‘There are few public places as familiar and uncomfortable as ‘The National Reunion Hall,’ a venue that reeks of stale coffee and fifties-era cigarette smoke. Despite the matted carpets and dusty décor, ‘The Hall’ hasn’t taken a reservation in more than a decade, re-directing phone requests to a pre-recorded message without so much as a courtesy ring. The message, read aloud by a man that sounds as though he is speaking the words from his deathbed, indicates that there has been a spike in demand for places such as ‘The National Reunion Hall’ and that the owners will place a call back at the soonest moment. The message ends before allowing the caller to leave any of their information. There has been some speculation in recent years that the message is not pre-recorded at all. Samples have revealed slight variations in tone and instances of subtle throat-clearing that might be attributed to the dying man’s weakened state. Attempts to communicate with him or to shock him from his script with loud noises or lurid replies have failed. The man’s identity remains unknown and is ultimately irrelevant.

The trick, if one might call it that, is nobody needs a reservation to attend one of the daily reunions. There are no set lists- nobody checking names. This could be chalked up to sloppy management except that one always arrives at a reunion at which they belong. In that way, management is the furthest thing from sloppy. Management is impossibly, terrifyingly effective.’

When I arrive at ‘The National Reunion Hall,’ I find that my 20-year high school reunion is taking place, there. I leave without showing my face- literally without taking off my helmet- and I return two days later, assuming the coast has cleared. This time it is a traveler’s reunion and, though it remains eerily pertinent, I figure it is bound to be less personal and certainly less awkward than having to mingle with the weary present versions of my high school peers.

I’m wrong, of course. When I step into the hall I find it decorated and catered for a hundred people and only one other person has shown up- the Stranger who, loyal readers might remember, had previously decayed into a sort of wight and then a specter and then a more traditional shadow. My shadow. I check my shadow and see it remains much as it has been these past couple years. It shifts uneasily under the rainbow lights that swirl above a vacant dance floor.

The Stranger looks up from a plate of dainty sandwiches and seems as surprised to see me. He scans the hall in case anyone else has managed to sneak inside. He opens his mouth and lets a gob of bread and cheese fall out onto the paper plate.

“I thought you were dead,” he says.

Something shifts beneath his chair and I step backward, thinking it’s his own shadow that’s reaching out. It’s only a rabbit, its hair tied in long, gaudy braids alternating black and gray. It drops a half-chewed carrot on the floor and hisses so loud and so long that I worry it might pass out. Hector shivers in my arms.

“I thought the same about you.”

We are quiet for some time, each of us trying to figure out what to say next. I’m about to speak when the Stranger cuts me off.

“This is my fault,” he says, “I walked away from a reunion of the strangers when I first arrived here three days ago. I run in limited circles, you know, so ‘The National Reunion Hall’ must’ve had to scramble to come up with another reunion on the fly, bringing you back from the dead as a workaround. Sorry about that.”

The Stranger picks up the half-chewed sandwich and pops it back in his mouth. His rabbit hisses like a leaking balloon.

“That’s all right,” I say, and then I shake my head, “Wait, I mean, no- you were dead. Otherwise, though, yes. I agree.”

The music playing from the dance floor shifts to a slow song and the lights dim to sultry. The Stranger crumples a napkin onto his plate and scoops his rabbit up from the floor.

“Let’s not argue,” he says, and he begins to step backward between the chairs, mirroring the movements he once used to disappear into the darkness of ‘Echo Cave.’ “Maybe I’ll see you around,” he says, “Maybe-”

The Stranger yelps and trips backward over a folding chair. He’s gone before I’m able to weave my way through the tables, having disappeared into the institutional geometry of the carpet, I guess, or having slipped between the course fabric of the table cloths. I don’t pretend to understand the sort of magic he does. It’s quicker than exploiting the gray roads. More prone to glitches.

Hector sniffs cautiously at the Stranger’s chair while I bag up a week’s worth of food from the buffet, the very thin silver lining to this whole encounter. I suppose a man could eat perpetually at ‘The National Reunion Hall,’ but only if he were willing to spend each night re-living the past with the people he thought he left there. Everything comes at a cost on the Wayside and ‘The National Reunion Hall’ is just a hair outside of my budget for a repeat visit.

-traveler

A number of ghost suburbs dot the nation and I imagine visiting any one of them would be enough for my purposes. It’s only by chance that I come across an entry that considers the phenomenon as a whole while passing ‘Echo Field-’ the very first of its kind. Hector and I drive through and find it unwelcoming, but only so far as any suburb is unwelcome to strangers.

‘The oldest of the ghost suburbs tend to be a bit more run down than newer developments, in part because of neglect, sure, but mostly because they were built to be a little run down. The opinion, at the time, was that ghosts preferred a ruined aesthetic to anything that smacked of new life and the misconception nearly caused the whole idea to flop. Taking nearly a decade to fill, ‘Echo Springs’ and ‘Sweet Abyss’ were verifiable ghost towns (figuratively speaking), before newer, nicer ghost suburbs were established and demand outgrew development. ‘Springs’ and ‘Abyss’ were reframed as ‘playfully retro’ and the remaining units sold at twice the original asking price.

Recent legislation has paved the way for significant government subsidies in regards to the construction and purchase of ghost-adjacent housing units. Even those normally in opposition of generous housing subsidies have turned a blind-eye to this one. Aging, conservative lawmakers have championed the reform- in fact, most already have their eyes on a ‘retirement home.’’

-traveler

At its largest, ‘The Lawless Square’ of Eastern Mississippi was not at all unlike ‘The OSHA Violation Grounds.’ It was exactly what it claimed to be: a city block’s worth of land on which no federal or state laws were enforced. This is not to say they couldn’t be enforced- that would be in violation of the spirit of the thing. Any large enough militia could, theoretically, have taken control of ‘The Lawless Square’ and imposed laws upon the place, but only up to a time when an opposing militia might arrive with better weaponry and a new flavor of justice. In that regard, ‘The Lawless Square’ has never been all that different than any other place, really.

These days it’s all but impossible for a militia to hold ‘The Lawless Square,’ not for stricter rules, but for tighter borders. ‘The Square’ has been whittled away over the years and is now really more of a lawless circle, just two feet in diameter. So, while a particularly determined militia once stood five of its members on each others shoulders in an attempt to hold the place, all it took was one, entirely lawless push before the regime crumbled, both literally and figuratively, firing their entirely illegal automatic rifles all the way down and injuring a number of bystanders in the lawful zone before landing in Mississippi proper where they were promptly arrested for crimes they had only begun to commit during the fall.

‘The Lawless Square’ is no longer big enough to commit murders in. It’s not so convenient a spot for grand theft auto or any sort of heist-like scheme. ‘The Lawless Square’ is really only a place to do drugs now, really only a place where a single person can do just enough drugs that they retain the wherewithal to stand within the rough circle long enough that all traces of the illegal substance have left their system.

Police are known to gather nearby, hoping to nab people from their place in line rather than wait for the current resident of ‘The Lawless Square’ to cross the boundary back to lawfulness. For all the arrests that take place around ‘The Square,’ the area is technically the most crime ridden place in the country. Considering the constraints involved, ‘The Lawless Square’ itself is one of the safest places in America to be.’

With no crimes high on my list to commit, I don’t plan on waiting in line for a turn in ‘The Lawless Square,’ but when Hector and I arrive we find it empty. I cross-reference the coordinates with Autumn by the Wayside and with several others sources online, having heard rumors that sly officers will sometimes construct false lawless squares where, in reality, laws are completely enforceable. The location comes back as genuine and, in addition, I discover that autumn tends to be slow season for crime-committing in the area. A happy circumstance.

Cautiously, then, Hector and I step into bounds of ‘The Lawless Square’ and, for just a moment, I feel the weight lifted- I feel the sheer breadth of opportunity gaping out around me, begging me to act. I dig into my pack, trying to think of some small crime to commit to make it worth my while, but come away empty handed. We stand for a moment longer and step back out into the world.

-traveler

Earlier in my life I would have described my relationship with the sun as being fairly neutral; so neutral, in fact, that I likely would have raised an eyebrow at the overall idea of a relationship with sun- with the very premise of the question. That’s changed a great deal since I crashed the truck and have taken to exploring the Wayside on my bike. Since then, I have developed a keen awareness of my relationship with the sun and I can say, without hesitation, that it is oppositional.

Sunshine finds its way in through my clothes as easily as rain and, unlike rain, I don’t notice until it’s too late- until I’ve settled into my sleeping bag and the red-raw skin makes itself known. Sunshine strikes me in the eyes at odd times, blazing down from the sky predictably, sure, but bouncing off innocuous metal surfaces, too, always at inopportune moments.

And the heat.

There are ways of staying warm on the bike. Few to keep cool when it matters. I can wait out the rain and the snow but the heat, when it arrives, is unending. Nighttime hardly lingers on those occasions that I’m passing through the south in early autumn. The world never cools. The sun only blinks its eye.

I am skeptical of every destination but more skeptical of ‘The Sky Callus’ than I probably ought to be.

‘Vermont makes a big deal out of ‘The Sky Callus,’ hinting, but never claiming outright, that it somehow exists as a result of their dedication to the environment. This author does not debate the climate crisis nor does he tend to downplay the importance of living a green lifestyle, but it should be clear to anyone with any sense that a mottled atmosphere is a scarred one. Whatever comfort there is to be had under ‘The Sky Callus’ is representative of the calm before the storm, not the cloud’s silver lining.’

I don’t understand the mottling effect of ‘The Sky Callus’ any more than I understood the concept of a hole in the ozone layer. How does atmosphere form gaps? How does it bunch up in odd places? I assume there will be something, be it signage or a visitor’s center, at ‘The Sky Callus’ that might explain the science of it all in layman’s terms but am greeted, instead, with what may as well be a circus.

The tackiest form of tourism has taken root at ‘The Sky Callus.’ Sweaty men sell eight-dollar lemonade from garish trailers. Haphazard family businesses hawk fried goods. Every booth seems to be playing a variation of the same loud rock music- all of it beachy and upbeat and insistent.

The area beneath ‘The Sky Callus’ is clear, at least. Some authority has made it so that the vendors can’t exist on the field itself so they hover just on the outskirts, close enough that they can pass food over the fence. Visitors huddle in the center of the field where the racket is the least intrusive. They complain about the noise and sip their eight-dollar lemonades. Hector and I claim a spot halfway between the two factions, where we won’t be immediately solicited and where Hector’s strange body won’t excite the kids, or frighten them.

And, despite everything, we find peace. ‘The Sky Callus’ is such that it’s impossible to be sunburned underneath it. The light that trickles through is gentle and warming and the crowd wanes in the late afternoon when the air takes on a chill undercurrent that I don’t mind at all. At some point, I fall asleep.

When I wake, I find the moon above us, its own light made bleary and accusing by ‘The Callus.’ I have always felt guilty upon waking from stolen naps, though, so maybe I’m projecting. I haven’t begun to consider my relationship with the moon.

-traveler

I don’t tend to think of myself as an overly squeamish person. If anything, my threshold for violence has risen since the trip began. I’ve been subjected to violent acts and I’ve orchestrated a few myself, though usually only in self-defense. How far back have you been reading? It’s been mostly self-defense, right? Preemptive, occasionally, but self-defense all the same.

‘The Sounds of Violence’ advertises itself as a medical resource and an auditory journey rolled up into one grim experience. In practice, it’s much like any museum on a budget, which is to say that it’s dark and dusty and its exhibits are spaced apart so that the time it takes to view them all justifies the cost of entry. I’m handed a set of plush headphones at reception and an instructional pamphlet that is 75% content warning and 25% ‘exhibits will activate automatically.’ The woman behind the desk mouths something to me and I realize the headphones are of a higher quality than I suspected. I pull them down to my neck.

“Room doors close automatically too,” she explains, “so the sound of forward groups won’t disturb those behind them.”

I look around the lobby. I glance out into the parking lot. Aside from the woman behind the desk, I haven’t seen the face of another human being in nearly three hours. She doesn’t notice that I’m questioning her. Or she doesn’t care. It’s not her job to justify the building’s features to me.

When I enter the first room, the door swishes closed behind me at a speed that puts me a little on edge. There is a sense of finality about the motion that I confirm by receiving no reaction when I step toward it again. I skip past the exhibit and toward the forward-moving doors and am relieved to find that they swing open willingly. Then, I hear a sound like waterlogged sofa hitting cement and a man’s voice shrieking in pain.

I turn and see this exhibit’s title: ‘Injuries sustained while falling.’

‘There are two things worth knowing about ‘The Sounds of Violence’ as a destination.

The first is that they claim all of their audio clips have been taken from real incidents. It would be comforting to assume they are lying, considering the grotesque injuries on display in latter rooms and the unlikely odds that such high quality audio could be salvaged from, say, ‘an accident involving a necktie and a helicopter.’ It would be comfortable to believe that they’ve paid off some voice actors and edited the audio to make it sound almost clownish. Otherwise, those seemingly over-the-top vocalizations would be evidence of a level of human pain unknown to much of the population. It would be a gross insight into what we are capable of feeling as an animal-being.

The second thing worth knowing is that they offer a discounted annual membership and ‘basking’ events in which visitors are given unlimited time in a room between dusk and dawn. They often sell out of both.’

The visual exhibit is nothing more than a series of printed posters detailing, with medical diagrams, the sort of injuries being sustained in the audio clips. The waterlogged sofa man shattered both legs and broke his hip. A snippet of conversation follows- a woman’s voice talking casually about snow, before a metal twang interrupts her and she screams. There is a wet impact and a grunt and then a whir of noise. Tumbling, I think. There is a sound like a branch snapping and the woman screams again. The hectic white noise of her falling stops suddenly and is replaced by the woman’s whimpering. Another clip follows. A man says “I think I can jump that,” and I rush out of the room before I hear him proven wrong.

Illustrations for the next exhibit detail burn injuries. I’ve hardly had a chance to take them in when a groggy voice says: “Wake up, honey. Do you smell that? Is that smoke?” A mattress creaks. Blankets slough off to the floor. A door clicks open and the man shouts “Shit!” He screams.

I yank the headphones from my head and the screaming grows exponentially louder. There are no cords- no indication of the headset being powered at all. They’re construction headphones, made for muffling noise. The burning man’s cries come from speakers in the walls at a volume that tears into my ear drums. I pull the headphones back on and rush forward. Autumn by the Wayside says a full tour of ‘The Sounds of Violence’ takes an hour and I realize, for the first time, that the author never cuts corners.

It must have driven him insane a long time ago.

-traveler

A man sits idly in the reception area of ‘The National Forbidden Knowledge Buyback Program,’ staring out the window nearest the desk with a vacant smile on his face. He turns when he hears me approaching and the smile becomes less vacant. His eyes remain on me as I slide my spare copy of Autumn by the Wayside across the counter.

“What’s this one about?” he asks.

“It’s a travel guide.”

“What’s it called?”

I look between the man and the book. He blinks but refuses to glance down and read the title himself.  

“If it’s dangerous, won’t hearing the title be the same as reading it?”

“Probably.”

“Do you have to quarantine or something if you accidentally look down and catch a snippet of a book cover?”

“Don’t know.” He sniffs. “Never happens.”

“You must be good at your job.”

“I’m blind,” he says. I make a face that I hope conveys apology and by the time I realize it’s all only read as silence to him, he continues: “No need to apologize. Happens all the time. So what’s this one?”

“It’s called Autumn by the Wayside.”

“Shoot. I was thinking we got all those.”

“You’ve seen it before?” The man doesn’t answer. “I mean, this has come in before?”

“Used to come in by the cartful. Had to lower the buyback cost because we suspected the author was turning a profit.”

“You met the author?”

“That’s right.”

“Did he look…

“Hmm.”

“Did he sound like me?”

‘Looking for some easy money? There is no better scam than that which can be pulled at ‘The National Forbidden Knowledge Buyback Program,’ where they will drop you some change for any old scrap of forbidden knowledge. They’ll pay a dollar for the true name of the god of Hillmont in Tennessee written on a napkin. They’ll pay a hundred for anything heard whispered in the echoes of ‘The Watery Grave,’ assuming it’s been jotted down. They’ll pay a little for just about anything if it’s pitched with a salesman’s flourish because they won’t actually read what’s been turned in. It’s too dangerous, even, for the sort of AI that can scan a document and check it against encrypted matches. The last time they tried that they accidentally created the internet.

All this to say that a seasoned traveler’s glove compartment will contain secrets enough for a week’s gas money and, with branches in every state, ‘The National Forbidden Knowledge Buyback Program’ is the closest some of us will ever get to a comfortable, government job. As of this edition, a copy of ‘Autumn by the Wayside’ will fetch you $15, down from something closer to $50. If you decide it’s worth the trade, tell Tom I said ‘hi’ and that I’ll see him again soon.’

“I guess you kind of sound like him.”

“Does he come around a lot?”

“He’ll come by every day for a week or two and then he’ll disappear again as soon as we lower the buyback.”

“What’s his name?”

The man arches an eyebrow. “I’m no expert, but shouldn’t his name be on the cover, here?” He runs his finger over the author’s name with suspicious accuracy.

“I just want to confirm.”

“We don’t really do names here.”

“He wrote your name in the book, Tom! People know your name based on what he’s done.”

“My name’s not Tom. That’s sort of an inside joke. It started out like ‘tome’ and then he…” The man’s eyes narrow. “You don’t care.”

“How much for this copy?”

“Twelve bucks,” he says, and he begins to tap at the monitor in front of him. “It was fifteen till he came back with a bunch of spiral-bound copies. Before that, he tried to sell us five hundred PDFs on a single thumb drive, paid per file of course. Bosses wouldn’t let that one fly.”

“I’ll keep the book,” I tell him, expecting that he’ll try to convince me to sell, this being forbidden knowledge after all. He doesn’t. The man’s face slowly turns back to the window.

“You all right?” I ask, and he jumps in his seat, spilling coffee across the counter. The paperback soaks it in and curls its corners in a knowing smile.

-traveler

‘‘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