Autumn takes on a great deal of winter’s chill the nearer one gets to Canada, which makes me thankful for the camper on those nights that I have to camp and makes me wary on those days where snow falls early and slickens the roads. North Dakota has seen snow in the last week and it hasn’t warmed enough, yet, to have melted it. The drifts crowd the road and I find myself claustrophobic even in the oil fields where the pumpjacks move darkly against the pale ground.
I suppose ‘The Blank Space’ has gotten under my skin already.
‘Theoretically accessible everywhere, but practically only visible in a square-mile or so of desolate North Dakota acreage, there is an section of visible space that is entirely blank, meaning, it seems to hold no stars or planets. Even satellites tend to avoid ‘The Blank Space,’ and, though this would take a little more proving, it has been reported that birds refuse to fly across it, preferring circuitous routes around the sky hole and generally preferring not to exist in the acreage under any circumstances.
Several videos have circulated regarding ‘The Blank Space,’ none of them particularly convincing on their own but, as a mass, certainly telling of something strange. Most record satellites that just skirt ‘The Blank Space,’ usually with a background of disappointed travelers who hoped to be the first to document something cross it. One video records the release of a captured pigeon, which hurriedly hops across the field and out of range before attempting to fly. Another is an attempt to interview a parakeet that has been trained to talk. Visibly stressed, the bird only whines for its owner.
Of semi-recent interest is the uptick in disappearances following the migration of Swifties to ‘The Blank Space,’ it having gained some popularity in lieu of the hit song that shares its name. The number of visitors to the field increased a hundredfold in 2014 and several of the people making this pilgrimage never returned, a phenomenon local police attributed to them being ‘young people.’’
Like a lot of these places, it’s easy to identify ‘The Blank Space’ by the fence that’s been put up to keep people like me out. The fence has been cut and twisted back by previous visitors, which saves me the trouble, so I pull the camper a respectable distance ahead, as though I had only pulled over to take a piss somewhere, and then I back track through the chill with my little folding chair and a thermos of coffee.
The stars are bright, tonight, and that makes their sudden absence all the more disorienting. The moon hangs low in the west, the big dipper looks twisted and small in the east, and though my astronomical knowledge is fairly lacking, I can’t seem to pinpoint any one star or planet that’s missing, per se. It’s just that hear, in ‘The Blank Space,’ they are pushed to the side. The universe gapes open where they should be, and the longer I stare the more often I feel my chair tipping forward, as though I’m resting on an invisible precipice and am pulled by some extraterrestrial gravity. It’s intriguing and not entirely unpleasent, the controlled vertigo of a carnival ride.
I remember, a little late, that I’ve also packed my binoculars, and as I dig them out of my bag I notice a chair like mine not so far away in the field- some artifact left behind by a traveler like me. The longer I stare, the more I see: a bag, a lunchbox, and a phone on the seat of the chair. There is nobody around, as far as I can tell, and I recheck the area with the binoculars before allowing myself to scan ‘The Blank Space.’ There, high up and directly above the abandoned post, I see a body.
I don’t wait long enough to see which way it is falling.
-traveler
