Something in the bike starts to grind just 20 miles out of Missouri. It’s nothing ugly at the outset, but I check Shitholes for the nearest likely pull-off and find a scene of autumn that has persisted well into the summer months.
A grove of dead trees stands at the border, tormented (and made greener) by thick ropes of manicured ivy. Clouds hesitate in the sky above, churning out a pink-tinged storm that looks like the underside of a sea creature. Two women toil in the grove with a hickey bar and a long piece of rusted metal. Together, they prop up the branch of something that could be an oak.
‘Maria Vasquez, owner of ‘Cold Grove,’ carefully avoids questions about her mid-west installation. Her acreage is thick with extinct trees- dead, of course, or they wouldn’t be extinct- held up and together with conspicuous pieces of metal and constant, obsessive maintenance by those in her employ. The sources of the unprocessed specimens is a mystery- the trees themselves are unlabeled and have only undergone amateur identification. The gates of ‘Cold Grove’ are opened inconsistently and trespassers face prosecution with an infamous zeal. It’s not friendly enough to be an educational center and it lacks the careful whimsy of art.
Former ‘Grove’ employee, Richard Denner, has famously (where fame is relative) accused Vasquez of occult motivations. ‘Cold Grove,’ he claims, has been erected to attract the ghosts of things long dead. Like columbine, which can be propagated as an invitation to humming birds, ‘Cold Grove’ requires no explanation because it is the means to an end and not the end itself. All said, there is evidence that Denner’s departure from the ‘Grove’ was an unpleasant one and he has since proved himself to be a man of little relevance.’
Finding the gates to ‘Cold Grove’ are open, I shake the bike a few times and leave with the vague idea that it might sort itself out over the duration of a walk. Inside, I see the women across the ‘Grove’ notice me and I pretend not to see them, taking on the guise of a non-intrusive passerby.
Despite care and rounded metals, the trees chafe at their structures, splintering and peeling where the wind has encouraged post-life movement. Something, rain probably (or wooden ennui) has led much of the grove to weep, creating dark, dripping stains where they bend in their death-permanent poses. A majority of their number stand like modern palm trees, great, barren stalks, and each is as cold and as hard as stone.
The trunk of one tree rattles as I pass; its structure buzzes under my fingertips. The head of a boring insect emerges for a split second, just at eye level, before retreating into the dark of the wood. The skin of the tree shifts, then, as a thousand tunnels fill with a thousand heads like the last. They wait and seem to watch me, clicking under insectile breaths.
“Grove’s closed!” one of the women shouts, and I skitter backward for fear of getting caught in a swarm.
But they have gone and the tree is silent.
Twenty miles out of ‘Cold Grove’ the bike makes a sound like an old woman’s cough and the grinding clears.
-traveler
