In all these years on the road, I haven’t seen anything the exudes malicious intent quite like ‘come heather,’ which, before you get any ideas, is a shrub. Heather is the pinkish-purple bush you sometimes see in upscale parks, its tips little flowering fingers, tickling the underside of butterflies and swarming with ravenous bees. In my experience, the presence of bees lend mundane heather a sickly sort of motion already. Wriggling. Undulating like a deep sea atrocity on a windless day.

‘Come heather’ moves of its own accord, its spindly towers sensing the displacement of air around them, bending on hidden joints. It’s the perfect replication of the come-hither motion and, though I know it’s a quirk of evolution, something to keep predatory birds away or attract necessary pollinators, the whole thing makes me queasy. The motion is too intimate. Too familiar. It activates subconscious protocols, making me question whether I know this plant from somewhere, as though I may have gotten drunk at a party, once, and told it some dark secret of mine.

I feel all this discomfort before I ever step foot in the maze.

‘One would think that ‘The Come Heather Maze’ would be exponentially more uncomfortable than the plant in its natural environment, but curation has the opposite effect, demoting it to a novelty rather than a truly uncanny quirk of nature. Perhaps it’s the desperate lengths the creators attempted to capitalize on the movement, choosing topiary structures they felt would benefit from the plant’s trick. None of them quite work as intended and because heather doesn’t tend to grow tall or sturdy, so much of the garden’s infrastructure shows that ‘The Come Heather Maze’ feels more like the foundation of a ruined house, derelict and a little sad.’

Hector loves the ‘come heather,’ or, he seems to love the idea of the stuff. Heather is high on the toxicity scale for pets so I keep him on a short leash as we trudge through the maze, dodging long tendrils and cringing when I come to ‘sensory arches,’ where the plant is allowed to grow freely and tickle passersby.

We leave a little early, in part, yes, because I don’t like mazes and I don’t like the ‘come heather,’ but mostly because Hector escalates to frantic state I’ve never seen, squeaking and hopping in circles and nibbling on his leash. It’s everything I can do to hold him back from gorging himself on the poison flower.

He calms, a little, once we’ve made it back to the parking lot, but his beady eyes stare through the slats of the kennel, watching the walls of ‘The Come Heather Maze’ shift behind us. Maybe the motion is meant for creatures like him. Maybe ‘come heather’ is a monster for small animals: a rodent siren. It must look like a paradise, then, and I wonder what he must think of me, parading him through and pulling him away.

-traveler

‘Every child that has ever visited a department store will have experienced the absolute serenity at the center of a round clothing rack. These once-prevalent oases have diminished in recent years as the online marketplace drains life from the brick-and-mortar shopping experience. The obvious side-effect has been the decline of children’s mental health. The less obvious side-effect is the erratic shifting of ‘The Merry Barycenter,’ the clothing rack at the epicenter of serenity.

‘The Merry Barycenter’ is a natural phenomenon that manifested in the northeast corner of ‘Larry’s Formal’ for more than a decade. This was back when the department store scene was fairly stable and, though ‘The Merry Barycenter’ wobbled in place with the creation and destruction of orbiting clothing racks all over the country, its location was predictable within a few feet at any given time. ‘Larry’s Formal’ went so far as to advertise the phenomenon, both because it was something of a thrill to experience and because it was something of a liability if left to chance.

Coming into contact with ‘The Merry Barycenter’ is marked by the sort of serenity that derails a person- the sort of serenity granted by prescription medication that shouldn’t be taken while driving. Imagine that the experience of seeking respite in the center of a normal clothing rack is equivalent to putting on a sock that’s still warm from the dryer. Experiencing ‘The Merry Barycenter’ is like being completely enveloped by said sock- drawing the warm fabric over oneself entirely so that the rest of the world is distant and muted. It is a retreat into comfortable isolation that lasts as long as one is content to remain within its vague circumference. Historically, this has been proven to be a very long time indeed and ‘Larry’s Formal’ had to institute very clear, very strict guidelines regarding use of the space.

Those days are gone. The tenuous state of shopping centers means the orbital center of clothing racks moves and fluctuates. It sweeps across freeways. It encompasses city blocks. It sometimes shrinks to the size of a dustmote and disrupts the short-term memory of whoever is unfortunate enough to walk through it. For a long time, it seemed like ‘The Merry Barycenter’ could only be experienced by happenstance. It was effectively lost.  

Recently, however, the internet and the broad concept of crowd-sourcing data has reignited hope in a community of people that chase the oblivion they experienced in youth. Small GPS devices have been installed on clothing racks all over the country and their coordinates are fed into an algorithm that attempts something very much like the many-body problem. The result is that ‘The Merry Barycenter’ can once again be traced, though a little luck is still required to find the exact location of the sweet spot: the area identified usually spans a square mile.

The orbital coat rack system is predicted to collapse within the century, taking ‘The Merry Barycenter’ with it. Gray Road physicists who care to issue statements about this eventuality are roundly pessimistic. Some insist we will experience a dangerous explosion of joy from wherever ‘The Merry Barycenter’ is when it dissolves. Others suggest it will be a quiet affair, the silent loss of a source for peace.’

 -an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

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