It’s autumn at ‘The Fresh Air-boretum.’ A miniature forest of gold and brown air fresheners is situated over model terrain, sprawled over a massive wooden platform and roped off at an appropriate distance. The smell fills the silo that houses them. It’s sharp and chemical, foremost, with hints of pumpkin spice, cinnamon, and coffee, maybe. It’s impossible to smell anything else- not even the small preview of winter tucked away in a corner, supposedly pine and spearmint.

Hector wants nothing to do with it. He wants nothing to do with the masks we’re offered at the front to protect our sinuses. The woman there offers to watch him in his kennel.

‘The Fresh Air-boretum’ doubles as an air freshener museum so I leave a bag of carrots and try to hold my breath long enough to take in a little history.

‘Ignore what ‘The Fresh Air-boretum’ says about itself. It’s all likely true but it’s all ‘financial hardships’ and ‘one man’s dream’ and ‘a journey to restore a sense of smell.’ These cliché origin factoids conveniently skip the fact that, until 2011, ‘The Fresh Air-boretum’ concealed the legs of its exhibits with curtains and in March of that same year a janitor followed a trail of ants and discovered that a serial killer (or many serial killers) had been depositing the bodies of their victims underneath said tables. For years. Police pulled 23 bodies from the silo that day and no arrests were ever made.

The dead make for fertile earth, reader. No forest grows without the dead.’

I get most of the way through the ‘The Fresh Air-boretum’ before I give in to the urge to look under the platform. There is a body right there, right at my feet, and I scrabble backward, slam my head on the opposite wall. The air freshener forest sways gently as I realize the body is only a cut-out- a black silhouette with three words painted in white: ‘Thanks for coming!’

-traveler

Hector takes to ‘The Prairie Dog Capital City’ with uncharacteristic delight. He’s lived a fairly sheltered life, away from other creatures his size. He’s caught glimpses of natural habitats before this but ‘The Prairie Dog Capital City’ is the New York of small mammal ecosystems- according to some sources, anyway.

‘‘The Prairie Dog Capital City’ is the New York of small mammal ecosystems. It has everything a street-savvy prairie dog might desire: reliable infrastructure, relative security, diverse work opportunities, and a growing underground music scene. At least, that’s what on-site researchers maintain. Researchers at ‘The Prairie Dog Capital City’ have a tendency to assert facts about the site that don’t quite reflect prairie dog behavior elsewhere- that don’t quite reflect reality as the average person might otherwise experience it.

Alleged prairie dog music, for instance, sounds a lot like the fearful chittering one might expect when as a human looms over a tunnel entrance and attempts to feed a microphone into a chamber below. Prairie dog socialites look a lot like specimens that have been dressed up in crudely-made costumes and therefore rejected from the general population (as opposed to being ‘a little snooty’). The infamous prairie dog crime syndicate that operated from 2009 to 2015 appears to have been orchestrated entirely by researchers. The heists, the betrayals, the outright murders- they are all projections of schisms that occurred among the research team at the time.

The only honest thing that seems to have happened in ‘The Prairie Dog Capital City’ is the 2019 ousting of a puppet mayor that had been installed by the researchers a year prior. Mayor Squeak, trained in captivity, was eviscerated soon after his arrival in the city. A day later, prairie dogs at the border became aggressive with researchers who attempted to recover the body. These patrols tested negative for rabies- for any serious diseases- but the procedure involved killed the specimens and seemed to fuel the sudden isolationist movement within ‘The Prairie Dog Capital City.’ The entire colony went dark for nine months.

In 2020, the prairie dogs established an open border and a small tourist-friendly area that looks much like any old prairie dog town. It isn’t a particularly popular destination, but the denizens don’t seem to mind so much.’

I don’t think too much about letting Hector off the leash in the prairie dog/human demilitarized area. He’s never shown much interest in escape. Today, however, he dashes out into ‘The Capital City’ proper and when I try to chase him I find a dozen angry prairie dogs leaping out of tunnels around me to bare their teeth and hiss. By the time I’ve made it back over the border, Hector is gone.

I wait two days for the old rabbit to return, wondering whether he’s been killed or abducted or tried in a prairie dog court of some kind or whether he’s just started a new life for himself- one that doesn’t involve long days on the motorcycle and cool autumn nights in a tent.

On the third day, a retired prairie dog researcher sets up camp nearby and presses sample tracks of his prairie dog classical jazz on me: a sure sign that it’s time to move on.

Hector emerges from a tunnel as soon as I start the bike, as though it were the cue he’d been waiting for all along. He seems well-fed and healthy and maybe a little tired too. He settles calmly into his kennel and is asleep before I’ve got my helmet on. I hope this means he’s choosing to be along for the ride, but that’s exactly the sort of sentiment I would project.

-traveler

Shit- really? That’s what a toilet sounds like on an airplane?

I try the flush again to confirm and the roar of it digs under my fingers, works its way between the skin of my palms and my head. It fills my ears- makes my heart beat faster. It almost makes me angry, some sort of defensive animal instinct that flares up as though I’m faced with an unknown predator. The last little bit of the process is the worst: a shrieking intake of air, like a child desperately sucking ice from the bottom of a slushy. It bears no resemblance to the relatively cheerful glugging of a terrestrial toilet. It’s monstrous.  

I’ve never traveled by air before and now I’m not sure I ever will.

‘Indiana is home to ‘Jill Landstrom’s Center for Exposure to Frightening Childhood Noises,’ an establishment that billed itself as a medical institution but quickly devolved into a nostalgic sideshow. Visitors shuffle between dark rooms and are met at the center of each with some grim-seeming noisemaker and a flashing red button. Pressing the button brings the exhibit to life, usually leading with a brief, animatronic explanation of what exactly creates the sound and climaxing with the sound itself.

‘Landstrom’s Center’ deserves an amount of praise for its determined adherence to authenticity. Where possible, all of its exhibits replicate the sounds with practical effects rather than pre-recorded samples. Landstrom’s staff consists of retired engineers, special-effects artists, and magicians. The admission cost is high, the appeal is limited, but there is nothing else like it except the frightening chaos of childhood itself.

Its sister site, ‘Jill Landstrom’s Center for Exposure to Stressful Adult Noises,’ is skippable unless one feels compelled to listen to the audio of looping DVD menus and the indistinct sounds of a car engine that will fail within a month and cost a great deal to repair.’

Hector and I make it as far as the ‘High Pitched Tone at the End of a VHS Tape’ room before the cumulative stress of the exhibits is too much. Aside from the motorcycle- aside from the occasional noisy disaster- I’ve settled into a fairly quiet life. Maybe I’ll return to ‘Landstrom’s Center’ when it’s time to reintegrate- prepare myself for the predictable scares of stationary life. Until then, I’ll content myself with crickets and the raucous snoring of an old rabbit.

-traveler

‘Nobody knows exactly what New Jersey’s ‘Cedar Family’ is up to. They are a group, a town, a commune that seems perpetually on the verge of dissolving into a cult. They achieved fame for their seeming utopia following a documentary in 2015 and their neighbors have been holding their breath ever since, waiting for a mass death, a militia, or (fingers crossed) a preemptive FBI raid. The fearful anticipation has taken a toll on nearby counties. Residents within 50 miles of ‘Cedar Family’ are up to four times more likely to be diagnosed with a stress-related mental health condition. People living in ‘Cedar Family,’ on the other hand, are of sounder mind and body than the average American citizen by far. They willingly submit to examinations. They advertise their medical records as part of their tourism campaign. These are the sorts of behaviors that worry people.

The average traveler won’t find much of interest in ‘Cedar Family.’ Visiting the town is much like being a newcomer to any sort of religious congregation. The residents are friendly and effusive. Their friendliness makes one feel embarrassed and out of place but it isn’t occult or even backhanded.

The average traveler may recognize some of the residents, though. This is because they systematically insinuate pictures of the people of ‘Cedar Family’ into thrift shops across the nation. They have sets and costumes for this purpose. They have a collection of antique cameras and old-fashioned dark rooms. They mix and match to keep things fresh. Platonic residents sometimes pose as couples. Families trade out kids and houses.

They offer no explanation for this.

Those in the know assume there is some religious significance to having members of the ‘Cedar Family’ in the homes of others. It may be some sort of self-worship. It may be some sort of spiritual surveillance.

Those who don’t know any better might find a box of abandoned photos in a thrift shop on the side of the road, available to purchase for pennies on the dollar. Maybe they take a few as a cheap souvenir. Those people are no worse for having the pictures wilting in their closet or framed ironically on their wall, but they’ve been tricked into placing them there- tricked into exchanging money for them. That makes is different, somehow. Exchanging money is the nearest thing to olde occultist binding that exists in 21^st century America.

Residents of ‘Cedar Family’ always stare into the camera- even in seemingly candid shots. That makes it different too.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

Signs for ‘THE Rock Shop’ loom large over I-15 where it passes through Montana. It’s not on my radar, initially, but the more signs I see the more I become convinced that I’ll find it in the book. When Hector and I pull over to load up on gas and beef jerky, I confirm it. Sometimes the Wayside just comes to you.

‘It’s reasonable to misinterpret the peculiar formatting style of ‘THE Rock Shop’s’ name as an example of Wayside hyperbole. Claiming to be the best, cheapest, largest, anything seems to be fair game in regards to highway advertising.

The truth is that the capital ‘THE’ is there only to describe the ‘Rock’ and not the ‘Shop.’ ‘THE Rock Shop’ has just the one rock to sell and as long as the signs remain up, it’s safe to assume that the business model is about as effective as it’s been since 1987, when ‘THE Rock Shop’ was founded by two men who felt it was something special.’

It’s immediately clear which rock is for sale. It’s a boulder, really, fenced off as though someone might dig the lower half from the ground and steal it. I hope to circle the thing once and check it off the list but the screen door of the nearby house squeaks open as I step off the bike. One man appears first, dressed in a sagging robe and slippers. He waves a paper and pen and shouts:

“Just a dollar, sir! Just a dollar and it’s yours!”

Another man follows shortly, dressed in sweats against the chill wind. “Over here! We’ll give you the tour!”

The man in the robe is on me before I can respond meaningfully to either. I nearly topple backward over the bike as he waves the paper in my face- a deed or agreement of purchase or something to do with buying the rock. I put my hand out in front of me and he shoves a pen into my palm, tries to curl my fingers around it.

“Sign here, sir! Just a dollar for THE rock. Just a dollar!”

The man in sweats rattles off qualities of the rock in the background. I can hardly make any of them out over the robed man’s fervent sales strategy. I’ve lost the key to the bike in the dirt somewhere. I drop to my knees to find it and the man drops with me, plastering the contract over the visor of my helmet. I’m dimly aware of Hector panicking in his kennel on the bike.

There’s a high pitched whistle, suddenly, and the man ahead of us is screaming. The robed man is gone in an instant, running over to help. I snag the key from the ground and pull the paper from the helmet and see the man in sweats is laid out on the ground, bleeding from a head wound. The robed man curses the rock and begins to drag his companion inside.

I’ve frozen, trying to discern the threat- trying to understand whether I have better odds in the house with them or on the bike or whether there’s anything immediately dangerous about what’s happening. The robed man makes the decision for me. He slams the door and in a matter of seconds his face is pressed against the nearest window. I can hear him through the glass and through the helmet- he’s shouting for me to sign the paper and leave a dollar at the door. Then THE rock will be mine.

It’s a quiet autumn day and cars glide past us on the highway. I consider the tour I’d planned on taking and see a little impact crater where the man had been bleeding. Probably not worth the risk.

I’d like to be the person I was when the idea of a stationary boulder inflicting blunt force trauma at a distance for no discernable reason seemed unlikely. I’d settle for being the sort of person that would stick around long enough to help these men or to at least understand what sort of dread force binds them to THE rock. I’m the sort of person that drives a mile down the road and calls an ambulance, instead. The kind of guy that feels a little bad for the EMTs that will have to put up with that peculiar sales technique.

-traveler

Of Autumn by the Wayside’s many appendices, one is entirely devoted to branches of something called ‘The Museum of the American Diet,’ for which there is no official entry. Appendix F is nearly thirty pages long and it consists only of addresses, listed first by state, and then seemingly at random.

I’ve visited nearly twenty and I think it’s safe, now, to say that they are all buffets.

-traveler

‘A peculiar group of whales has haunted the Massachusetts coastline since its abrupt appearance in 2018, forgoing any sort of migratory behavior in favor of a specific patch of water, roughly five miles in diameter. This is not what makes the whales peculiar. The pod is peculiar physically in such a way that the term ‘whale’ only loosely describes the things floating in the Atlantic Ocean. They are gray and balloon-like. They have small, black eyes and are never seen moving their fins (which stick out rigidly from their sides) or their mouths (which gape open to form perfect circles). They bob along the surface like bath toys and spin lifelessly whenever water blows from their spouts. The term ‘whale’ is used in this entry only because federal law requires that all publications refer to these ‘whales’ as such.

The federal government has created a program called ‘Whale Watch’ to surveil these creatures. ‘Whale Watch’ is free and, when interest is low, it’s also sometimes mandatory. Like a jury summons, an invitation to ‘Whale Watch’ is easier to answer than ignore. Selected participants are boated to a retrofitted oil rig called ‘Whale Watch Island,’ where they spend 1-2 days eating stales sandwiches and watching out for any behaviors that have not already been listed as ‘innocuous.’ A second list of ‘not innocuous’ behaviors has been supplied in response to a request made through the Freedom of Information Act, but so much of the list has been censored that the only new knowledge gleaned is that there is enough content to fill four pages.’

Hector and I are alone on the ferry out to ‘Whale Watch Island,’ which I find reassuring because I assume it means there’s a cohort there already. Some people return to ‘Whale Watch’ over and over. They become veterans of the process, driven to understand the mystery themselves or perpetually chosen by whatever lottery system nominates participants in the off-season. I’d rather be stuck with them than with a group of total rookies. It’s sunset when we arrive and I’ve only just got my feet on the ‘island’s’ grated metal deck when three harried-looking men shuffle past me and onto the ferry. It turns for shore without ever cutting its engine.

There is nobody else on ‘Whale Watch’ duty tonight. The tower is empty and the lights are off. A fridge inside is stocked with plastic-wrapped sandwiches. Handwritten directions for baking frozen pizzas in the toaster oven are taped to a chest freezer. There are seven pizzas inside and a half-scooped tub of neapolitan ice cream.

The whales are east of the island and entirely still. I locate the list of innocuous behaviors and see that remaining entirely still on the surface of the water is the topmost item. Below that: spinning, screaming, surrounding ‘Whale Watch Island,’ disappearing underwater entirely for up to five minutes, and seeming to float in mid-air for up to 30 seconds. I expect them to start screaming immediately but they don’t. They just float, there, on the water.

By midnight I’ve learned why it isn’t necessary for the program behind ‘Whale Watch’ to establish rules about sleeping or watching the whales. It’s impossible to want to sleep knowing that the whales sometimes exhibit non-innocuous behaviors and it’s impossible to concentrate on anything else for any amount of time without feeling as though the whales are watching back.

-traveler

Hector and I arrive at a place called ‘Hangman’s Ledge’ on a cold day in early autumn. There is nothing particularly special about ‘Hangman’s Ledge.’ Every state has a hangman’s this or hangman’s that which, of course, begs the questions ‘who was hanging who so often they named somewhere after it?’ and ‘if it’s who I think it was hanging who I think was, should we really hold on to that sort of name like it’s not a big deal?’ In terms of places to visit, however, ‘Hangman’s Ledge’ is entirely mundane.

It does offer a sprawling view of the valley below and, though it would be difficult to pinpoint ‘The Moonshine Spring’ without binoculars, it is very possible, on a cool autumn night, to see whether or not the spring has been ignited. The internet says it’s as simple as looking for flickering orange light, like a massive candle has been lit miles away. The internet says a person knows it when they see it. I don’t see it, so I assume ‘The Moonshine Spring’ carries on in its unignited form below and we skip it.

You see, the internet says that, in its unignited form, fumes from ‘The Moonshine Spring’ are capable of intoxicating or killing any small animals that happen to wander into the area.

Autumn by the Wayside offers another reason:

‘People have been killed over ‘The Moonshine Spring.’ You wouldn’t think that would be the case, but it is. Imagine a natural fountain of unbelievably high-proof alcohol. Imagine it exists, unregulated, on private land. The landowner has thrown the gates open- never thought to build gates, really- so anybody can visit ‘The Spring’ and drink or bottle to their heart’s content. It is a free, seemingly-infinite supply of a reasonably valuable resource.

But that resource is moonshine.

It is impossible to think of a reason why one person would kill another over such a thing and it’s impossible to believe that such a thing wouldn’t invariably lead to manslaughter in some form or another.

People come from all over the country to peaceably fill a bottle at ‘The Moonshine Spring.’. But those people also leave. The people that remain at ‘The Moonshine Spring’ for days on end are often of a different sort and they are, by definition, the most likely to be found there. The longer ‘The Moonshine Spring’ remains unignited, the drunker and angrier these people become. An unarmed traveler might check in town for recent burning dates and, finding they are a long ways off, should consider buying the pre-bottled stuff and saving the site for next time.’

Hector and I swing past ‘Hangman’s Ledge’ on our way back through again. It’s late autumn and cold. Colder on the ledge than anywhere else. Wouldn’t you know it- the internet was right about this one thing. The orange glow of ‘The Moonshine Spring,’ ignited, is unmistakable. Even from miles away.

We take the bike down off the ledge and walk the half mile or so to the dry rock field, finding it stinks of stale alcohol and urine at its outer edge but is fairly clean-smelling nearer the flame. Maybe the explosive ignition burns the residue off the rocks or maybe the long-term residents retain enough sense to separate the bathroom from the bar.

Autumn by the Wayside lists, in its many appendices, the ways ‘The Moonshine Spring’ has been ignited over the years. Everything from lightning strikes to dares. More often than not, though, it’s some drunken Icarus who wants to smoke with his drink. There’s a picture of it happening to a man- of his body silhouetted by the growing flame. It does round on the internet every once in a while. Isn’t hard to find.

We warm ourselves by ‘The Moonshine Spring’ and, when I worry Hector’s acting strangely, we head back up the valley wall, satisfied to have seen the thing in its better form.

-traveler

‘Wandering among the many reading areas inside the Library of Congress in Washington DC, an unknowing visitor might stumble upon a room with an uncomfortable climate. This is likely ‘The American Standard Room Temperature Room’ which, in an ideal world, would be set to a standard 68 degrees Fahrenheit but is often much colder come January and much warmer in July. These temperature fluctuations reflect the average environment of the American living room at any given moment based on readings from sensors across the nation (the specific locations of which are a closely guarded secret). A heat wave will make the room unbearably hot. A winter storm that knocks out power in the Midwest may lower the temperature to near freezing.

‘The American Standard Room Temperature Room’ is a concept piece by artist Julian Rocio who created it as a meditation on empathy. Though ‘The Room’s’ temperatures do sometimes swing high and low it is always habitable in the short term, and rarely even notably uncomfortable upon entry. The room’s programming is based on national averages, after all, and at least some of the data points are from climate-controlled dwellings.

The trick of ‘The American Standard Room Temperature Room’ is that it looks no different than any other on-site reading room. Patrons normally find their way inside accidentally and as they read or research it’s Rocio’s intention that they become aware of their discomfort very, very slowly. Cold hands. Sweat under the collar. A near-total inability to find perfect comfort and a level of discomfort that doesn’t quite warrant leaving the room. It is a princess-and-the-pea style revenge experience at the center of the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution, where some of America’s most privileged might tread.

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

This is a personal trip, first and foremost. The goal has always been to witness, for myself, what Autumn by the Wayside describes in the dirty corners of the nation. I didn’t set out to prove anything to anyone. I don’t feel like I need to provide evidence of what I’ve seen. Autumn by the Wayside is published in several editions, available new in many major bookstores and is invariably stocked by the cartful, tattered and broken-spined, at your local second-hand retailer. It may as well be an invasive species, there.

These sites can be visited by anybody, their addresses are listed plainly. Most are open to the public for, at most, a small fee. It only takes seeing one or two of the destinations to loosen one’s steadfast sense of reality such that the rest of the book’s content seems reasonably likely to be true. It only takes seeing a dozen or so before the book becomes undeniable and… closer, somehow.

That’s the strange nature of Autumn by the Wayside. Other travel guides speak of their subjects as though they are unfamiliar. They prepare the reader for what is foreign and, in doing so, they write about a place with the assumption that it’s far away. Reading Autumn by the Wayside, one begins to feel the sense of the foreign approaching. What is familiar about a person’s hometown becomes uncanny. As the Wayside asserts itself, the notion of home dissolves. A person doesn’t need to travel to visit the Wayside. Once they recognize it, they just have to step outside their door.

I’ve gotten off-topic.

This is a personal trip- a trip about witnessing rather than writing. But the writing has become important without my realizing and it’s frustrating to see a thing like ‘The Monument, Undescribed’ and to be at a loss for words. Even Hector looks upon it in awe.

‘What can be said about ‘The Monument, Undescribed’ except that nobody can speak of the thing in regards to its physical attributes, its history, or its location?’

-traveler