A few days ago I went on urban safari, exploring an old abandoned railroad track. (Spoiler: It wasn't.)

I'm staying much alone lately, working on the next album. I have a lot in my head, prefer to keep to myself as much as possible, just write and think and eat and sleep. Exploring remote areas on bike and foot are nice breaks, I bring my lunch and just kind of zombie around in deserted areas.

On one of my longer bike trips this weekend I came across an old and rusty railroad track, a segment of the Bergen-Oslo line replaced by a longer tunnel. Great! I could follow it some distance on my bike by a dirt track, but eventually the track continued alone through tunnels, along a steep mountain side by the fjord. So I parked the bike and set out on foot, with my camera and handheld recorder.

I walked for some miles on the track, through tunnels and steep canyons carved out of the mountain side. There were lots of great sounds to sample, it was a windy day but deep in the canyons it was quiet, just lots of eerie drips and spooky drops. Splendid reverbs and weird tonal soundscapes from all the water running. Some places along the track there were piles of rusty nails and rotten boards, making for  soggy haunting sounds. It was very meditative, quietly exploring, listening to soft mountain walls and banging out tones on moist wood.

After a while I came upon a short, open segment, with a nice view to the fjord. In the distance I could hear a remote factory whistle echoing between the mountain walls, and I thought "hey that sounds almost like a train, that's nice for atmosphere". Depending on the wind, sometimes the whistle was really loud, and I decided to sample it, would be a neat addition to the eerie tunnel sounds. I climbed up on a short cliff by the track to get better clearance from the walls.

I was adjusting the recording level, kind of hard to find a proper gain, the whistle was suddenly superbly loud and clear, sounded like it was just around the bend...

...and then. It actually came hurling around the bend. Embodied as a fucking real life full size full speed thundering Harry Potter steam locomotive.

My jaw dropped to the mossy ground decorated with rusty nails, and I completely forgot about sampling - but I had the sense to grab my camera and shoot, or else I wouldn't even believe myself this actually happened. So there:

The train zoomed past me, so close I could have touched it. It seemed very, very real. There were people inside. They were as surprised as me at seeing someone real. It made a lot of noise. The ground was shaking. Then it was gone and all was quiet again.

I was like: WAHT TEH FUU I'm in a steampunk time machine movie did you see that DID YOU SEE THAT it was a real steam engine and vintage wood wagons and it sped just past me it makes a whistle sound and it was so f**king awesome did that really happen I could almost touch it and it probably weighs a ton or five and where did that come from oh my god maybe there are zeppelins too where are they! where are they!...

Then it dawned on me; I got the shivers, the track is NOT abandoned. At all. If this had happened one minute earlier, or I had been one minute later with everything I did in my life, I could be dead now. I have no idea if I could have escaped that monster in the tunnels or canyons, or if I would have even heard it, or if it could have stopped, if it had seen me. That was many tons of iron moving really fast along a very given trajectory, there's a physics formula here that most likely does not compute to my advantage.

This track is so NOT abandoned. And there are tunnels in all directions how on earth am I going to get back to my bike? Must I stay here for the rest of my life, die of starvation on this puny cliff of safety from that sneaky ninja locomotive? Can I eat pine? Grass? For how long? Are there mobile coverage here? Does it matter, because did I bring my mobile and can I phone in an airlift? NO.

Any lesser person would probably lie down to die, but I laugh in the face of fear. Or rather - I have an album to make. So I tiptoed back towards the recent canyon, stood absolutely quiet for two minutes, trying to listen for a new train, then ran like a shit-scared chicken through the mountain pass. Eventually on the other side I found an opening in the steep hills, and could climb back through the woods to my bike. Sometimes in the distance I could still hear a train whistle, but no train never passed me again.

I am so not going into a train tunnel again.

Back at my bike I quickly pedaled myself back into inner city safety, and had my lunch in a quiet graveyard park. Suitably, contemplating life and death. Realizing some of my current and regular album struggles are kind of petty. I am actually lucky to be alive to tell this tale. Mostly because of my own ignorance. Though, how awesome would it have been to end up as "met his end by steam locomotive"? 

That WOULD have been an awesome end.