I’m not used to the traditional National Park Services anymore, that much is clear. It’s made clear by the oppositional vibes of the people around me, the families pulling their children just a little closer- maybe not even realizing they’re doing it. I step into the restroom and look at myself in the mirror and see I’m much as I have been. I try to make myself objective, try to remember a way I looked before the way I look now. I’ve certainly been neglecting my beard and my clothes are in tatters but they are clean and I am clean. That’s the one promise I made myself, leaving for this trip.

That I wouldn’t let myself stink. 

‘What is this? A common National Park Site in this, a normally non-normal guide to America’s roadside attractions?

It’s true, and it’s not the only one. There are gray areas when it comes to the Wayside and whole sections of this book are devoted to the complexities of understanding them. This, though, ‘The Glass Anthill,’ isn’t so gray as all of that. It just so happens that the National Parks set up shop next to the Wayside and, in doing so, became an extension of the long road we champion in this publication.

Pay the fee for ‘The South Nevada Fossil Beds’ but ignore the old bones- they’re just like all the others you’ve seen. Turn your attention, instead, to the corner in the southeast. There, you’ll find ‘The Glass Anthill.’’ 

What the guide neglects to mention is that ‘The South Nevada Fossil Beds’ is mostly subterranean. There is a welcome counter on the surface and a few rooms for glancing at fossilized specimens and watching a looping documentary about the site’s discovery that feels much longer than its 20-minute runtime. The man at the front welcomes me and guesses right away that I’m here for the anthill- this is the first indication that my appearance is giving away more than I know. 

“Our manager has put a screen on the glass,” he says, “And you’re not supposed to pull it back because it might disturb the ants.” The man looks over his shoulder. “Just be quick about it if you do.”

When the man hands me my change I note several small ants tattooed on his knuckles and wonder if I shouldn’t have done a deep dive regarding potential cults or ant-based secret societies. Too late now, but I pointedly spend several minutes glancing over the displays and watching the slog of a video in the viewing room before descending the grated metal steps that lead to the wider display. 

‘The South Nevada Fossil Beds’ distinguish themselves by this viewing area where the fossils can be seen in the undisturbed earth and among the various rock and mineral layers that several geologists insist are very important to their formation and really very interesting overall. It’s the sort of thing a normal person can look at for about a minute before the novelty wears off and, considering this location doesn’t even have a gift shop, I imagine somebody at the National Park Service agrees with me. This place isn’t making any best-of lists. 

I do my lap around the main attraction before doing a 360 and realizing I have no sense for the cardinal directions underground (or ever, really, even on the surface). I pull up an app on my phone that points me toward a cardboard standee of a poorly designed fossil mascot, enthusiastically reminding children not to take fossils from public land. The ‘screen’ on either side of the mascot is a vaguely translucent pattern of dinosaurs marching about a prehistoric wasteland, most likely intended for windows in children’s rooms. 

Most of my fellow visitors are busy on the other side of the exhibit and seem to be ignoring me anyway, so I make my way over to the standee and, rather than push behind it, which seems infinitely more suspicious, I confidently pick it up and move it to the side and start the arduous process of pulling up the corner of the fossil film with the fingernails I’ve kept chewed down to skin for as long as I’ve been alive. After only a moment, I notice that the whole wall seems to be moving behind the screen and I take a step back, some instinct for danger or disgust suddenly taking control. I press my hand to the screen and am reassured by the smoothness of glass behind it and, when I finally can peel it back, I find the massive ant kingdom the guide suggested would be there.

It’s bigger than I expected and somehow clearer than I expected too. I trace the paths of the ants to little chambers and, without any more knowledge than anyone else who was once a boy child in a world with ants, I am able to understand what those chambers are for. I see a resting chamber. An eating area. A place for burying the dead. I follow grander dirt paths to where the queen is birthing eggs and I follow those same paths back to where the eggs are being nurtured to maturity. 

The longer I look, the more I see things that simply can’t be true. One chamber looks like a little ant gym. Another holds a vacant pavilion, maybe and empty theatre? Far off in the distance there are smaller chambers with insects that aren’t ants at all and I wonder if it’s a prison or a zoo.

My attention is so focused at this point that I don’t notice a child at my side before they shout back to their friends or siblings:

“Come check out what the weird guy found!”

Before I can put a word in, there are several more kids around me and they have toppled the standee and begin to tear at the plastic screen. To reveal depressing ant suburbs and long tunnels that must lead to other ant cities. I put enough space between myself and the chaos that, by the time parents and employees of the site arrive, nobody remembers it was me who started this.

That is, until I notice an ant on the floor, seeming to consider me to whatever extent its tiny senses can comprehend a behemoth. The ant seems curious, at first, and then accusing and, as it turns to move back toward whatever crack in the wall must allow them to walk freely in the exhibit, I step on it and leave. I don’t know what hell the ants can bring down on me, but I don’t need it today.

-traveler

‘Wayside destinations, by and large, keep to the interstates and outskirts of places where more normal life tends to occur, but there are certain points of interest that thrive in the cities as well and that is the case for ‘The Missing Piece,’ a store located and prominently advertised in Dallas proper. Listed separately as a ‘boardgame’ and ‘toy’ store, the owner, Patricia Sorgen, tends to disappoint potential customers and then leverage that disappointment to wow them. She does stock pieces that, taken in total, likely add up to thousands of boardgames and toys. Individually, though, these pieces are not much to look at. 

To be inside ‘The Missing Piece’ is to be inside one of those old library card catalogs. It is roughly the size and shape of a studio apartment but it is chock full of shelves and each shelf has a series of little drawers with cryptic labels that mean something only to Sorgen. Sorgen herself greets customers and, after explaining that, no, she doesn’t sell whole toys or boardgames, usually performs a medium-like trick in which she guides visitors to a game or puzzle or favorite action figure of their past and asks them to describe when and where a piece of that item went missing. Often with very little to go on, Sorgen is then able to produce that piece from one of her drawers and, though the actual toy or boardgame may be long gone, the visitor tend to pay for it, just as a souvenir, and that is how Sorgen makes her money.

As to how she manages to keep such an inventory, well, that’s up to some debate.’

Sorgen is thin- her hair straight and white and her clothes simple but carefully ironed. She navigates the shelves with a precision that must come from decades of this work. She opens a small drawer in the back and it rattles, plastic on wood. She withdraws something small and returns. 

“Was it this one?” She asks. It’s not really a question. She knows that it is. 

Sorgen places, in my hand, the small green projectile I described as having lost on a road trip with my parents. It is rounded and translucent, meant to be a sorcerous fireball launched from the hand of an old wizard robot I owned when I was seven. The fireball was lost between dinner and dessert at a restaurant and then, because we still needed to get to the hotel, there wasn’t much time to look for it. I’ve thought a lot about this fireball over the years. 

And it is the same fireball. I turn it over in my palm and run my finger over the divots my sister left there, briefly chewing it before the plastic was snatched away from her. 

“Do you… take these things?” I ask.

Sorgen smiles. “Of course not. That would be a very difficult way to make money.”

Money is not the only thing that is traded on the Wayside- I’ve learned that much between then and now. I wonder if Sorgen isn’t some sort of emotional vampire or some demon that thrives on the fulfilment of old debts. She is visibly upset when I hand it back to her.

“I think it was a different color.” I tell her. “But thanks for checking.”

I suppose it will sit in the back of my mind a while longer, that little piece of plastic. And I’ll always know where to get it when I’m ready to pay the price.

-traveler

‘People like animals. People like videos of drowsy and sleepy animals. People must like sleepy animals. 

This seems to be the entire logical skeleton of ‘The Sleepy Animal Zoo’ outside of Philadelphia, where several dozen vaguely exotic animals doze in their cages during the daytime, attempting to ignore the gawking patrons and their unruly children in order to catch a few moments of shut eye. ‘The Sleepy Animal Zoo’ is a private affair which means that it’s not subject to some of the same regulations one might take for granted, having seen what Pennsylvania’s public options have to offer.

Tickets are very cheap, which is good, yes, but they are so cheap that patrons can’t help but wonder where the money comes to maintain the animals’ habitats and, upon seeing them, understand that the money simply doesn’t exist. ‘The Zoo’ hasn’t aged well in the decade or so that it has been in operation and the bones were never exactly good. Visitors are left with the sense that the bears and the tiger could likely escape and maul everyone nearby if they were so tired. But they are tired and that is its own concern. 

The animals are less dozy, really, than nearly unconscious. They rarely wake and when they do they seem to hardly be able to lift their heads. Then, there was the case of little Davey Maker who, like so many children before him, decided to crawl into the monkey habitat and, rather than be adopted or consumed by angry, frightened monkeys, simply fell asleep on the hot cement and dreamt until zookeepers came to fetch him.

There is an amount of cuteness, here. That can’t be denied. The animals appear well fed and none perform the manic pacing that is sometimes noted in creatures brought to the very edge of insanity by the cage. At its worst, ‘The Sleepy Animal Zoo’ probably has its animals on a constant cocktail of sedatives that keeps them cozy and docile. At its best, ‘The Zoo’ is kind of boring and, as many visitor reviews indicate ‘not that different from any other zoo.’ 

Rumor has it that the animals are kept awake at night by wild, private dance parties for celebrities and politicians, these gatherings sometimes bordering on the occult. These are rumors, though, and one has to imagine that the entry price for admission to these ritualistic raves is so high that it would likely exclude anyone reading this book.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

I imagine there will be a time when cameras exist that can capture the full majestic silliness of ‘The World Hat’ and I, the aging millennial, will go white in the knuckles as the new generation makes a trend of posting those pictures until something happens to the site, accidentally or otherwise, that ruins it.

Just the hypothetical makes me angry.

I’ve been feeling that a lot, lately. The anger at imagined wrongs. I suppose some of it is the helplessness I feel when I read the headlines. I suppose some of it is this unending road trip. The loneliness. It’s been some time since I had a traveling companion or even a nemesis and now, with the camper, I’ve got all this room for either. It’s like driving a haunted house across the country. 

And I suppose all of that comes suddenly into focus because I find myself upside-down with my head in a hole and there’s nobody to take my picture from the viewing deck. 

‘Given the gaudy extravagance inherent in certain Wayside destinations, ‘The World Hat’ is something of a palate cleanser. It began with a naturally formed stone divot at the top of a rock formation on the edge of private land, owned by a woman named Rhonda Lasser who has never been seen on the property nor quoted speaking about it. Timothy Cortez, whose relationship to Lasser is unknown, is credited with finding the divot and recognizing that it was about the size of a one-size-fits-all hat and, eventually, installing two handlebars on either side of the divot so that he could flip himself upside down and briefly claim to be wearing the planet like a hat. This all happened with relatively little fanfare until a local news article chronicled Cortez’s attempts and failures to be recognized for this feat by a publication like the Guinness World Book of Records (he had broken no record) or Ripley’s Believe it or Not (this was not exactly unbelievable). The story did some rounds on the morning news programs of several neighboring counties and Cortez excitedly showed off pictures of himself wearing the world until the question of landownership came up and then he promptly disappeared from the public eye. 

‘The World Hat’ has never quite reached the viral draw that other picture-specific destinations have. Despite Cortez’s bars, standing on one’s head on a stone surface is difficult and uncomfortable and subjects of pictures tend to be red-faced and straining, leading to a secondary nickname: ‘The Space Toilet.’ It doesn’t exactly draw the social media crowd. 

At its heart, ‘The World Hat’ is a stupid idea executed with genuine intentions and its construction guarantees that it will be a Wayside destination for some time. Travelers are recommended to bring a friend, both for picture-taking and for spotting. Slipping out of ‘The World Hat’ at just the wrong angle may result in a bone-breaking fall and the nearest hospital is 50 miles down the interstate.’

There is something about wearing ‘The World Hat.’ When I turn upside down, I expect to feel the weight of my body like the weight of the world and to be reminded of all the troubles ahead of us. Instead, I find my worries pushed away as my body strains to stay in position and the horizon stretches out before me like the wide brim of a hat. 

-traveler

It is a good day for the beach. It’s more warm than I normally like, but the sky is speckled with clouds that allow for an occasional reprieve from the sun, and a breeze tends to appear when it’s most needed, playing over the ocean and cooling the people at ‘The Slight Beach.’ I glance up from my towel and think that this could be a picture taken from a postcard, if it weren’t for all the warning signs. 

‘One of nature’s deadly little illusions, ‘The Slight Beach’ is named for the grade at which the sands drops into the water past the shore. In a word, it is ‘slight.’ So slight, that one’s descent into water that covers anything above the waist takes a concerted hour’s walk straight into the ocean, by which point, many beachgoers find themselves exhausted and even a little lost. Far enough away from land, and without any sort of tangible slope, it’s common for visitors to become lost, wandering around in water that is only four feet deep but unable to drink or rest or even swim very comfortably. 

Those who choose to enter the water are advised to do so with a lifejacket and one of the many specially-designed shore-pointing compasses sold at the local souvenir shops for exhorbitant prices. Rescue boats leave the shore at 5pm but space is limited.’

I forgo the life jacket but do buy one of the compasses fro mthe local Ranger’s outpost, only because it has a picture of a disapproving looking Ranger and the words “Wish you were here” under the arrow pointing at the shore. The man who sells it to me asks me not to go in the water, explaining it’s his job to ask that and that there is nothing legally he can do to stop me but it’s really pretty dangerous. I point out that he waited until after he sold me the compass to start on the warnings and he gives up, suggesting I should skew northwest if I want a good seat on the rescue boat when it comes by. 

Once I’m on the water, I start to realize what the temptation is. Standing ankle-deep is supremely unsatisfying and, the further I walk, the more the sounds of the coast begin to recede. The experience is comfortable isolating and the view gets better past the signs. I take a few pictures at knee-deep and determine to go a little further, keeping the colorful umbrellas behind me in sight as I walk. 

The trick, of course, is that between the heat and the water, those indicators of land are there one moment and then gone the next, melded into the vague technicolor of light playing on water. Something brushes past the back of my knee and I nearly drop my phone. 

I hear someone yelling in the distance and see a man struggling to swim in the water. He says he’s gone too far out- is too tired to swim anymore. I motion for him to stand and he does, looking slightly embarassed. I check my compass and point him back to shore, glad to see that he isn’t compelled to talk to me or thank me for saving his life or anything like that. He waves and wanders off and fifteen minutes later I realize I was reading the compass upside down. 

-traveler

‘The Bone Garden’ smells. It smells for about a mile around its perimeter, which, given that it’s grown in this shrubby not-quite-desert of the outer Death Valley, doesn’t seem to bother anyone. Most people cycling their A/C from the air in the car could drive by without ever noticing it- the stench isn’t permeating exactly. With an open window, though, and paired with the vultures overhead, it isn’t exactly hard to miss. 

‘There’s not much to the surface of ‘The Bone Garden.’ There shouldn’t be, anyway. ‘The Bone Garden’ is an informal place where community members have come to bury carcasses in chicken wire, leaving them for a year or so to decomposition and hungry, burrowing insects but confounding the sorts of animals that might attempt to dig them up and scatter the bones.

It’s the bones that people are after. Given time, the chickenwire fills with the skeleton of the animal in a form that’s near to life. What people need these skeletons for is not a simple question. For some, it’s a morbid curiosity, for others, it’s nostalgia for a lost pet. Some people make art with the bones. Others claim to cast spells. 

There has been some drama in ‘The Bone Garden’ of late. A sign has appeared, handwritten but on wood, that asks the gardeners to not place human remains on the premises. This has been met with backlash, not so much for the rule itself, but for the idea that anybody should be able to regulate a community project such as ‘The Bone Garden,’ which has been maintained for over a decade now. Efforts to organize a clean-up of the discarded bones that litter the ground have been met with similar derision. 

“Those bones belong where they fall,” said one gardener, casting about with the skull of a rodent, “How would you know it’s the garden without the bones?”

The woman is later recorded tripping into a pile of remains as she searches for her plot, waving away the camera from the ground and swearing she tripped on her own shoes.’

The guide fails to mention that the ground of ‘The Bone Garden’ is swarming with insects, and I suppose that’s because they’re the sort of uninterested, half-alive larvae that feast on the dead and ignore or even resent the intrusion of the living, but had I known the earth beneath me would be so saturated with life as to be undulating beneath my sneakers, I probably would have tied bags on my feet or something. As it is, I waffle on whether or not to hike up my pant legs, choosing instead to tuck them into my socks and hope that nothing capable of squirming in between the tight fabric will choose to do so. 

The bone layer on the ground moves slightly with the earth beneath it. The bones make a noise, like the rattle of an insect, course and grating. Piled remains sometimes topple with the sound of hollow wood, the effect of which is to drive some deep instinctual fear of predators into overdrive. I turn reflexively each time this happens and my eyes try to make sense of the shifting landscape, occasionally determining that something large seems to be moving just below the surface of the ground, before the pattern collapes back into chaos. 

I stick around long enough to take note of the plot system- loose at best. Gardeners plant little signs- a name, at least, and an entry date. Some indicate the contents or an estimated time of retrieval. Others advertise their social media accounts. 

Before I leave, I watch a vulture fall from the sky, breaking its neck as it crashes into the center of the garden. I came upon a short scientific article about this. These birds are drawn in by the smell and become locked into a loop, waiting for a meal that never comes. I suspect the dead vulture may feed the others, but before they can descend a woman has made her way out of the woods with chickenwire to bury the fallen bird. 

Another vulture breaks briefly from the circle, hesitates, and returns, drawn in by a promise nobody intends to keep.

-traveler

‘Nestled in the parking lot of a local grocery store in Walter, Montana is a pile of snow and dirt that has not fully disappeared for as long as historical records of the area have been kept. ‘The Snow Pack,’ as its called locally, is actually the reason for the grocery being there in the first place, it having served as a natural refrigerating service in those wild west days of sarsaparillas and gun shot wounds. The grocery soon outgrew the need for ‘The Snow Pack’ but the snow remained all the same and eventually became the easiest place for plows to gather snow from nearby streets, only increasing the likelihood of ‘The Snow Pack’s’ survival. 

Now, the citizens of Walter baby ‘The Snow Pack’ with a care that borders upon anxiety. Unseasonable warmth has threatened the phenomenon, seeing it shrink to a mere ten-square feet in 2022 and, according to some reports, releasing something of a stench that has been frozen under the ice for decades. In the years between, residents have taken to dumping their sidewalk’s snow on ‘The Pack,’ hoping to see it last another year.

The city of Walter has reacted strongly to smear campaign created by Claremont, MO: their football rivals. The campaign has nothing to do with football: it features only a picture of ‘The Snow Pack’ as it was seen at its lowest point with the words: ‘What are they hiding in Walter?’ in bold print underneath. The unusual tone of the campaign has made it popular online and some have arrived at ‘The Snow Pack’ with shovels, in order to get to the bottom of things, both literally and figuratively. Members of the local football team (The Pack) roughed up one such visitor and were released with only a warning, indicating what may only be the tip of a much deeper conspiracy.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Well they’ve done it and we, the people who make a living on the interstate, are all so happy you’ve gotten what you want. As of this edition, likely to be printed in 2023, Texas has completed construction on the nation’s first, and hopefully only, ‘Interstate Loop.’ This is not a loop in the normal sense, that being a sort of long roundabout meant for traffic consistently moving between two likely destinations. This is a loop like for toy cars: dangerously vertical.

And its results are likely to be much the same.

It’s estimated that a vehicle will need to be travelling well over one hundred miles an hour to make anything close to a successful pass at ‘The Loop.’ It’s also suggested that, for a successful pass, a vehicle will likely want to cross lanes of traffic, meaning that, in the unlikely situation of two vehicles attempting to complete the loop at the same time from opposite directions, there’s a decent chance they collide mid-climax and crash to the ground. 

The state of Texas has seen fit to give drivers every chance they might need to succeed at this new strip of interstate. Steep hills on both sides of the loop offer a means by which to gather the speed theoretically required for making it across. The asphalt is smooth and sticky on the wheels, for maximum grip. An ambulance is kept nearby to rescue those survivors of ‘The Loop.’ Say what you will about the project- they’re putting in the work to make it a reality. 

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

Without meaning to, I begin to feel a certain accomplishment in the product I design at ‘The Interactive Baby Toy Factory.’ It’s been a long time since I’ve something with my own hands. The motorcycle counts, I suppose, and I’ve done some repairs on the camper over the year or so that I’ve had it, but to make something from nothing, based on no former design. I don’t think I’ve done that since elementary school thrust me into a craft room and asked me to make a crocodile out of popsicle sticks and glitter. 

The toy I design is a sort of thick plastic space ship with an inky finish and a crew of adorable aliens inside. My thinking is that the toy can be investigated in parts- locked closed while the child is young, and gradually opened as the child reaches ages where smaller toys and more nuanced pretend play can be encouarged. It’s got a little spring engine for zipping around the floor. The aliens inside make a satisfying rattle. The characters are generic enough to be lovable, but edgier that the usual bear. It’s something that will catch the eye of parents, I think. This is a capitalist endeavor, after all. 

I hand my spaceship over to the workers and wait in a room with a two-way mirror. Inside, an eerie mechanical baby seems to be watching me or, I suppose, looking at itself in the mirror. It, doesn’t look much like a baby, minus the silhouette. A long cord trails out of its head and disappears into a track in the ceiling.

It turns its head when factory workers enter the room with the space ship.

‘The owner of ‘The Interactive Toy Factory’ is a parent himself and, prior to branching out on his own endeavor, worked in toy design for several decades. The new factory is a little ‘grumpy,’ he admits. 

“Everybody thinks they can design a toy,” he says, “And when something goes wrong, everyone says they knew it was coming, that toy makers are cutting corners and using cheap plastic or faulty construction. It’s not easy, and it’s not my fault all those kids died!”

There is no record of the incident he is referring to.’

The spaceship is left on the floor and the workers retreat, leaving the curious mechanical baby to its process. It doesn’t move, at first, and I wonder if the toy is too generic. If it’s unable, even, to capture the attention of a child that, in turn, was designed to play with toys. Eventually, though, the baby makes its way to ship, toddles up to two legs, and then comes crashing down face-first on the tail. The fake baby begins to spew, what I assume must be a blood substitute as it mimics harm. It grabs for the spaceship and, in pulling it back, engages the little spring engine which begins to tangle in the baby’s thin hair. The baby tries to stand and slips in, what I personally feel but am in no way medically qualified to say, is way more blood than a child of that size could lose, and falls again in such a way that the hard plastic splinters into shards. What follows is an hour or so demonstration of what an immortal (and suspiciously clumsy baby) can do with pieces of sharp plastic. 

I’m handed a report at the end that predicts a great deal of liability, an expensive and difficult recall, and a death toll in the thousands. I get to keep the bag of gooey plastic shards- a souvenir from a failed career. 

-traveler

‘Washington’s ‘Wash’em’ or ‘The Largest Carwash in the World’ holds the record with an enthusiasm that likely works against it. The nearest competitor, currently located in Korea, is less than a quarter as long as ‘Wash’em’ and takes takes only a half hour to compete. ‘Wash’em,’ on the otherhand, is ever-expanding and the most recent reports suggest traversing the tunnel can take up most of a day.

‘Wash’em’ makes a lot of claims about the length of its carwash, indicating a very thorough understanding of modern cars as well as an appreciation for those vintage models that come through (this being a little tongue-in-cheek, being illustrated with a 2013 Camry). It claims that bleeding edge AI has been plugged into a database chock-full of car facts and allowed to wield of a state of the art visual recognition system to allow for a unique and tailored cleaning experience each time. It will, for instance, take note of novelty antannae toppers and attempt to clean around them, rather than whip them off into the wet, colorful void of its maw, as a lesser carwash might do. It is able to pinpoint and understand the difference between, say, wood sap and bird feces and even the difference between feces left by various species of bird (the literature does not indicate why this would matter exactly). The AI has been programmed to seek out ‘WASH ME’ messages written in dust and to preserve that small swath of filth while writing ‘done and done’ or something of the like beside it, tucking a little wet towel behind the rear wiper so that the driver, annoyed and maybe begrudingly amused, can finish the job.

Reports that the AI will sometimes write other, more concerning messages in the soaps suds and dirt of windshields are vehemently denied by the owners of ‘Wash’em’ and by its team of programmers, none of whom have ever been sighted at the car wash itself. 

‘Nothing to worry about inside the ‘Wash’em,’’ press releases read, ‘Head on in and see for yourself. Just, maybe pack a sandwich and some water.’

I have exactly two buckets in the camper and they are both already in use, keeping drips at bay. I have eaten through half my food. Consumed three-quarters of my potable water. I’ve been in the ‘Wash’em’ for two days and I don’t know how much longer the camper will stand up. 

Another impact shudders through the left wall and the metal creaks and strains under pressure. It’s dark except for the prismatic light leaking in through the towel I’ve taped over the windshield. A scrubber passes over the ceiling and a seam across leaks green foam that quickly resolves into an apple-smelling detergent of some kind. Brushes skidder underneath and the floor begins to warm. The last time the ‘Wash’em’ applied hot wax, the floor became too hot to stand on for half an hour and it fused the legs of my favorite plastic chair to the rug underneath it. I grab a sleeve of crackers from the cabinet and move on to the couch to wait it out. 

Several times I’ve heard voices on the outside of the camper. Calling for help. Calling for me to join them. I wonder what would make me desperate enough to leave- to risk it out there rather than in the safety of the camper. A buckling hull, maybe. An empty water tank. The voice of someone I know. Another day and I may be an entirely different person, willing to do desperate things to-

Oh, nevermind. It’s finished.

-traveler