‘‘The Refuge for Deer with Chronic Wasting Disease’ is better known by a rather unsavory nickname: ‘The Buck Stop.’ This is probably for the best, given that there is very little savory about the enterprise and travelers with any amount of sense will understand the distinction and choose to avoid it.

Masquerading as a care facility, ‘The Buck Stop’ is a zoo by way of disaster tourism. Its keepers gather up the district’s prion-infested wildlife and place them in pens that are carefully designed to extend their torment for as long as possible. The result is a grotesque dissonance between luxuriously outfitted habitats and the insane, decrepit animals that pace their interiors, waiting for a death that won’t seem to arrive.

‘The Buck Stop’ receives considerable state funds for this service. Beyond that, the less that’s said about it, the better.’

Among the many frustrations this journey has offered is the unapologetic hypocrisy with which Autumn by the Wayside will feature a destination for its moral bankruptcy. Surely if the place were an irredeemable blight it would be better not to mention it at all, right? The author of Autumn by the Wayside, maybe me, sometimes writes as though the guide has competition in the publishing world- as though there are other books like it out there. That’s not been my experience. Some of these sites have a web presence. Some of them put up signs or distribute brochures, but Autumn by the Wayside is the only place I’ve found them collected.

And some of these destinations aren’t mentioned anywhere else. Some turn up empty web searches- even those with common names, as though they’ve been scrubbed from the internet. The author, whether he chooses to believe it or not, is placing pins on a map and because I’m a completionist, because I have no idea what I would do otherwise, I am chasing the pins.

‘The Buck Stop’ is one of a number of places that make me re-think the journey entirely. It is as bad as it seems it would be. The habitats are done up in the cartoon rubber that one finds in mall-based children’s play-places. The deer batter their heads against it. They throw themselves at the ground, squawking and whimpering. The smell of death hangs in the air and though much of the signage is dedicated to the impossible transmission of prions across the habitat boundaries, I’ve kenneled Hector miles away and I wear a mask, myself.

Some of the deer seem to have been given habitats to suit their symptoms. It’s unclear as to whether this is a matter of display or an attempt at comfort. A round field houses deer that turn relentless circles. Pillowy sod lines the dens of those that prance drunkenly with each step. The smallest enclosure holds several specimens that have lain down and are seemingly unable or unwilling to get up. Their chests rise with frantic breaths and the cool autumn air fogs about their mouths.

The thing Autumn by the Wayside fails to mention is that the deer each have a price- not to buy, but to kill. ‘The Buck Stop’ has spun this as an act of supreme empathy and a sacrifice on their part, really, because it is an institution devoted to letting nature take its course. For a donation, visitors can end the life of any deer on display and have the corpse destroyed in a nightly burn-pit. Pictures of the donors are up on the wall of the gift shop. None of them look particularly happy.

The last thing I would note, to supplement the sparse write-up included in the guide, is that someone has decided to price the deer based on their condition at the start of the day. The less the deer has suffered, the more it costs to put them out of their misery.

One man shows up on the wall again and again. He seems to come by each morning to buy off the cheapest round of deer- to have them killed before they have to endure another day at ‘The Buck Stop.’

I wonder what the deer must think of him.

-traveler

‘Beware ‘The Rusted Seesaw’ oh tired traveler. Beware. Though it is done up in the guise of a children’s ride, though its flaking metal is sometimes coated in fresh paint, ‘The Rusted Seesaw’ is hardly more than a pile of shrapnel held together by ill-will and fate. It shrieks and moans with riding. It bends shamefully under the lightest bodies. Its layers break down into scabs. Its scabs work their way between clothes and skin. Itching. Staining. Poisoning, more likely than not. ‘The Rusted Seesaw’ will claim countless victims over the years simply by leeching heavy metals into the environment. It will be known for just one killing.

‘The Prophecy of the Rusted Seesaw’ is a simple image painted on the back of an old stop sign. It depicts a roughly human-shaped figure in crude agony. ‘The Seesaw’ is there, it has splintered under the rider. The jagged metal of the base mutilates the figure. Loose shards embed themselves in his limbs. The figure’s seesaw partner, still seated, looks on in horror. The figure is frozen that way in unending near-death.

‘The Prophecy’ is taken seriously by those in the know. Those in the know have heard of a similar image, painted on the back of a yield sign. It depicted an incident involving the massive statue of a chef that once stood outside a Wayside diner. The incident was as unlikely as it was disastrous and it came to be exactly as the image foretold. It came to be despite malicious grin of the old statue, despite the uncanny moans that issued from its crevices when the wind was right. The signs were there, both specific and generalized. They were ignored.

Fate is a funny thing. Those who believe ‘The Prophecy of the Rusted Seesaw’ are too afraid to dismantle it for fear that it will be the inciting incident. Those who don’t believe have no reason to interfere. It carries on, wasting away into the grass, declining with the grace of a rabid dog.

Creaking in an abandoned forest park, ‘The Rusted Seesaw’ awaits the rider and the witness and it will not rest until they arrive.

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

“For the love of god, save me!” A man flails at the center of ‘The Freshwater Taffy Lake,’ drowning very, very slowly. “Something just brushed my leg. Oh god, it’s biting me!”

I look down to make sure Hector hasn’t escaped his harness, hasn’t swam or tunneled through the taffy to reach the man’s legs. It doesn’t seem like something Hector would be capable of, but it seems like something he would do anyway. The rabbit remains on his leash, chewing idly at a blade of grass.

“I can see you!” The man calls. “You’re letting me die!”

His is not an enviable situation. It’s a warm day and the taffy was soft enough to dip under my foot with half my weight still on the shore. It’s warm enough that the taffy swallowed the print I left in a minute or so, erasing any evidence that might have suggested I was ever here. It’s warm enough that ants swarm the lake and they are certainly not so heavy as to sink and not so discerning when it comes to the difference between flesh and taffy.

“Help!”

What I want to know is, how would a guy like that get out into the middle of the lake to begin with? What’s his scam?

‘Everyone’s got their own explanation regarding the scarcity of freshwater taffy relative to its saltwater cousin but let’s set the record straight. Freshwater taffy is just grosser. The mild saltwater content of saltwater taffy acts as a barrier to common germs and parasites that thrive in a stagnant freshwater lake and the consistency of taffy doesn’t really allow it to be anything but stagnant, even in the best of conditions.

This is true of ‘The Freshwater Taffy Lake’ in upper Montana, which is a blight on the land in just about every season. It’s a germ-ridden magnet for bugs in the summer, it’s an uncooperative skating rink in the winter, and despite municipal efforts to add new colors, it churns just enough to settle back to an unappetizing grayish-brown within a month or two. The last person that ate from ‘The Freshwater Taffy Lake’ died a week later and, though it’s true that he was killed in a car accident, it seems safe to assume that hanging around ‘The Lake’ is just bad luck. It’s only a matter of time before it kills someone for real.’

I feel a twinge of guilt a week later when I read the story of an amateur paraglider, Albert McCormack, who was carried off-course by a rogue gust of wind and landed in the center of ‘The Freshwater Taffy Lake,’ thinking it was a particularly unfertile patch of flat dirt. He began to sink and, with nobody around to hear his calls for help, was swallowed by the taffy. His body was extricated after someone spotted a corner of his glider poking from the candy like a shark’s fin.

It’s encouraging to me that the ghosts I’ve witnessed have been more or less anchored to their haunting sites. Suffice to say, I don’t think I’ll be returning to ‘The Freshwater Taffy Lake.’ This nomadic life requires a minimalist approach to baggage.

-traveler

‘A desire path is a product of whimsy. Of a great deal of whimsy, really. A desire path forms when the whims of travelers align over time, usually forming a short cut or indicating the way to some interesting but unofficial site that may, otherwise, go unnoticed. A desire path is sustained by curiosity and by something petty, too. Something like envy. Dedicated travelers, those with a completionist streak, will see the rogue paths formed by those who came before them and will feel an obligation to follow, to see what’s worth seeing in defiance of the traditionally implemented trail. Suffice to say, desire flows from many sources.

‘The Desire Path’ in Alabama is not formed by whimsy, but rather by the last attempt of sane minds to remain alive. ‘The Desire Path’ runs through a grassy, square-mile field previously known as ‘Daredevil Park’ for the simple fact that there is also a single landmine buried somewhere within the borders and, through legal trickery and a complex customer waiver, the park managers are able to charge a small fee for entry and call it an art piece. The official literature bills it as something of a religious experience. ‘The Desire Path’ exists on a beautiful campus but the threat of death or maiming is ever present. That’s a metaphor for something, right? Brochures suggest as much but come to no real conclusions.

Interest in ‘The Desire Path’ has been renewed as of late, following an incident involving a moderately popular streamer who attempted to step on every square foot within the park to ‘prove that this place is full of shit.’ He found the landmine in the northwest corner after only six minutes of streaming and was killed. ‘The Desire Path’ re-opened four days later with a short statement that largely ignored the death, saying only that the crater had been sanitized, the well-traversed dirt path had been re-seeded, and a second landmine had been installed in a new location. In essence, ‘The Desire Path’ had doubled down.

Visitors returned in very hesitant numbers once the controversy passed but, now, after many years, a reasonably stable version of ‘The Desire Path’ has re-formed, skewing superstitiously to the south. It’s widened every year by those who test its borders, believing, superstitiously, that it’s somehow safer than walking blindly through the untread grass that surrounds it.

Of note, a determined tendril has sprouted from the central path, thin enough to allow pedestrians in a single file. It is a desire path in the traditional sense and it terminates at the location of the previous explosion, where the streamer’s mother fills the crater with flowers. Others have begun to do the same and so a new, tenuous tradition has formed, offering visitors a chance to risk their lives as a gesture toward the lost life of another.

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

“Next up: Manifred Williams with his orange begonia! Look at those colors folks!”

Manifred Williams is a large man and his size grants him a cavernous belly button. A begonia grows from it, bushy and dangling downward, swaying as he walks to center stage in leather boots and unbuckled jeans. The effect is slightly vulgar but the crowd eats it up. The man has swagger. Unearned, in my opinion, but I am far out of my depth at the ‘The Festival of Stomach Flowers.’

‘It is as the name suggests, dear reader. ‘The Festival of Stomach Flowers’ is like a beauty pageant and a flower show fused into something that doesn’t resemble either. It is an annual gathering of people who have nurtured or neglected their bodies in such a way that their crevices have realized an uncommon fertility.

It’s said, among believers, that the flowers growing from the bodies of festival participants display special qualities- that they bloom in new colors and attract strange insects, that, crushed into a powder or brewed into a tree, they will treat chronic ailments and soothe apocalyptic hangovers. The legality of selling body flowers for consumption is questionable, but no agency has yet cracked down on ‘The Flesh Flower Market,’ a long-standing evening event that takes place after the festival and allows runners-up to recoup some of the cost of coaxing life from their hidden places.’

Melanie Elroth has encased her abdomen in a looping terrarium, sweating and growing moss. Scott Abner carries a parasol and grows a mushroom from his ear, cradles it like an old fashioned hearing horn. Two philosophies are on full display at ‘The Festival of Stomach Flowers.’ Half of the participants appear to be at peak health and the other half look like corpses, folded over. Sallow and sick.

I have to remind myself that these growths are the culmination of hard, careful work or extended languishing- that the chance of me… catching something like the thing that hangs from Manifred Williams’ midriff is slim. I have to remind myself often because the gathered crowd is made up of enthusiasts, mildewy and sprouting weeds.

After half an hour I realize that Hector has escaped his harness and I find him eating grass that curls from a man’s cracked callus. The man doesn’t notice, or doesn’t seem to, but when I fetch the wayward rabbit  he turns to us and nods.

“Thanks for the trim,” he says.

We only skirt the edges of ‘The Flesh Flower Market,’ where attendees clip and moan and cross-pollinate. Hector throws up a little green pile in the kennel and sprouts a single dandelion from his nose a week later. It withers and falls away and that, thankfully, is the end of that.

-traveler