Since this blog now exists I thought I would share one of my favorite old stories, and possibly one of the stranger encounters I’ve had. A good alternative title for this story would be “Out of the hole and facing rebirth”…

One of my favorite things about this job is completing service requests - these are generally requests from people who actually want to see us. A nice change of pace from being the bearer of usually unpleasant news. Most of these requests are pretty routine - “person concerned about tree in proximity to power lines” is by far the most common. On this particular request, a neighbor was concerned about a property behind hers with a large tree growing into high voltage lines. Nothing strange, but not on her property. I called the person who made the request before heading out to see if I could get some more details and get access to her yard to see things from her vantage point. She agreed to meet and let me into her backyard, where I could access an easement and see the tree.

It was during monsoon season, the weather outside was nice and humid - the air still fresh from a recent rain, and the sky grey and overcast. The request was in one of my favorite central Phoenix neighborhoods with lots of dense old trees and flood irrigation. As soon as I pulled up in front of her property I could see the tree she was concerned about, a massive old female carob growing directly into the lines. I drove around to the other street to go talk to the property owners and schedule pruning access.

The property where the tree was located was entirely walled off, easily 10’ tall wooden walls surrounding it. It looked vacant or abandoned. I couldn’t find a single access point to knock on the door, and my knocks and hollering at the front wall yielded nothing from the property - just confused looks from an elderly neighbor who was watering her plants next door.

I returned to the lady’s property who called the request, and decided to see if we had access to the tree through the easement. The easement was massively overgrown with lantana, grasses, and sow thistle - but sure enough you could walk right up to the tree. I also noticed that there was open access to the walled off property’s backyard, so I decided to wade through the brush to try and find a front door.

I pushed through the brush in the easement, walking toward the backyard of the property. I noticed the property had a bunch of overgrown and neglected fruit trees, large garden beds, and multiple buildings. As I was looking at the rearmost building, and noticing that it’s windows and doors were covered by tattered blankets… I slipped and slid down into a large dug out hole in the ground. About ten to fifteen feet down I slid on my ass, into this dark unknown abyss - covered overhead by the lantana.

Shaking myself off, and laughing at my failure to maintain situational awareness I stood and tried to assess my current predicament. The pit looked like it was constructed maybe as a pond but construction was abandoned halfway through. The side I slid down was muddy and steep, and the interior of the hole was maybe 15 feet across, and asymmetrical. The far side had ‘steps’ built in, with old tires and wood reinforcing it. I began climbing out on that far side, careful not to slip again, pushed through the overgrowth, and came face to face with this (click to show image):

No explanation was ever found for it’s existence - the buildings on the property had an air of decay and abandonment. No glass in the windows or doors on the buildings, only old tattered blankets. Oddly, the “shed” was the most intact building on the property. I left a door hanger on the building that seemed most likely to me to be the main building, and very carefully avoided the pit on my egress.