Broken Dreams

Rural urbexing stirs up some stuff…

Broken Remains

The word “urbexing,” is a condensed word for “urban exploration” (UE) and orginally was applied to abondoned or derelict city spaces. It is a genre of artistic photographic exploration of such spaces. A sub-genre has come to be called “rural urbexing” (RUE) for exploring abandoned and derelict rural spaces.

One of my favorite things to do, before I became too disabled for it, was RUE. In fact, I used to take my son with me on my excursions and he fell in love with it too. He is an avid urbexer, more interested in UE than RUE. I have always been drawn to broken spaces… places abandoned by humanity. I am particularly intrigued by the dichotomy of nature overtaking these spaces, reclaiming them from humankind’s attempt to make nature conform, to tame the wild. I usually find a kind of unfolding rebirth in such places. There’s a wild elegance to it all in my artistic eye. There are also elements of thrill and mystery in the activity. Be warned however, there may be a threat of illegality or of encountering less-than-safe fellow explorers.

Still, keeping a few guidelines in mind, UE and RUE can be intriguing and fun activities, with few limitations of when and where you may participate. I would say that UE and RUE only have one hard and fast rule: NEVER disturb the site. Some more general guidelines follow:

• Take nothing and leave the site precisely as you find it.