There is a lot of conflicting information regarding ‘Magnetic West.’ Everything in books and everything published online suggests that coming within half a mile of the place will destroy any electronic device that might be considered reasonably sensitive, say, laptops, computers, and pacemakers. More hardy electronic equipment is said to malfunction within 100’ or so.

The official signage of ‘Magnetic West’ claims the opposite, but it does so as though it’s in dialogue with its critics.

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet, says one billboard, Magnetic West is as safe as Magnetic North!

Another depicts a man bent over, clutching at his chest. It says: We fixed that problem! Magnetic West is safe for the whole family! A suspicious amount of fine print fills the area below, entirely unreadable from the road.

About a mile out, a much smaller sign reads: Experiencing dizziness? We are legally required to warn you against proceeding. An impromptu parking lot has been carved from the shoulder a few yards beyond for travelers, like me, who planned to gamble on arriving by vehicle but lost their nerve at the last moment. I leave the bike and carry Hector along the highway until I spy the gift shop ahead. Hector shifts nervously in his kennel and my fillings begin to buzz. This can’t be as safe as they claim.

And they don’t claim a lot.

‘There is nothing safe or sane about ‘Magnetic West’ or the gift shop people tend to mistake for the site itself. ‘Magnetic West’ proper is nothing but a massive wooden complex, taken up entirely by a magnetic array powerful enough to disrupt compasses for hundreds of miles around. It allows no visitors but employees, trespassers, and saboteurs alike report very little of interest for anybody outside the diehard magnet enthusiast community and, even then, it is only an engorged example of what one might see at a physics lab or a science museum.

‘Magnetic West’ is fairly transparent about it’s intent, in fact. Its investors describe it, in press releases, as an attempt to ‘Americanize natural directional anchors’ so that ‘foreign entities in the North can neither benefit from, nor manipulate, hard-earned American orientation tactics.’ In short, they’re trying to sell the idea of an artificial, American-owned, directional alternative to the earth’s natural magnetic poles.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the concept of ‘Magnetic West’ was put forth in 2002, when the U.S. Government was particularly happy to buy up proprietary conversion devices for all their various navigation systems if it could be written off as protecting the homeland. Also unsurprising was the swiftness with which this fad died out, leaving a budgetary hole and a dozen warehouses of expensive, specialized equipment to gather dust.’

Hector and I unenthusiastically poke around ‘Magnetic West’s’ gift shop. Far from reaching some sort of self-awareness, the owners have neglected to invoke the interesting science of magnets in their selection of products, choosing to double down on their initial pitch instead. ‘Patriot Compasses’ of various models line the shelves, each with a little manifesto on the back, pledging that its owner has divested from the ‘foreign-owned’ north pole and sworn loyalty to the United States of America, proud home of the superior ‘Magnetic West.’

I’m tempted to buy one, only because it’s exactly the sort of unnatural talisman a person might trade to a witch for a dark favor, but I’d rather give my money to covens directly than support the uncomfortable patriotism espoused here. Hector and I leave with nothing but a headache, and the motorcycle drags until we finally break free from the facility’s magnetic pull, several miles back the way we came.

-traveler

‘If one happened to wake, suddenly, in the lobby of ‘The Casserole Palace,’ one might be forgiven for thinking they had drunkenly stumbled into a geological museum and not a tribute to the hot dish. It’s an easy mistake to make. You see, faced with the problem of displaying something that tends to ruin after a day at room temperature, ‘The Casserole Palace’ has preserved their subjects in two relatively novel ways:

Historical casseroles, of which there are only eleven, have been completely dried out and are sat, like mummies, on a little shelf in a climate controlled room. If it weren’t for the context, nobody would believe this collection of dust ever passed as food.

Examples of more modern renditions, on the other hand, are preserved in thick glass cylinders to better display their layers. These are core samples of casseroles prepared on a massive scale. Nobody knows what kitchen it outfitted to make them and nobody knows where the rest of each dish goes but don’t let the mysteries distract you. The tubes are not particularly aesthetic on their own but, together, they form a hardy sort of rainbow- a celebration of food in a diversity of beige.’

I’m not sure anybody loves casseroles as a category of food, but I think everybody loves a casserole. And it’s been a while, you know. I’ve been traveling for a long time and casseroles are not the sort of thing you buy in the store or make in a motel room or cook over a fire or even order at a restaurant.

So, yes, I spend fifty dollars to eat at ‘The Casserole Palace’s’ buffet and, in addition to a pretty passable chicken-broccoli I inadvertently gain access to something wholly horrifying: their mix-and-match casserole machine. Take the overall concept of a frozen yogurt place but strip away the decency until it’s something more like the soda fountain at a rundown gas station. Imagine spigots thick enough to release chunky soups and pans that range from personal-sized to unwieldy. End it with a conveyor belt and an industrial oven. That’s the mix-and-match casserole machine. A thing that should not exist.

A laminated guide near the start of this monstrosity politely suggests that customers limit themselves to three layers and two topping for any one pass-through. Seeing that it’s widely ignored, I do what any man, drunk on home cooking, would do in my position. I create the suicide casserole: a thin spray of every layer, a small handful of every topping. It comes out looking like any casserole, really. The upper layer, thick with cheese, resists cutting. When I finally make a mark, hot liquid from inside pools up and congeals in the air. The surface heals itself before a minute has passed. I start again.

I manage a few bites but, like any food built for fun, it isn’t very good. I pack the rest and carry it with me, telling myself that I’ll work my way through it until the dairy fillings spoil.

I don’t.

I dump it off the side of the highway, telling myself, instead, that some animal may still choose to eat it so that I feel less guilty about the waste. It oozes off the shoulder, a motley roadkill returning to the earth.

-traveler

‘The prepper community doesn’t have the most welcoming reputation taken altogether, but an enclave in the hills of West Virginia is the exception that makes the rule. ‘The Folks with the Right Idea’ (commonly shortened to ‘The Right Idea’) exist on the opposite end of the welcoming spectrum, clocking in at something that might be considered too hospitable or, perhaps, virulently friendly. You see, ‘The Right Idea’ maintains about as low a profile as any off-the-grid group might be expected to but a traveler that happens past their gate will find a small, curated visitor’s center that outlines their philosophies, their goals, and, most importantly, the concerns that have driven them to longstanding bunkers.

That’s the theory anyway.

You see, the trouble with ‘The Right Idea’ is that their idea is so seemingly right, that anybody who spends more than half an hour perusing the literature in their visitor’s center is convinced to join them.

It would be easy to write this off as some sort of cult-like compelled initiation. Surely there is some drug in the water of the visitor’s center. Surely there is some forceful coercion. In fact, there is little evidence for either. Satellite images suggest the enclave itself is many miles away from the center and stakeouts have revealed it isn’t a manned facility, though it is visited in the evenings by a maintenance crew. As though to drive the point home, ‘The Right Idea’ has broken their inconspicuous online presence to set up a streaming webcam in the center, clear enough to maintain their integrity but not so focused as to broadcast any of their material. To date, there have been no signs of foul play.

The real intriguing aspect of ‘The Right Idea’ is not that it converts people on the spot- in fact, it tends to lie dormant, and because ‘The Right Idea’ has been around in some form or another since the 1970’s, it’s been known to lie dormant for as long as forty years. People that visited the center in their thirties live their lives and then retire to the bunker, having never crossed back into West Virginia in the meantime. ‘The Right Idea’ sticks with them through the decades.

There is potentially a lot to be concerned with, here, but the only really quantifiable concern is that, on average, the time between a person encountering ‘The Right Idea’ and their pilgrimage to the enclave is shortening. Whatever force or argument that compels an initiate to join has become insistent past 2013 or so and downright urgent in the 2020s.

Use caution when approaching ‘The Right Idea,’ reader. Consider it a one-way street.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

I’m not superstitious about much. Most of the tics I’ve picked up on this journey reflect very rational fears- they’re survival mechanisms, really, that sometimes misfire for being necessarily hair-triggered. Actual superstitions, though- I can count those on one hand.  

The biggest has to do with my name- you might have noticed its absence. That’s not just good internet hygiene. That’s the real me. The me that gives false names at coffee shops to avoid hearing his own called out over the counter. The me that has used so many nicknames that even his old friends (and there are few now) would be hard-pressed to remember the root.

Why?

I don’t like people saying it, that’s all. I don’t like to think of my name in the hot air of other lungs. I don’t like the way it looks on lips and tongues. To hear my name in somebody else’s mouth is like feeling my fingers down their throat except I don’t mind that nearly as much. It’s like my fingers down their throat and then those same fingers straight into mine.

I like my name. I don’t mind saying it myself. I don’t mind whispering it to Hector, who is unlikely to repeat it. I don’t even mind seeing it written out, except that it greatly increases the chances that someone will read it aloud.

I’m also firmly in the ‘leave no trace’ crowd so you might imagine my surprise when I find myself carving my name into the trunk of a tree with my pocket knife. It’s hardly visible, for the all the hundreds of names that have come before it. But it’s there.

‘There is a short path at the end of Forest Road 4- a five-minute walk to a behemoth eyesore called ‘The Tortured Tree.’ It’s a pine tree, though it’s difficult to tell that now. Most of the branches have been torn from the trunk. Some hang loosely near the top and seem to retain needles enough for it to survive. ‘The Tortured Tree’ has been stripped of bark up to about fifteen feet. It weeps sap from the exposed wood, giving it something of a rubbery varnish where insects have not yet collected.

This devastation has been wrought by the relentless tendency of visitors to carve their names into the trunk, though ‘tendency’ might not be the right word. Those that speak of the experience describe a compulsion. Even those that have arrived with the intention of protecting the tree have lent their pocket knives to tourists or given in to the very behavior they came to prevent. Sensitive visitors report a feeling like justice as they carve letters. It isn’t as though the tree wants the names, it’s as though some outside intelligence wants the tree harmed.

 ‘The Tortured Tree’ falls within state jurisdiction, but rangers have been slow to respond to the vandalism. Off the record, they’ve suggested that protecting the one tree will only cause would-be vandals to target the otherwise pristine environment around it. The warnings they have issued are notably weak, never actually condemning the tradition but encouraging visitors to ‘be cool’ and to ‘do what feels right.’’

It seems a shame not to finish my name once I’ve started it. It seems impossible not to finish, really. Luckily, once the deed has been done, I feel a psychic pressure lifted and I’m able to hack the letters away again.

If someone speaks my name in the forest and I’m not around to hear it, would it still be intimate and vulgar? Probably not, but I’ll sleep easier knowing it won’t happen.

I look down and see Hector has shaved some wood from the tree himself.

“Is that your name, little buddy?” I ask, and he pees in the dirt, thinking it over.

I’ve got everything packed up to go before I rush back to the tree and really make sure my name is gone. I start on Hector’s and make sure that’s gone too. I feel better after that- actually better. I do.

Maybe I’ve gathered more tics than I thought. Can’t be helped. The Wayside is positively infested with them.

-traveler