met up with this path, beneath the bridge, is merely a brief, intriguing passage along a very pleasant ride through the marshy area behind the undeveloped land with a farm house and barn on it. If you ever go to Woodman's on Milwaukee Street from the direction of East Washington St. you know what I'm talking about. Another odd urban artifact with aging graffiti on it. Actually, I believe this is a remnant of the Town of Blooming Grove that remains an island surrounded by Madison.

Starting on Corporate Dr. across from Woodman's, behind the Post office on Milwaukee St., this currently short path goes through a very pleasant area that otherwise would not be appreciated so closely. It has benches along it as well as light posts which I presume would be illuminated in the night. The cross-under of highway 30 has sort of a deep, dark, scary woods feel to it, but it provides one of few safe ways to cross from one side of HWY 30 to the other, on foot or bike, without tapping into your fading Frogger video game skills.

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