‘A peculiar group of whales has haunted the Massachusetts coastline since its abrupt appearance in 2018, forgoing any sort of migratory behavior in favor of a specific patch of water, roughly five miles in diameter. This is not what makes the whales peculiar. The pod is peculiar physically in such a way that the term ‘whale’ only loosely describes the things floating in the Atlantic Ocean. They are gray and balloon-like. They have small, black eyes and are never seen moving their fins (which stick out rigidly from their sides) or their mouths (which gape open to form perfect circles). They bob along the surface like bath toys and spin lifelessly whenever water blows from their spouts. The term ‘whale’ is used in this entry only because federal law requires that all publications refer to these ‘whales’ as such.

The federal government has created a program called ‘Whale Watch’ to surveil these creatures. ‘Whale Watch’ is free and, when interest is low, it’s also sometimes mandatory. Like a jury summons, an invitation to ‘Whale Watch’ is easier to answer than ignore. Selected participants are boated to a retrofitted oil rig called ‘Whale Watch Island,’ where they spend 1-2 days eating stales sandwiches and watching out for any behaviors that have not already been listed as ‘innocuous.’ A second list of ‘not innocuous’ behaviors has been supplied in response to a request made through the Freedom of Information Act, but so much of the list has been censored that the only new knowledge gleaned is that there is enough content to fill four pages.’

Hector and I are alone on the ferry out to ‘Whale Watch Island,’ which I find reassuring because I assume it means there’s a cohort there already. Some people return to ‘Whale Watch’ over and over. They become veterans of the process, driven to understand the mystery themselves or perpetually chosen by whatever lottery system nominates participants in the off-season. I’d rather be stuck with them than with a group of total rookies. It’s sunset when we arrive and I’ve only just got my feet on the ‘island’s’ grated metal deck when three harried-looking men shuffle past me and onto the ferry. It turns for shore without ever cutting its engine.

There is nobody else on ‘Whale Watch’ duty tonight. The tower is empty and the lights are off. A fridge inside is stocked with plastic-wrapped sandwiches. Handwritten directions for baking frozen pizzas in the toaster oven are taped to a chest freezer. There are seven pizzas inside and a half-scooped tub of neapolitan ice cream.

The whales are east of the island and entirely still. I locate the list of innocuous behaviors and see that remaining entirely still on the surface of the water is the topmost item. Below that: spinning, screaming, surrounding ‘Whale Watch Island,’ disappearing underwater entirely for up to five minutes, and seeming to float in mid-air for up to 30 seconds. I expect them to start screaming immediately but they don’t. They just float, there, on the water.

By midnight I’ve learned why it isn’t necessary for the program behind ‘Whale Watch’ to establish rules about sleeping or watching the whales. It’s impossible to want to sleep knowing that the whales sometimes exhibit non-innocuous behaviors and it’s impossible to concentrate on anything else for any amount of time without feeling as though the whales are watching back.

-traveler

Hector and I arrive at a place called ‘Hangman’s Ledge’ on a cold day in early autumn. There is nothing particularly special about ‘Hangman’s Ledge.’ Every state has a hangman’s this or hangman’s that which, of course, begs the questions ‘who was hanging who so often they named somewhere after it?’ and ‘if it’s who I think it was hanging who I think was, should we really hold on to that sort of name like it’s not a big deal?’ In terms of places to visit, however, ‘Hangman’s Ledge’ is entirely mundane.

It does offer a sprawling view of the valley below and, though it would be difficult to pinpoint ‘The Moonshine Spring’ without binoculars, it is very possible, on a cool autumn night, to see whether or not the spring has been ignited. The internet says it’s as simple as looking for flickering orange light, like a massive candle has been lit miles away. The internet says a person knows it when they see it. I don’t see it, so I assume ‘The Moonshine Spring’ carries on in its unignited form below and we skip it.

You see, the internet says that, in its unignited form, fumes from ‘The Moonshine Spring’ are capable of intoxicating or killing any small animals that happen to wander into the area.

Autumn by the Wayside offers another reason:

‘People have been killed over ‘The Moonshine Spring.’ You wouldn’t think that would be the case, but it is. Imagine a natural fountain of unbelievably high-proof alcohol. Imagine it exists, unregulated, on private land. The landowner has thrown the gates open- never thought to build gates, really- so anybody can visit ‘The Spring’ and drink or bottle to their heart’s content. It is a free, seemingly-infinite supply of a reasonably valuable resource.

But that resource is moonshine.

It is impossible to think of a reason why one person would kill another over such a thing and it’s impossible to believe that such a thing wouldn’t invariably lead to manslaughter in some form or another.

People come from all over the country to peaceably fill a bottle at ‘The Moonshine Spring.’. But those people also leave. The people that remain at ‘The Moonshine Spring’ for days on end are often of a different sort and they are, by definition, the most likely to be found there. The longer ‘The Moonshine Spring’ remains unignited, the drunker and angrier these people become. An unarmed traveler might check in town for recent burning dates and, finding they are a long ways off, should consider buying the pre-bottled stuff and saving the site for next time.’

Hector and I swing past ‘Hangman’s Ledge’ on our way back through again. It’s late autumn and cold. Colder on the ledge than anywhere else. Wouldn’t you know it- the internet was right about this one thing. The orange glow of ‘The Moonshine Spring,’ ignited, is unmistakable. Even from miles away.

We take the bike down off the ledge and walk the half mile or so to the dry rock field, finding it stinks of stale alcohol and urine at its outer edge but is fairly clean-smelling nearer the flame. Maybe the explosive ignition burns the residue off the rocks or maybe the long-term residents retain enough sense to separate the bathroom from the bar.

Autumn by the Wayside lists, in its many appendices, the ways ‘The Moonshine Spring’ has been ignited over the years. Everything from lightning strikes to dares. More often than not, though, it’s some drunken Icarus who wants to smoke with his drink. There’s a picture of it happening to a man- of his body silhouetted by the growing flame. It does round on the internet every once in a while. Isn’t hard to find.

We warm ourselves by ‘The Moonshine Spring’ and, when I worry Hector’s acting strangely, we head back up the valley wall, satisfied to have seen the thing in its better form.

-traveler

‘Wandering among the many reading areas inside the Library of Congress in Washington DC, an unknowing visitor might stumble upon a room with an uncomfortable climate. This is likely ‘The American Standard Room Temperature Room’ which, in an ideal world, would be set to a standard 68 degrees Fahrenheit but is often much colder come January and much warmer in July. These temperature fluctuations reflect the average environment of the American living room at any given moment based on readings from sensors across the nation (the specific locations of which are a closely guarded secret). A heat wave will make the room unbearably hot. A winter storm that knocks out power in the Midwest may lower the temperature to near freezing.

‘The American Standard Room Temperature Room’ is a concept piece by artist Julian Rocio who created it as a meditation on empathy. Though ‘The Room’s’ temperatures do sometimes swing high and low it is always habitable in the short term, and rarely even notably uncomfortable upon entry. The room’s programming is based on national averages, after all, and at least some of the data points are from climate-controlled dwellings.

The trick of ‘The American Standard Room Temperature Room’ is that it looks no different than any other on-site reading room. Patrons normally find their way inside accidentally and as they read or research it’s Rocio’s intention that they become aware of their discomfort very, very slowly. Cold hands. Sweat under the collar. A near-total inability to find perfect comfort and a level of discomfort that doesn’t quite warrant leaving the room. It is a princess-and-the-pea style revenge experience at the center of the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution, where some of America’s most privileged might tread.

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

This is a personal trip, first and foremost. The goal has always been to witness, for myself, what Autumn by the Wayside describes in the dirty corners of the nation. I didn’t set out to prove anything to anyone. I don’t feel like I need to provide evidence of what I’ve seen. Autumn by the Wayside is published in several editions, available new in many major bookstores and is invariably stocked by the cartful, tattered and broken-spined, at your local second-hand retailer. It may as well be an invasive species, there.

These sites can be visited by anybody, their addresses are listed plainly. Most are open to the public for, at most, a small fee. It only takes seeing one or two of the destinations to loosen one’s steadfast sense of reality such that the rest of the book’s content seems reasonably likely to be true. It only takes seeing a dozen or so before the book becomes undeniable and… closer, somehow.

That’s the strange nature of Autumn by the Wayside. Other travel guides speak of their subjects as though they are unfamiliar. They prepare the reader for what is foreign and, in doing so, they write about a place with the assumption that it’s far away. Reading Autumn by the Wayside, one begins to feel the sense of the foreign approaching. What is familiar about a person’s hometown becomes uncanny. As the Wayside asserts itself, the notion of home dissolves. A person doesn’t need to travel to visit the Wayside. Once they recognize it, they just have to step outside their door.

I’ve gotten off-topic.

This is a personal trip- a trip about witnessing rather than writing. But the writing has become important without my realizing and it’s frustrating to see a thing like ‘The Monument, Undescribed’ and to be at a loss for words. Even Hector looks upon it in awe.

‘What can be said about ‘The Monument, Undescribed’ except that nobody can speak of the thing in regards to its physical attributes, its history, or its location?’

-traveler

‘It isn’t entirely necessary to visit ‘That Same Stupid Cloud National Park’ to see the titular slice of sky. It’s a cloud, after all, and its visible from certain viewpoints for miles around. Optimal angles aside, the park’s experience is worth the nominal cost of entry for two reasons: context and charity.

Context is important in viewing ‘The Same Stupid Cloud’ because it appears like any other except on days when it’s the only cloud in the sky or when the high-up airstreams have whipped its peers into quick movement around it. In these conditions it’s easy to see that ‘The Same Stupid Cloud’ is static both in place (above the park) and in shape (decidedly cumulus). On shape, ‘The Same Stupid Cloud National Park’ devotes the great majority of its educational displays to a friendly debate about what ‘The Cloud’ looks like. An anatomical heart? A puppy’s head? A gemstone of some sort? These are just a few of the many suggestions that have been sourced from visitors and turned into tall, difficult-to-read signs, each with a cut-out of the specific shape they detail to aid someone who might not otherwise recognize, say, a gyoza in the sky.

This brings us to the second reason to visit the park: charity. The rangers stationed at ‘The Same Stupid Cloud National Park’ have so little going for them. All park resources outside of those suggesting cloud shapes are devoted to explaining, in great detail, why exactly ‘The Same Stupid Cloud’ is anomalous and what has been done to study it. ‘The Cloud’ is a marvel, of course. It is a perfect scientific outlier, defying much of what is understood about physics and meteorology. It flies in the face of what humanity has learned of permanence and nature. It resists attempts to dispersal. It hums low tones on the winter solstice.

Recognizing all of this requires that one think really hard about the cloud or attend the annual ‘Sky Song Festival,’ neither of which the average tourist is likely to do. An hour’s pitstop is rarely enough time for a road-weary traveler to properly wrap their head around the implications of the thing- is really only enough time to empty one’s bladder and agree that the cloud does look like a pigeon, from a certain angle, as one Kumar D. pointed out in 2003. This is a source of frustration for the rangers who are, on the other hand, inevitably driven mad by the mind-bending impossibility ‘The Same Stupid Cloud’ represents.

‘The Same Stupid Cloud National Park’ earns Autumn by the Wayside’s highest recommendation, not because it stands out among the rest, but because your earnest attendance may grant a local ranger the will to see another day through to its end.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside