‘It’s said, or assumed anyway, that every part of nature has its place. The predators keep populations of prey in check. Prey consume and distribute seeds. The lowliest forms of life, those that feed on the dead, churn out fertile earth. Everything depends on everything else, this is a lesson we’ve seen realized again and again.

Everything except for ‘The Fruitless Bramble.’

There is nothing quite so frustrating to biologists than ‘The Fruitless Bramble,’ which covers a few acres in southern California and seems to do… nothing. ‘The Fruitless Bramble’ is so nearly inert that most people assumed it’s dead. The thick, brittle vines ribbed with stinging thorns are green only for about a day as they squeeze out new growth. Following that, they fade into a brownish gray and move no longer, hardly twitching under even the strongest winds. 

‘The Fruitless Bramble’ kills everything that enters. Mice and birds have not yet evolved to survive there and have difficulty avoiding the thorns. Their bodies litter ‘The Fruitless Bramble,’ rotting in the sun because the ground is so hardened by bramble roots that no natural decomposition can take place. ‘The Fruitless Bramble’ seems to forgo any of the nutrients it might receive from these kills. It needs next to nothing because it exhibits no seasonal change- no flowers, no berries, no leaves. 

‘The Fruitless Bramble’ has proven to be resistant to nearly every type of destruction. It has survived fires set by disgruntled landowners with adjacent property. It has been struck by lightning more times than seems right. It doesn’t respond to any form of weed killer or pesticide and the one time someone attempted to drive a bulldozer straight into the field, ‘The Bramble’ was able to work its way into the wheels and disable the attack before local authorities could respond. 

Sometimes nature turns out an evolutionary dead end and ‘The Fruitless Bramble’ appears to be one of these lost causes. It serves no purpose, makes no attempt to spread, but it persists all the same, baking angrily under the sun and howling in the wind and sometimes cracking, randomly, when one spiral of the bramble has become too heavy for bramble underneath. 

Avoid those stalls selling ‘Fruitless Bramble Tea.’ It isn’t good, or good for you.

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

What they don’t say about ‘A Room with a Spider Hidden in it Somewhere’ is that ‘The Room’ is massive but cramped and chaotic with the sort of things one might expect to find in a grandpa’s basement. It’s clean, though. Dust-free. Information at the front desk suggested that this for the health of the spider and because cobwebs would make the game unfair for the human participants. 

‘Fair to call this another simulation destination, ‘The Room with a Spider Hidden in it Somewhere’ advertises itself, also, as a skill-building experience and a nature-exploration center. The latter aspect tends to take center stage in its most recent advertising campaigns, leaning on an almost insufferable insistence that there are whole realms of nature that have been neglected because people flock immediately to the lush green of the actual outdoors, ignoring the varied and valid life that lives in basements and attics and sometimes ventures forth to appear in a cupboard or drawer when least expected. How has it that this noble corner of the world has gone unilluminated for so long? This question, it clarifies, is rhetorical. Spiders don’t like much light. 

So, turn your back on that natural park or that world-renowned zoo and travel to ‘The Room with a Spider Hidden in it Somewhere’ or risk being, and this is a quote, a ‘nature-normie’ like the rest of the schlubs who read billboards about ‘The Room’ and drive on by.’

Comforting, at least a little, is that ‘The Room’ does seem to operate on a set of thin rules. The first rule is that the spider shouldn’t be killed, which I suppose is kind. The second is that winning the simulation involves finding the spider without killing it or being bitten, and here the bold is to represent that the actual text is presented in that dramatic, dripping blood font usually reserved for Halloween decorations, making it difficult to know whether the spider in the room is legitimately venomous or if it’s a dramatic reference. 

The last rule, and probably the dealbreaker for most, is that participants can only dress in one of the robes ‘The Room’ provides, which are, it turns out, pretty short in all dimensions. It certainly adds a layer of vulnerability to the experience- I acknowledge as much as I carefully turn over a chipped mug and, finding it empty, pull open a filing cabinet drawer.

Something brushes over my bare toes and I reflexively kick, cringing as something insectile knocks against the wall and slides to the base. When I get closer look, I see that it’s a centipede, now quite dead. 

“Does this mean I lose?” I ask, assuming someone is observing all this. 

The centipede twitches.

There is a pause and then an intercom cracks to life. “Nah, that’s all right. Keep looking.”

-traveler

‘In the southwest corner of Alabama there is a museum dedicated entirely to the geefer, an imaginary organ in the human body that material there suggests is sometimes also called the Magda Gland. ‘The Geefer Museum’ is one of those destinations that stands out for the sheer amount of thought and money that must have gone into its creation. The complex stands five stories tall and its central chamber boasts a massive, walk-through model of a human’s lower torso where the geefer and its adjacent organs are supposedly arranged. 

Doctors, or people who claim to be doctors online, have pointed out several inaccuracies with the display- not just the inclusion of the non-existent geefer, but also the overall arrangement of the represented organs. The museum’s informational booths and pamphlets cite very, very old sources, some that date back to the dark ages and here, historians (or people who claim to be historians on the internet) have also pointed out that many of its ancient sources simply do not exist either. Residents of the dark ages got a lot wrong, it would appear, but even they cannot be blamed for the imaginary geefer.

Notable, too, is the clinic in the back of the museum which offers a service called ‘Geefer Restoration,’ for which they ask a $1000 donation but will begrudgingly be performed for free if a visitor is of a lower income bracket and is in desperate need of their geefer.’

I suspect ‘The Geefer Museum’ has seen better times and that those times were before the internet made it fairly easy to debunk much of what the museum insists is true about the human body. It is wildly built, that’s certain, but its fiberglass models are beginning to chip and crack and its placards are dusty in a way that suggests long neglect. Someone still cares enough about ‘The Geefer Museum’ to keep the lights on, but it appears they employ just one man and his job includes ticketing, maintenance, and guide. He performs these duties with no enthusiasm and I am left to wander the museum on my own. 

Stand outs include the central chamber, where someone with a great deal of talent was once employed to recreate a skewed version of our inner workings. Red liquid sloshes through clean pipes while various organs squelch and gurgle and react to the occasional thrumming of the massive geefer, the unlikely shape of which is a near-perfect pyramid. 

There is a room that spends a lot of time detailing the cultural impact of the geefer with circumstantial evidence like the pyramids in Egypt and on the back of the dollar and that, somehow, the Masons are involved in its cover up or potentially its harvesting. The theories become convoluted by the end. 

Finally, there is a formaldehyde-smelling room near the end that is lined with jars that seem to contain reclaimed geefers. The signage there never quite explains how the museum was able to collect and display so many human organs, but it does finally make some claims about what the geefer is meant to do and, here, the museum debuts a third name: the fear-heart. If ‘The Geefer Museum’ can be said to have a thesis, it’s something like ‘humans are born with an organ that makes them afraid but a vast conspiracy suppresses or removes that organ in order to control the masses.’

It all approaches but never quite uses the word ‘sheeple’ in its explanation. I leave ‘The Museum of the Geefer’ enlightened, maybe, but not overly concerned. 

-traveler

‘The Body Bog’ is the essence of a side-of-the-road attraction because there’s not much for a person to safely do while visiting. The parking lot reflects the relative tightness of the presentation, allowing for, at most, four cars or, in my experience, one very old camper. A short path branches from the parking lot, winds for ten minutes through some tree, and then ends in a sort of boardwalk over the wet bog grounds that give the place its name. 

A sign there says only: ‘Body Bog’ (Coming Soon). 

The guide says more:

‘It’s a threat, yes. Maybe not to any one individual but certainly to humanity as a whole. There are no bodies in ‘The Body Bog’ but it’s clear that its curators hope there will be soon. In previous years, more detailed signs included theoretical instructions for ‘ceremoniously’ sinking human bodies into the bog so that they would likely be preserved for years past their expiry in regular old dirt. The sign went on to include examples of the sorts of bodies one might expect to eventually find in ‘The Body Bog:’ cheating spouses, two-faced friends, annoying children, and neighbors’ pets. ‘Just to name a few,’ the sign was quick to say, ‘Just throwing ideas at the wall, you know,’ it continued. 

Shortly after this sign was removed, visitors began to report hearing a voice in the bog, calling out about something called ‘Bog Cake.’ ‘Come on over this way,’ the voice said, ‘We’re celebrating ‘The Body Bog’ with cake! Totally safe to just walk on over!’ Local Rangers became involved in investigating the voice and it soon quieted.

These gimmicks quashed, ‘The Body Bog’ has sense settled on a patient silence that some describe as ‘pressured waiting.’ There is something expectant about ‘The Body Bog’ that is difficult to describe, and far be it from this author to discourage travelers from aiding the Wayside in its growth. 

‘The Body Bog’ needs bodies, and someday it will have them.’

“Is someone there?”

Someone begins to shout just as I turn to leave the boardwalk and head back to the camper. I scan the surrounding woods but make out no movement.

“I need help!”

It seems impossible to me that anybody would fall for ‘The Bog’s’ weak lures and more impossible still that they would make it so far into ‘The Bog’ before becoming stuck. My first guess is that this is some new recording, which is why I’m concerned when it continues:

“I’m not a recording! I’m just a man with limited telepathic ability who has become… stuck, here. There was a bog spirit, I think… somebody calling about cake.”

I take another step back toward the camper and the boardwalk creaks loudly underfoot. The man quits screaming, for a moment. 

“I heard that,” he says. 

“I’m just going to call the Rangers,” I say, “Or the fire fighters or whoever is nearby. I’m not really in, uh, bog-wear.”

“There’s not time!” He coughs and chokes as though he’s swallowed some of the bog water. “I’m sinking!”

“Won’t be a minute…” I say, finding that every board on the path back seems to creak. 

The man screams for me the whole way back, but it’s quieter after the first turn. I worry, a little, when I reach the camper and find I have no service, but it only makes me more determined to call for help as soon as possible. I hop in and drive toward civilization, checking my phone until a notification pushes through with new information about the next stop- some museum for an organ that doesn’t exist in the human body. Then, I see my old hometown is in the news again. I get a phone call about the camper’s warranty. 

A few days later I remember the voice in the bog with a sudden shock. I wonder if I should call someone now, but I don’t.

-traveler

The passage to ‘The Choker’ is a narrow one, to start. And it’s not like they want you to find it, they being the Rangers who maintain and supervise Washington’s Greater Cave System which, until recently, was closed to the public due to all the deaths. Now re-opened (because those Rangers were blind sighted by an argument that those people weren’t just endlessly wandering in the caves, very much alive), accessing ‘The Choker’ has become a little easier and, passing by, it’s finally made sense for me to cross it off the list before an appeal on the dead vs. missing decision inevitably comes through. 

Still, ‘The Choker’ is only accessed via a branch of the caverns that is deemed ‘unstable’ and it takes the better part of three hours just to reach and find the little crevasse that opens wide enough to take a body but isn’t one of the similar but much more dangerous crevasses that just become tighter and tighter or drop travelers into seemingly endless pits. A small, spraypainted ‘X’ inside ‘The Choker’s’ passage confirms I’ve got the right one, which is only so comforting.

It’s still a tight squeeze.

‘‘The Choker’ is observed, not visited- a massive crystalline geode with a relatively tiny hole in the bottom where, if one chooses, they might painstakingly shove their head through to get a view of the sparkling panorama. It’s recommended that travelers bring radiant light sources, again, small enough to fit through a melon-sized hole, and it’s recommended that a form of lubricant is used at the penetration point. Heads go in a lot easier than they come out, and ‘The Choker’ is littered with the blood and skin of panicked visitors.’

The entry makes me think that the entrance to ‘The Choker’ is going to be this scene of old violence, brown with blood or something like that. It’s not- I almost miss it, actually, and could have spent another half hour crawling through the narrow approach passage which is said to end abruptly some ways ahead. As it is, I happen to glance up in time for my headlight to catch something glimmering in the shadows above and, to the left, I find another small ‘X’ indicating that I’ve reached my destination. 

My research allows me to avoid two common pitfalls, here. One is the utter destruction of my headlight while attempting to shove it, and my head, through the hole at the same time. The other is getting my head through without considering that I won’t have room to pass a light source in after. Several blogs I’ve read suggested candlelight is the way to enjoy ‘The Choker’ but I do carry some semblance of Leave No Trace in my philosophy and so have opted for a small, collapsible lantern. I pass it through the hole and start the unpleasant process of lubing up my head. For this I’ve chosen a water-based based lube that’s graphic design and instructions indicate it was meant for something a great deal more enjoyable than this. 

And it’s cold. 

Generously lubricated, I start to squeeze my head up into the chamber, rotating, a little, so that my nose and chin can pass through small divots in the stone. Through, finally, I try to enjoy the crystals and I try to wonder at the mysterious beauty of nature and consider that I’m probably one of only a handful to have seen this and so on and so forth but the rock around my neck is oppressive and the prospect of now pulling my head back down daunting and when I do a small test to see if I can alleviate some of the anxiety I find, to my deep concern, that I can lift my legs from the ground below me and be stably, if not comfortably, supported by my neck alone. 

It takes a great deal of mental effort to not immediately start shoving myself back down with my arms and, instead, remember a suggestion that I instead try to lift my shoulders and rely on that more subtle, and thus more gentle, leverage so that when I emerge I will still have most of the skin of my face. Another panicked minute ticks by as I search for just the right angle and then suddenly my chin scrapes below the edge of ‘The Choker’ and, slowly but surely, the rest of my head follows. 

It must be frustrating for the Rangers to see people, like myself, emerge from the cave with the facial scrapings and dirty lube-matted heads indicative of visiting ‘The Choker’ and to have little-to-no recourse. I don’t dwell on it for long, though. There are certain Wayside destinations that make me happy to be free and alive, by comparison, and ‘The Choker’ proves to be among them. I rinse my head with a bucket outside the camper and smile as the afternoon air stings the little pink wounds about my head.

-traveler