“The Fairy Fern Refuge Area is hidden behind a labyrinth of poorly placed signs and poorly worded directions. Even seasoned travelers will find themselves doubting on the long hike to the refuge, wondering whether they’ve wandered through the Fairy Ferns without realizing, only to conclude eventually that the Fairy Fern infestation ground would be very difficult to mistake.”
The author of Shitholes, be it me or someone else, has not seen fit to write their own directions or draw their own map to the Fairy Fern Refuge Area. A road sign mentions, as an afterthought, that the trailhead can be found ten miles ahead but the road signs seem to forget about it afterward and I spend an hour and a half roving the same stretch of forested highway until a small pull-off catches my eye. There’s a barbwire fence I hop, which worries me, but a decayed wooden sign in the dirt a short ways ahead shares several letters with the place I’m trying to find. Past that I’m left to follow a path which seems surprisingly viable considering the hoops I’ve jumped through to find it.
I walk a mile and swing left on a fork before I hear the low sounds of voices ahead and smell a good deal of smoke. Shortly I emerge into a small clearing in which several kids, maybe just out of high school, have built a little fire and around which they are drinking beer and shooting the shit. I haven’t been particularly quiet but they haven’t taken many precautions in terms of keeping an ear out and because I’ve been sleeping in the truck these past few days and haven’t slept all that well I wonder if my appearance doesn’t startle them some.
“Hey guys,” I say, offering a casual half-wave, “Is this the Fairy Fern Refuge Area?”
A look passes between them, a look that I don’t immediately understand. Could be relief that they’re not getting busted, could be suspicion, suspicion that I might still be out to murder them or to take their weed.
“This is just a place,” one says, “It doesn’t have a name.”
“Spooky,” I joke and I try to smile but they all just keep staring.
Fuck, I’ve gotten old. They don’t think I’m some sinister grifter at all, they think I’m a middle-aged plant enthusiast. It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m walking around the woods looking for a fern refuge and I’m clutching Shitholes in my hand like it’s a bible. There’s a banana and a bag of granola in my backpack because I’ve been getting peckish on excursions like these. And I used to be one of these guys, these kids that hang out in the woods. Fuck me, this is embarrassing.
“I think I took a wrong turn back a little way,” I tell them and stalk off, not unaware of suppressed laughter.
The right-at-the-fork is a lot less easy going than the left, a way overrun with nettles and segmented by fallen trees. Clumps of moss come off in my hands as I scramble over the underbrush and I maneuver awkwardly over the insect colonies I expose there. The whole way I’m thinking of those kids and their smug-sounding laughter and I’m realizing that no matter how this pans out those kids are going to have a better day than I am. Either I find the place or I don’t and that those are my choices is just… it’s just exhausting.
There are a bunch more forks and turns in the path, a lot of roundabouts that are just long enough to trick me into going in circles. Shitholes guy, maybe me, was right about the refuge being a pain to find and he doesn’t even include a picture or a description of a fairy fern but seems to rely on the reader just knowing it when they see it which I know I probably won’t. What do I do with my time between cases that isn’t research? There’s nothing of substance to my free time, a lot of trying to sleep in the back of my pick-up. A lot of hasty eating.
After another short hike I come across a lacquered brick path, well grown over, certainly, but the sort of thing that promises a sight. It’s also when I hear a voice in the tree above me and it says:
“If I had more teeth, would you think I was more beautiful?”
There’s a man in the tree, dressed in worn jeans and a t-shirt that looks like he bought it at a gas station.
“Who says I think you’re beautiful?”
“Nobody,” he says and I see that he’s missing two teeth front and center, one above and one below, “It’s a question of relativity.”
“I’ve never dated a guy who was missing teeth.”
“Not what I asked either.”
“Then?”
“How many more teeth could I have,” he asks, “Before I was less beautiful? I’ve still got my wisdom teeth, if that matters.”
“I’m going to say five for the sake of ending this.”
“If you’re looking for the fairy ferns, you just missed them.”
For some reason this bothers me more than the teeth, even though it seems reasonable that the refuge is the only reason I would be out here. Suddenly the wind changes and I smell smoke.
“I burned them,” he says before I can ask.
I set out on the lacquered bricks at a jog but I only have to turn a corner before I see the smoking clearing ahead. A pile of fairy ferns burns freely in the center, individual fronds twisting and grasping in ways that are uncomfortably human. The earth has been gouged out, the trees nearby stripped of their bark.
“I salted the earth, too,” the guy says behind me, “I’m not superstitious, it just means things won’t grow as well now.”
“I know what salting the earth does!” I snap, “Why did you torch this place?”
“Have you seen a fairy fern?” he asks, “They’re invasive, bad for the plants around it, bad for the people who come to see them. If a plant deserves to be burned, the fairy fern does.”
“But this was a refuge.”
“Just calling a place a refuge doesn’t mean anything,” he shrugs, “If anybody wanted to protect these plants they would have put a guard out or something. If I had come through a month ago you would have walked through this field without ever realizing you missed them. I don’t think the world will suffer for their loss.”
“The…”
“You’re going to tell me that the food chain, the cycle of life is an intricately balanced system and that everything has its place but I’ll tell you that the world has been rebounding from extinctions for as long as there has been life and that sometimes, a lot of times, the blind groping of evolution on this planet produces something that’s just shit all around. You stepped on a piece of fairy fern back there, now look at the bottom of your shoe.”
There’s a frond trailing behind me like toilet paper and when I lift my foot I see that the base of the thing has worked its way up into the treads, digging into the rubber of my shoe. I pull my boot off quickly and feel pricks of pain in my foot as I do. My sock comes off, held to the inside of the shoe and bloodied. There are several small holes in my foot, each trickling blood. The fairy fern has infested the boot entirely and the leather pulls apart in my hand.
“Tell me you’re not going to throw that in the fire.”
“Of course I’m not,” I tell him, though it had crossed my mind, “You’re going to stop me?”
“Do I look like the fighting type?” he asks and I see again that he’s missing teeth, that there’s a knife at his side and dirt under his fingernails. He can’t be much older than me but he’s bigger and certainly stronger and he’s got a dirty shovel in his hands.
“Yes.”
“Well I’m tired after digging up so many plants.”
I’ve shaken most of the boot away from the fairy fern and it hangs limply now, watching the end of its species.
“How did you find this place?” I ask the man as he turns to leave.
“Read about it in a book. Watch your finger.”
The fairy fern has reached back up and wrapped a tendril around my pinky. I quickly shake it off and say nothing else as he goes. My own progress back to the truck is slow, walking with an injured, bare foot and stopping the fairy fern’s attempts to consume me. There’s a rat’s cage in the back of my truck that wasn’t there before, a rat’s cage and a few empty beer bottles. A scrap of paper, torn from another copy of Shitholes, is tucked up under my windshield wiper and it’s got a phone number scribbled in the margin. The entry is for a place called ‘The Kat Cirkus!’ and the guy’s crossed everything out and written ‘don’t bother looking for this one either.’
I cram the fairy fern into the rat cage and by the time I’m looking at it in the rearview mirror it’s already well-tangled around the bars. I’ll have to look into an aquarium.
-traveler
