‘The City Fountain’ doesn’t get me right away. In fact, I’m in the city for nearly eight hours before I catch it in action. A man reaches down to tie his shoe and a short blast of water emits from a hole in the sidewalk, soaking his crotch. I might have missed it if I hadn’t turned at just the right moment which, according to my research, is strange. ‘The City Fountain’ is not known for holding back on visitors.

‘The first and only entity protected under federal laws regarding ‘Irregular Sentience,’ ‘The City Fountain’ of City, Idaho is, unfortunately, sentient by way of general malevolence. Designed and installed by a local Idahoan name Jack Janner (later found to be a false name), ‘The City Fountain’ was activated on July 4^th, 1976. Janner was killed later the same day when a pipe exploded nearby, thus far the only fatality attributed to his creation. The water-logging of his personal files, both at his home and in the local bank’s safety deposit box, further implicates ‘The Fountain’ in his death but, because irregular sentience laws had not yet been put in place, ‘The City Fountain’ has managed to avoid trial for the apparent homicide.

‘The City Fountain’ has garnered a reputation as something of a trickster, utilizing the thousands of spouts and spigots integrated into the City’s waterworks to knock ice cream out of the hands of unsuspecting children, and to knock phones out of the hands of their parents, recording these little micro-traumas. Residents of the City know that ‘The City Fountain’ is more than a trickster- it’s a bully- and that the only thing keeping it from crossing the line from cruel to dangerous are the bylaws that allow it to be tried as a human.

Resentment grows between Wayside tourists and the City dwellers who have to live with ‘The Fountain’ year round. Rumor has it that a third faction has determined to kill the thing, in whatever manner a thing like ‘The Fountain’ might be killed. Visitors are cautioned to be forgiving of the City’s people and suspicious of its facilities. Much of the plumbing has succumbed to the will of ‘The City Fountain. Unfortunately, the meanness is the best indication of ‘The City Fountain’s’ intelligence and its best defense for protection.’

I hurry back to the camper and find it flooded. Hector, soaked and shivering, has taken refuge on the driver’s seat. A thick stream of water pummels the headrest, jetting up from behind the camper and through one of the windows I left cracked for airflow.

‘The City Fountain’ won’t let me fix anything as long as I am in its domain. My shirts are knocked off hangers. My bedsheets are stained in muddy sewer water. We leave town and find an amount of peace in the outskirts, though night falls before anything has a chance to dry. It’s a cold night. Another night on the ground. Eventually, I decide to drive and hope the chilly autumn air will start us on our way back to normal, whatever that looks like.

-traveler

Virginia’s ‘Tick Town’ is not the first place I’ve visited that smells like blood. There was that field of flesh lilies with flaky white butterflies. The was Nebraska, I think. There was the waterfall in Connecticut that was legally required to allow public access to prove that the liquid cascading over the high cliffs above was not blood, despite it looking like blood and smelling like blood and producing a fine pink mist that tasted like blood. I read, recently, that they had to shut that waterfall down.

It was blood after all.

‘There is little doubt that humanity has wreaked havoc on the planet and there are a number of good people- of good scientists- doing hard work to recognize and mitigate that damage. Within that population, however, there are a few that take what is clear and run with it to unclear conclusions. This is likely true of the creators of ‘Tick Town,’ a couple of disgraced biologists that claim, generally, that man has stolen its blood from the ticks.’

They make you wear a tick-proof suit in ‘Tick Town’ despite several signs that indicate the ticks should be harmless, given how much blood exists “in its natural state.” The natural state of blood, according to ‘Tick Town,’ is in rivers and rain. Flowers are dewy with blood in tick town and blood pools in the cracked sidewalk like a cracked callus. There is so much blood that the ticks drown in it. They swell up like balloons and float around like contented tourists but even I can see they’re dead.

It’s hard to feel sorry for them, though. Even in such a miserable state.

I’ve chosen to avoid the peak hours of ‘Tick Town,’ when the owners arrive to give themselves over to the starving ticks, describing all the ways a visitor might accidentally let a few into the suits to join them, though also explaining that they are legally obliged to warn visitors against doing anything like that. They explain how easy and painless it is to be bitten by a tick- how little blood a tick actually consumes compared to the volume we carry around each day. It is a simple way to give back to nature, they tell you, and if that’s what they have to do to feel better about the world, then I’m happy to keep my judgement to myself.

Hector stays in the trailer for this one, as bloated and dependent as the ticks. As much a means to cope with the world, too. He would be happier in a home, I’m sure, with other tragic animals. But I need him and, as long as that’s true, he needs me too.

But people do what they have to, just to get by. It’s as true on the Wayside as it is anywhere.

-traveler

‘It’s well known that Mallard County School Districts teach ‘tip of the pyramid’ rather than ‘tip of the iceberg’ as a common idiom for describing an inconsistency between the understood aspects of a situation, and the larger, concealed truth. It follows that this colloquial variation stems from ‘The Rising Pyramid’ located within Mallard County’s borders. Lesser known, perhaps, is that the Mallard County usage is distinctly negative. This is because the slow migration of ‘The Rising Pyramid’ has only ever wrought devastation.

The colonial history of ‘The Rising Pyramid’ begins with its discovery in 1912, when a small cohort of ambitious gold miners thought they might have discovered one of a number of rumored lost cities attributed to the continent. ‘The Pyramid’ was excavated to about four feet before a sinkhole opened and swallowed all but one of the five men. The survivor was found raving in the woods and near death, though not so near that he wasn’t able to pass the whole sorry story to a group of traveling soldiers before succumbing to a mysterious fever.

A much larger contingent soon arrived at the site of ‘The Pyramid,’ finding that the structure had risen to fill the sinkhole and had subsequently revealed a number of dire-seeming illustrations carved by well-meaning ancients into its surface. A particularly clear-minded Captain, named Mallard, reasoned that the site was bad news and rallied the men to re-bury it.

Three months later, reports of ‘The Pyramid’s’ reemergence reached Captain Mallard and he arranged for a second visit. What he found and confirmed over the next several years, was that ‘The Pyramid’ was rising and that no earthly force could stop it. Fort Mallard was constructed, in part, to study and guard ‘The Rising Pyramid.’

It released plague rats at the height of 15.’

It burned red-hot at 20.’

It tore a man in two at 21’ when he attempted to scale it in the night. The exact mechanism of this attack remains unknown (but was repeated at the height of 124’ under similar circumstances in 1998).

By the time Fort Mallard became a town ‘The Rising Pyramid’ had become a familiar threat, not unlike the Yellowstone calderas or Joshua Tree’s laughing ditch. Stress is high in the town and they do not welcome gawkers, though gawkers inevitably arrive.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘People talk a lot about ‘The Wet Heat’ in Cougar Valley, Washington, where geography, climate change, and the peculiarities of jet streams combine to make an oasis of sorts. The temperature in Cougar Valley hangs around 95 Fahrenheit for most of the year, dropping to a chilly 90 in the dead of winter. Humidity rarely drops into the eighties, making the valley something of a natural sauna. Some people travel there for its many spa resorts. Others live there.

‘Cougar Valley Rot’ is a condition unique to the area, one in which the skin becomes spongy and sloughs off like a molting snake. Its painless, apparently, but also quite deadly if left long enough. Treatment can only be performed in dry air, which tends to burn the raw flesh of victims. And pain is a powerful motivator. Some choose to succumb to the rot rather than face the dry world outside. Among residents of the valley, life expectancy sits around 60. Perhaps this is why the town’s motto, inscribed on its welcome signs, is surprisingly self-aware:

‘Pretty good, as a stopover.’’

“The wet heat gets into just about everything,” the man explains, gesturing apologetically to an old single-room camper attached to an even older car. I nod and he continues. “Fabric’s been stripped out wholesale. Most of the cushions, too. Cabinets are warped, a bit. Some don’t like to close. Others don’t like to open. Maybe once you drive it out of here the wood’ll sort itself out.”

“Wishful thinking,” I smile. I’m no great bargainer, but I know when I’m being sold optimism.

“True.” The man scratches his arm and draws four white gouges in his skin. The rot, I suppose. I noticed it in his face, as well. “But anything that’s rusted’s been replaced, I guarantee that much. The bones are good. Price is good too.”

The price is exceptionally good. “Why do all the work stripping and shining on the thing if you planned on selling it so cheap?”

“Meant to travel the country in her,” he says, “Seems unlikely, now. Least this way, she’ll see some road.”

I nod. “She’ll see some road.”

The man takes the bike for half the asking price. The rest I pay in cash. I hope he’ll put some of the money toward treatment. I hope he won’t ride the bike with the rot. Mostly, I put his concerns behind me and get out of ‘The Wet Heat’ before my clothes mildew. I know a woman in Oregon that can check the car and make the camper livable.

I’m tired of sleeping on the ground.

-traveler

Hector thrives in the dark. Maybe it’s a rabbit thing. Maybe it’s a once-blind, now-sighted thing. Maybe it’s just Hector who, thankfully, doesn’t seem to mind the amount of time he spends in his kennel as we travel and who is more than willing to accompany me into ‘The Mine Mine,’ which is both dark and, in places, tight. It’s the people he’s skittish around and I’ve learned, myself, that this is a wise instinct. I avoid the light of other headlamps, keeping mine dark until the very last moment. Then, we begin to dig.

‘Part museum, part burial-mound, ‘The Mine Mine’ is the eclectic collection of an eccentric dead man. In the style of old pharaohs, he chose to be buried with his belongings and made good work of it himself, casting everything he grew tired of into a natural pit on his land. The pit is one of two entrances to a complicated cave system where these discarded possessions spread out over the years but were otherwise preserved. The second entrance was found long after the man had died and had been ceremoniously sealed in the pit. By then, much of the land was public and a ticketing system was established. This tenuous nicety is the only thing keeping the activities at ‘The Mine, Mine’ in the arena of ‘discovery’ rather than, say, ‘looting.’’

There are precious few rules at play in ‘The Mine Mine.’ A lot more in the way of personal liabilities. A blinking key chain on my belt loop should, theoretically, indicate my location in the caverns and send an alert if I’m down here too long. That way they can charge me for the overstay and, if I’m lucky, recognize if I’ve fallen into a pit or otherwise mangled myself past the point of self-evacuation.

The route I take isn’t very long, but it’s off-map and a little more treacherous than what the average family caravan is willing to risk for old canned food and cave-softened memorabilia from the man’s past. A narrow crevasse opens along the floor. I jump it, rather than trust the rickety bridge someone installed nearby. I’ve read that early Mine-miners set traps. This was before everyone realized that it was all mostly junk, down here.

Hector and I squeeze through a crack in the wall, one that I might not have been able to make even a year ago. I’ve been losing weight- enough that people sometimes comment on it in a less-than-complimentary way. In this instance, it means I make it into a chamber that is inaccessible, or at least, not worth the risk, to others. There is a skeleton on the floor, which is concerning, but not surprising. The sign outside said I might see things like that. I double check that it’s a Halloween decoration but I’m not medically knowledgeable and some combination of squeamishness and superstition keep me from turning it over.

I squeeze into the next chamber and feel my feet go out from under me. I tumble into a pit full of old toy boxes before I slide down into a new cavern some thirty feet down. There’s some panic. Some grappling for my light before realizing its still attached to my head, blocked by the paper stat-card for an old transformer. Hector slides down after me and starts to chew the garbage we brought down with us. I try to find my bearings and, instead, I find the body of the man in his tacky, bejeweled casket. Several of those jewels have been pried away by a crowbar hidden near the north wall.

This is not my first time in the chamber. Not my second. Every few years I have to lose the weight and shuffle around in the dark, waiting to fall through those boxes because I can never quite remember where the pit is and marking it would make the treasure that much more obvious.

I take six more jewels- enough for the next couple years if I’m careful. I don’t trust myself to take them all at once. With that much money, I could do anything.

But wouldn’t.

-traveler