Having dwelled too long in the Midwest, perhaps, I expect to find ‘The Spring Herd’ displayed in some orderly fashion, it being among the privately-owned, eccentric-collection type oddities the Wayside has to offer and it being located in a field gone to weeds. On the contrary, I’m pulled over on the shoulder and trying to isolate the source of an off-tempo squeaking that I assume is coming from the motorcycle and find, when the wind blows, that it isn’t the bike at all. Just tall enough to peer over the underbrush, I spy the bobbing head of a cartoon penguin, weather-worn as to evoke images of the typical Hollywood apocalypse. I tap it with the toe of my boot and it rocks back and forth, squealing with the strain of rusted metal.
That’s the noise, all right. If it started ten minutes ago that puts me pretty much in the thick of it, I imagine, and as soon as I imagine it, the wind blows and ‘The Spring Herd’ begins screaming.
‘For the uninitiated, ‘spring rider’ refers to the ridable caricature of an animal attached to the ground with an industrial spring, allowing sober children and drunk or nostalgic adults to sway back and forth, side to side, and in deteriorating circles until the spring surrenders, leaning sadly to the ground, or the momentum of the animal is enough to drive the top of its head into the bottom of its rider’s. They come in pairs or groups of three and rarely represent a collection of a single species.
Insightful travelers may notice the dwindling of the American playground, both in number and in size. Parks are becoming fewer and, with their natural habitat dwindling, spring riders are nearing a state of endangerment. One family has exploited the peace between species of spring riders and created an unofficial, off-highway preserve in order to stave off their seemingly inevitable extinction. This collection of spring riders is referred to as ‘The Spring Herd,’ due both to the construction of the pieces and because they are best viewed in the spring, having risen from the snow and being not yet concealed by growth.
Visitors beware- though tame, the collective undulations of ‘The Spring Herd’ in the wind has been said to induce nausea in those who watch too long and, though the riders hardly suffer for it, there are carriers of lead and tetanus among them.’
I refuse to be seen on one of these creatures from the highway so I venture inward and have soon dropped far enough off the shoulder that the occasional rumble of passing trucks hardly rises above the crinkle of disturbed grass. The squawking of spring riders precedes the wind across my scalp by several seconds. Standing still, it’s clear they’re all around- some nearby, and some a long way’s off. Hundreds if not thousands. When the wind blows just right, it sounds so much like they’re coming toward me that my knees wobble with fight or flight.
I’ve come too early to see them together in the floral twilight between summer and fall (or autumn has too well maintained summer’s growth) but I eventually find a flaking alligator with my knee and upon recovering, I stomp out a small clearing. Precariously mounted, I am content to be carried for a while on the back of something older and wiser than me or anything I own.
Eventually, I’m convinced that ‘The Spring Herd’ is singing.
-traveler
