‘A great deal of speculation seems to have gone into ‘The Collected Warnings About Hitchhikers.’ For each story with the backing of an actual headline, there are three or four that have clearly arrived at the museum by word of mouth and this practice is all but confirmed by a book near the exit in which visitors are asked to log their own hitchhiker horror stories. An astute traveler might notice the many redacted entries inside, stories which, no doubt, recall positive interactions between strangers on the road. These anecdotes are not welcome in the museum. The owner makes that very clear.

Esteban Cooke broke ground on ‘The Collected Warnings About Hitchhikers’ shortly after his 16 year old son ran away from home. Steven Cooke was the last of his five children, each of whom disappeared into the Wayside around the same age and each of whom followed in the footsteps of their mother, Luciana Cooke. Their stories are made public in the museum itself, their likenesses recreated in scarecrow structures wearing (one must assume) the clothes they left behind and each smiling or grimacing through a wax ball that Esteban estimates is near enough to a bust. The figures shift and twitch with the help of rudimentary robotics while they explain (through Esteban’s falsetto) their tragic fate on the road. Whether he means to or not, Esteban allows an amount of mocking into these performances.

Most other exhibits reiterate your ‘Resurrection Marys’ and your ‘Hook-Handed Slashers,’ claiming that similar incidents have been reported in every state, along every road, and ‘are written in scar tissue on the hearts of those left behind.’ A renovation set to become ‘a gruesome series of hitchhiking murder scenes in 3D’ has been in process for the better part of a decade.

The only section that seems to differ notably from the major contents of the museum is a wing that details a mysteriously-sourced translation of ‘Hitchhiker’s Thumb,’ a coded language that the museum takes very seriously. The exposé hinges upon the idea that hitchhikers are universally versed in this language and honor-bound to declare their intentions before entering a vehicle. A thumb leaning forward, for instance, is a signal that the hitchhiker means to murder a driver for their car (the forward lean a suggestion that they only kill as a means to an end). A thumb leaning back indicates a killer-for-fun with a specialty in ducking behind the driver’s seat and leaping out to strangle their host (the leaned-back thumb representing the struggling victim). Movement of the thumb at any point can foreshadow the inevitable killing in a number of ways- the swiftness with which the thumb is dropped can be scaled to understand the patience of the murderer, the waggling of a thumb might suggest torture preceding death.

The number of ways Esteban Cooke has imagined the murder of his family on the road is astounding. One leaves ‘The Collected Warnings About Hitchhikers’ feeling as though they’ve glimpsed a man’s embarrassing fetish and harboring pity for his lost family, not swayed by the stories of their demise, but by the understanding that they had to live with its owner.

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

The horizon has begun to straddle terminal dusk behind me when a second star bursts into view ahead, so bright that I pull over and wait for my vision to clear. It clears after the sun has set and leaves only a confusion of neon lights, a rogue LED flashing sickly in the encroaching high-definition dark. By then I’ve checked my phone and confirmed that this is likely my destination.

‘For the sake of brevity, this entry will refer to ‘The American ‘American Diner’ Diner’ as ‘TAADD’ except for when it counts. When it counts is now, because it is important to understand that, by embedding ‘American Diner’ into ‘The American Diner’ ‘The American ‘American Diner’ Diner’ is doubling down on a stereotype so well-trodden that the finished product borders upon absurdity that turns the stomach.

‘TAADD’s’ outer is plated in chrome and polished to such a shine that the 50’s era curving structure reflects with the blasphemous irreverence of a carnival mirror. To approach ‘TAADD’ is to be confronted with battalion of strutting selves, some short and stubby, others spindly and looming like a beetle-sick pine.

Inside one can expect to be ignored entirely or set upon by servers so weathered and wry that their nonchalance becomes cutting. Cutting, too, are the cracks in the plastic booths which open and close like tiny mouths as one shifts their weight, nipping at exposed flesh and confirming a millennium’s filth in the cushions. The food is mainly grease and salt, the coffee, hot tar. The smoking section may well be on fire and everything has been tooth-picked to the surface beneath it. ‘TAADD’ is the diner experience as it’s meant to be- the only option available.’

My evening arrival spares me the existential confrontation by warped reflections but my attempts to enter ‘TAADD’ are fruitless for the better part of an hour as the reflected scrawl of a dozen neon signs weaves mirages where a door should be. Hector is eventually hungry enough that he opts to use his blindness to our advantage and, with his slow tugging as guide, we eventually arrive on the other side of this rainbow maze.

A sign past the door says ‘Please Wait to Be Seated’ on one side and ‘Please Seat Yourself’ on the other and is positioned such that it’s difficult to know which is the current intended takeaway. I let Hector cross onto the carpet first, like a bumbling mine canary, and his trespass goes without comment. We slide into a booth near the front and are awarded with laminate menus.

All of the items up for grab are listed without description and personalized in such a way as to be entirely mysterious. ‘Ezekiel’s Smoked Salad.’ ‘Liza Plate (sm).’ ‘Inverted Pancakes (Choose Maria or Penelope style. Combination: add 1.99)’

A coffee appears in front of me, delivered in so casual a rush that it slops over the side. Napkins do not seem to survive contact with the liquid- they dissolve into pulp without absorbing it. I notice that Hector has somehow received a small cup of plain slaw. It doesn’t seem possible that someone could have delivered it without taking my order first. I push it away from him until I can confirm that this is a safe place and not a monkey’s paw sort of hell.

The pie list is expansive but most options have been struck-through to indicate their being sold out. I crane my neck to see if I can spy a pie counter or even just catch the eye of a server but the whole of the restaurant seems to look away as soon as I pay it attention. I’m not sure I’ve seen anybody’s face since I’ve been here.

The décor is the standard taken to the extreme. There is a wall of license plates and a smattering of signed photographs that suggest a handful of celebrities may have come through. A broken jukebox machine stands in one corner, a broken fortuneteller in another. A collection of era-gone-by promotional materials are racist enough to illicit discomfort. Everyone seems to be hungover or sad.

Do I like American diners?

I order something that turns out to be a variation of hashbrowns and they are about as ‘okay’ as fried potatoes can be. We escape ‘TAADD’ with no harm but with the nagging sense of having been complicit in a sort of corrupted nostalgia. How is it that diners have remained so anchored in their ways as to be unaffected by the passage of time? What does it mean to have them spread like toothpicks, tacking the country they serve to the earth beneath it?

I doubt diners are the problem, assume, instead, that the Wayside has delivered a ‘smoke-a-pack’ punishment for a transgression I had no real part in. For me, a diner has always been a familiar place in a strange state- as much a home as I seem to have anymore. That said, staying at home has never been my strong suit.

-traveler

Hector and I drive for nearly half a day, circling a behemoth construction site that turns out to be the very place we’re trying to find. The parking lot is churned mud despite the southern heat, identified by a small, temporary sign and lent structure by the sheer determination of a young man in an orange vest who kindly directs me away from the splotchy puddle topography of the inner lot to a still-firm spot on the outer-edge. I note the rain-drop applause of a small audience inside once my helmet hangs on the bars and I scoop Hector from the kennel without asking the man whether his presence will be controversial. Most people see the charred rabbit and assume he serves some unspoken purpose, to have been so afflicted and survived long enough to enter a grocery store, church, or no-pet motel. This proves to be the case at the gate- the woman there can hardly look at him. Inside, I see the facility has been cracked open like a backwards egg, the yellow exterior parting to reveal sloped, liquid-white.

‘The facility that houses ‘The New American Ice Cap’ is built to allow for constant and, optimistically, limitless expansion. Its perimeters are thick and modular, insulated with the same technology that allows humanity’s fragile shuttles to pierce the atmosphere and built on treads that permit impressive, if not fittingly-glacial, movement.

Vertical expansion, when it occurs, requires that the ‘egg’ be cracked for a great deal longer than is normal and is marked by festivities that are both extravagant and a little forced. Aside from that which is provided by the project’s sole investor, Amy Lind, these open houses are the primary source of funding for ‘The New American Ice Cap,’ raking in thousands of dollars from a population that can’t quite connect their enthusiasm for an ice park to the increasingly warm summers.

Lind is, herself, somewhat controversial in the realm of sustainability. She claims science has sided with the project, that the egg’s harnessing of solar and wind power to maintain the sub-zero acreage is nearing self-sufficiency. Most sources without connection to Lind suggest quite the opposite. Outages are increasingly common in ‘The New American Ice Cap’s’ satellite towns as the frozen mountain sucks power from the grid, purring like a contented refrigerator in the dusty alcove of an old house.’

The ‘egg’ is well-cracked by the time Hector and I pay our outrageous $30 entry pass. We’re buffeted by intermittent bursts of frigid air that rush through the gates, swelling a sign past the entry gate that describes the technological marvel that is today’s intended purpose. The event is an all-sides expansion, the culmination of years of planning and the catalyst for which is the project having closed on a strip of land over the border of Georgia that had been inhibiting growth for half a decade. Though the flower-petal walls of the egg appear to be stationary, they are, in fact, moving backward to meet the second wave that stands behind them. By the end of the day, a lid will be placed on the facility and the enclosed campus will have grown exponentially. Tickets to witness this ‘Eclipse’ are beyond my budget but will likely fund ‘The Great American Ice Cap’ for a few more years alone.

In the meantime, southerners have come out in droves to clamber about the sides of the ice mountain- to throw snowballs, sled, and nest expensive beers is even pricier snow. The entire mountain has drooped and spilled from the cracks, flooding the outskirts for miles around. Informational clips, largely ignored, claim that the saturated ground will be re-frozen by the end of the month and provide a stable foundation for the growing ice cap.

Hector shivers under my arm as we approach the base of the cap itself. It’s gargantuan despite the molted slush and the swirling pillar of vapor that has begun to form a cloud overhead. If not for the behavior of Lind, who can be seen pacing back and forth across the metal slats of a temporary tower embedded halfway to its peak, I would think she may have created something that would change the shape of the nation. If her nervousness and her clear disdain for the events attendees are suggestive of the project’s status, I get the sense that she may be in over her head.

I rent a lawn chair where the air feels most comfortable. Hector vacillates between obsessive consumption of ice and a desire to be warmed, hopping between the snowbank and my lap in a rhythm that closely matches Lind, above. She addresses the crowd each hour, smiling through gritted teeth and reminding everyone that the mountain will have to be vacated quickly when the perimeter is in place. The countdown to this evacuation inevitably rolls back as further malfunction prevents the closing of the walls.

A week later I read that the cracked egg has been abandoned, that Lind has disappeared overseas. Consulting engineers and ecologists argue over the long-term effects of the ice cap’s thawing, whether its even feasible to close the thing now that the run-off has softened that terrain. A lake forms on the border of Georgia and Alabama. Locals take to calling it the ‘Water Lily,’ a term that will, no doubt, find its way into Shitholes when I next flip by the entry.

-traveler

‘‘The Spin Doctor’ regional chain of laundromats is centered in the southeast, though one-off branches and knock-offs can be found in most states east of the Mississippi. Mundane in every other way, ‘The Spin Doctor’ machines are equipped with a four-hour deep-clean setting that can be triggered by straddling the line between the ‘regular’ and ‘delicate’ cycles precisely before punching the quarter tray in. Watching the clothes spin through the glass, one will reportedly come to terms with a small, unfortunate event that occurred while wearing a garment inside.

By no means does the deep clean erase the event from history or from the minds of those who witnessed it. The ‘clean’ is for the traveler, alone, who will either see the embarrassment from an angle that greatly minimizes its impact or realize, suddenly, that they had misremembered some forgivable context. The garment will emerge in tatters but the traveler will have one fewer intrusive thought needling them as they try to sleep- a cheap trade for those who find the service even remotely compelling.

Rumors suggest several ways in which one might bolster the deep clean for those particularly guilty memories. Quarters minted in the year of the event are said to be lucky in this regard. Sitting close to the machine as though rot-your-brain staring into a television keeps interruptions to a minimum. Some find comfort in keeping a video of the process in their phone, the loops of which can be streamed in 10-hour intervals, a lo-fi, ASMR niche all its own.’

Seventeen years ago I was a high school freshman who thought football might make him a better man. It did not, and I spend a night or two each month reliving the afternoon that taught me it wouldn’t. It doesn’t help that I still carry around the school colors in the form of a worn-thin athletic quick-dry t-shirt. I’ve worn and washed it often enough that the stains, at this point, are well-set. Into the washer it goes.

Four hours is a long time to watch a machine and I don’t feel particularly cleansed of that afternoon when its buzzer jolts me from a reverie. I collect the jersey, now a handful of mulch, and stretch. I sleep soundly in the first evening, at least, contented with having tried.

-traveler

‘The trouble with bees (discounting the larger, extinction-level problem) is that one never quite knows where they’ll show up. The internet has allowed for an intermittent symbiosis to form between farmers and apiarists, the farmers appreciating the bees for their pollinating and the beekeepers playing an underhanded game of global chess with their queens.

For all that the Wayside is already chaotic, the shifting bee colonies add another layer of uncertainty to a tour that may already be fraught. One may have prepared bundled offerings of black catnip for the ashen specters of ‘The Immolated Kat Cirkus’ but to complete the tedious peace ritual for feline phantoms between boxes of nervous honey bees? Or to stumble upon a hive at the ‘The Undisclosed Peak’ while waiting for a glimpse of America’s secret second moon? Bees are happy to sting in the dark, reader, by moonlight, by daylight, in storm and sun. Bees are the postal service of the natural world, endangered, yes, but persistent even in the face of extinction.

And, like their honey, bees have a tendency to pick up on the local flavor.

It is good common sense to refrain from opening strange boxes or exploring ruined buildings, if for no other reason than for the minimal chance either currently houses bees. Much of what could be considered good common sense would suggest avoiding these destinations altogether. Whilst ignoring common sense, the author offers this piece of advice to the traveler: speak softly and carry epinephrine.’

Ah, stupid. I’m sure I’ve flipped by this little warning a hundred times and ignored it. Had I absorbed any of what it said I may have:

1. Ignored a moonlit field of mysterious boxes might portend.

2. Remained on-book, rather than thinking I had somehow discovered a Wayside oddity not already covered inside.

3. Done a better job washing the corn syrup from myself.

Hector is worse than me in most of these regards. He moves through the field with blithe abandon and doesn’t seem to mind that his skin crawls with insects. Could be that the rabbit and the bees understand neither is a threat to the other. Could be that his skin is thick enough that he doesn’t notice or that the stingers pose no threat at all.

I don’t consider myself thin-skinned, exactly, but compared to the tan rabbit I am not so ready to go about my business when I understand what all the itching is. Something instinctual (or, perhaps, something layered-in by cartoon tropes) warns that bee stings are a bit like dominoes- there is either peace or disaster. I move slowly and in the moonlight I confirm that the bees have mostly snuck under my sleeves and the cuffs of my jeans to get at the corn syrup from North Dakota. It seems reasonable to assume they’ll leave once the residue is licked, chewed, or otherwise mandibled away.

It’s a long process- an evening I spend standing stock-still, trespassing in a moonlit field. By sunrise, the bees have mostly dissipated and those that remain are happy enough to be brushed away by a gentle hand. Hector has fallen asleep between my feet and he kicks fitfully when I gather him from the dewy grass. Out of the corner of my eye a figure moves, a second scarecrow thawed in the sun.

The woman observes me from across the field and I stare back at her, the each of us wondering whether it would be therapeutic to discuss our misadventure or if we’d rather pretend it never happened. She chooses the latter, with a shrug, and then winces at something underneath her jacket- a bee sting, I guess.

I imagine her eyes widen. I imagine a pulse of adrenaline to her stiff legs. I imagine because I’m too busy running, myself, Hector an unwieldly football in my arms.

-traveler

‘Oil rigs chug a little slower deep in the American mid-west where the fruit of the ground is not black-gold but golden-gold, known less colloquially as ‘corn syrup.’ Commonly mistaken for a processed form of the surface-dwelling corn plant, ‘corn syrup’ earns its name for a tendency to pool under the same prairies atop which maize and its distant cousins tend to thrive. It is a viscous bruise hidden beneath the majority of American crops.

The straightforwardly named ‘Space Flower Theory’ posits that corn syrup is this world’s nectar and humanity, reimagined as a sort of swarming, drone-like species, is simply a medium for Earth’s essence. Corn syrup is the reward we earn for pouring non-renewable resources into unsustainable growth, which seems counter-intuitive at first but, ‘Space Flower Theory’ explains, is actually quite natural. The sooner we burn the planet down the sooner humanity will feel compelled to leave it. In doing so, we cross-pollinate the cosmos.

Though the name reeks of a new-age crystal rubbing, ‘Space Flower’ believers present as ‘down-to-earth.’ In reality, they are simply apathetic. Reading between the lines, it isn’t difficult to see that ‘Space Flower Theory’ is a thin, possibly sarcastic means by which a person might downplay the importance of individual responsibility for global crises. Any one who subscribes to the theory was looking for an excuse to forgo recycling when they found it and the same can be said for the majority of those who are able to describe it with a straight face.

The only discerning factor between the arm-chair ‘Space Flower Theorist’ and the zealot is the completion of a pilgrimage to the corn-syrup fields outside Omaha. They make no excuse for climate change, substitute an aggressive nihilism for the amateur’s lethargy and strive, in all actions, to salt the earth where it’s wounded. Their ritualistic destruction of farmland over a corn syrup reservoir results in what is often called crop circles. They hope, one day, to become the spacefarers we wish they were.’

‘The Syrup Fields’ aren’t much to look at. It’s autumn, so the rigs are definitely moving slower for all that the subterranean syrup has thickened in the cooling dirt, but they haven’t slowed, yet, to the notable winter crawl and the tempo is not so different from the mid-summer fly-fest videos I pull up on my phone. Hector licks wildly at the ground, the only indication that this is anything but an oil town and eventually I have to wipe down the rabbit’s sticky underbelly and shove him in the kennel. I don’t know that corn syrup is bad for him but, considering the number it’s done on the human populace, I feel comfortable making an educated guess.

Stupidly, perhaps, I sneak past the no-trespassing signs for a closer look and, shortly thereafter, I am running through a cornfield, pursued by a farmer with a gun. The web-strings of cooled syrup that form nearer the rigs collect on my face and make it difficult to open my eyes and to see through them once opened. I lick strands from my lips, sickly sweet and yellow across my skin.

Hector and I make a tidy escape, the farmer-cum-rig-operator emerging from the field in time to kick dirt at the bike as we swerve back onto the road. I doubt he would have taken the shot, but I drive a long ways before stopping again to shove a pocketful of sweetened kernels into the kennel and to wipe syrup from the handlebars. I suppose this counts as a fleeting bout of apathy and I wonder, idly (and idling) whether its onset is due to the corn syrup’s proximity or if the two are somehow comorbid, the seeking out of the Midwest and the carelessness with which we live.

-traveler

‘Imagine the frustration of the children who came of age near ‘Bellamy Forest,’ where the animals grow second heads and drop them like a hats in the wind. It must have been difficult, for that first batch, to describe these deliberate dismemberments and be chided for telling stories.’

Hector and I rent a deer stand for an evening in ‘Bellamy Forest.’ The agreement suggests that sleeping in the stand is against regulations, though, staking out the forest late into the night is just fine and I doubt the people in charge make a habit of wandering around and scaring off game. I take my chances and roll out a sleeping bag, knowing I’ll fall asleep at some point whether it’s intentional or not. Once I’ve blocked out the spaces in the walls where Hector might blindly wander off the tree, I retrieve an old pair of binoculars and settle myself into a meditative quiet.

I’ve seen pictures of the ‘Bellamy Forest’ animals and don’t exactly savor seeing them in life. It isn’t just spare heads they grow, though it’s the most common mutation among deer. The squirrels and raccoons slide out of redundant skins or run off without their tails. The rabbits grow extra feet, sometimes looking like furry little centipedes. Something in the biology of Bellamy animals has come to a decision regarding what part of the animal it is that draws hunters to it and the animals have evolved to provide it non-fatally. When a Bellamy deer is startled it drops an extraneous head, a glassy-eyed husk, and it bolts off in the opposite direction. Timed correctly, a gun shot will trigger this effect in a gathered herd, leaving a field of hollow relics.

But that would be quite the faux pas.

Evolution got it about half right. I don’t own a hunting license and don’t make a habit of keeping up with the hobby, but I know that Bellamy Forest has only become more of a destination, now. A hunter can prove their worth, here, by executing a kill before the animal has time to drop whatever extra part it grows. A two-headed deer graced the lobby of the lodge where I rented my ticket, for instance, and the placard nearby pointed out the seamless connection of the second head- a perfect Bellamy kill.

That’s what nature has a hard time anticipating. It understands killing for the sake of something, even for the sake of something as abstract as a trophy, but sometimes we kill for the sake of the kill and there’s no outmaneuvering that.

Rumor has it that the ‘Bellamy Forest’ mutation is already dying out, not for overhunting, given that licenses are tightly controlled, but because the quick-trigger evolution of the place has seemingly grasped its failure and gone back to the drawing board. The vestigial pieces of newborns have become wilted, half-formed, and much less likely to drop. The sheer ugliness of the new creatures has already dented hunting business which is why I slid so easily into a last-minute stand rental.

Around dusk a two-headed deer sidles into the clearing below Hector and I. The second head is unmoving, its mouth slightly open and its eyes gaping wide. It looks exactly like the sort of think one might mount over a hearth, a perfect, if naïve, negotiation on the part of nature. When Hector knocks over my bag (surreptitiously digging for carrots) the clattering startles the deer and the second head slips off into the grass. I just catch the bare patch of hide on the animal as it bounds away.

Hector, behind me, has settled into a corner with his treat. I wonder if he knows he’s done the deer a favor or if he was just working under the same impulse that drives the hunters to stalk their prey.

-traveler

Sometimes you notice a thing in Shitholes and it gets under your skin- that’s proving to be the case with ‘The Itch.’ Detailed in one of its hundreds of sidebars (each seemingly unrelated to the page’s major content) Shitholes defines ‘The Itch’ as the disease of a long-term traveler because it involves the sort of knowledge one picks up only after having traversed the same routes over and again. ‘The Itch’ is the flipside to American nostalgia- a symptom of having one’s favorites places spread across the country rather than confined to a neighborhood. My favorite burrito place is a thousand miles away from where I get my favorite pizza-by-the-slice. The natural places I turn to for quiet are always just out of reach and I always seem to come upon them in autumn, when the chill makes it difficult to stay still for long.

‘Long-haul trekkers beware of ‘The Itch,’ or, perhaps, be aware of ‘The Itch’ for ‘The Itch’ is not something that can be avoided so much as it is a thing worth understanding as inevitable. Early in a distance endeavor, there is a sense of one’s desires falling by the wayside and that absence brings about a spiritual coherence, for a time. In truth, one finds themselves searching for those same desires years later, treading and re-treading old paths in order to find them where they seemed to have landed.

‘The Itch’ is so named for its awful persistence and for its tendency to worsen the longer one indulges in scratching. Cut your nails, traveler, and grit your teeth and look back only when you believe something is following you.’

Reading between the lines, Shitholes seems to prescribe abstinence for ‘The Itch,’ a condition I am already intimately familiar with. I have kicked worse habits through feats of discipline and I have endured long years between fleeting romances. Abstinence in a realm or two is not the problem, for me, at all.

The problem has to do with all the small abstaining on the larger scale. How much will I need to give up to keep ‘The Itch’ mild? Does it mean never returning to an establishment I’ve visited before? Or does it mean never trying anything new so as not to instill further desires? I suppose I could curate my eating and drinking and even some of my recreation to national chains. One fast-food coffee is the same as another of its brand. That would keep ‘The Itch’ from spreading, I suppose, but I doubt it would quell it in the long term.

“Self-sufficiency,” I say, out loud, and the sound of my voice startles Hector. He hobbles over to see what the fuss is about, “If I could conceivably become the source of our favorite things,” I explain to him, “We would never miss a single thing.”

Hector thrives on rabbit food, clearance lettuce, and the occasional carrot. If I can continue to provide those things, he may have already seen the worst discomforts of his life. I suppose I’ll be the judge of that. Someday, hopefully not soon, Hector will be old and his discomforts will mount, again. They may, objectively, begin to approach his time in the sun room. If it comes to that, I’ll have to decide when enough is enough because, if I don’t decide, Hector will have no choice but to endure.

‘The Itch’ is a matter of endurance and I’m increasingly of the opinion that the same could be said of this project. I wonder if I will someday be considered by someone in a place to judge my tolerance for discomfort and I wonder what they will factor into their decisions about the shape of mercy as it applies to me. Will I be a testament to discipline by then? Or will I be ruined?

-traveler

‘An American experiences a unique exhilaration upon discovering the perfect location for a picnic. Private but not clandestine. Shady but neither wet or cold. Flat and softened by grass rather than earth so as to remain firm throughout the meal rather than sinking under the weight of its attendees. ‘Pristine Picnics’ has capitalized on this little joy and, for a moderate fee, can point you down a path all your own. Their impressive grounds allow for 53 simultaneous picnics, re-discovered each day.’

‘Pristine Picnics’ keeps the sausage-making aspects of their model hidden only enough to be easily ignored. When I ask about the work that goes in to maintaining their campus, the supervisor on duty, a woman name Dae, takes me into the back and walks me through scale models of the campus and its systems.

“Most of the work is done at night,” she explains, “And we’ve automated a great deal of the maintenance. Our mowers are fitted with proprietary blades that round out the grass rather than leave sharp edges. They keep and carry the clippings out, all by 2:00am so that the smell of the process has dissipated some by the time the sunrisers arrive. A second little army emerges just before daybreak,” she smiles, pointing out a minature half-orb robot, “They collect the morning dew and take it back to the reservoir. No wet blankets, here.”

We arrive back at the campus model and I take a moment to study the pattern of paths- 53, one assumes, each pointing inward and alternating in depth. Picnic areas are marked with little flags.

“Why aren’t these at the end?” I ask, indicating a few of the sites, “Are you expanding?”

Dae shakes her head.

“There can only be one true site per path,” she says, “Otherwise the intimacy of the picnic is compromised. In reality, there are many acceptable picnic sites on a given journey. Our customers derive satisfaction from little acts of transgression. If they reach the end, they may remember a site just a few minutes back that they preferred. That will become their site and they will believe that they have made a discovery, circumventing what they believe is the ‘Pristine Picnic’ script and enjoying what seems to be a more authentic experience.”

“But they don’t?”

“The site they remember will be the true site, of course,” she smiles again.

I keep all this in mind as Hector and I set off down my path. We’ve got the run of the place for two hours and I don’t suspect the meal will take long, so we admire the shallow forest and stop each time it opens to reveal a clearing where one could very likely sit and be contented. The sites become increasingly idyllic as we pass and before long I’ve begun to experience a mild stress that I eventually conclude is an argument, happening in the back of my head.

On one hand, I, too, want to arrive at a conclusion of my own- to find a site that is perfect for my tastes whether or not it is perfect for everybody who rents this path.

On the other hand, I’m aware that the desire to transgress, in regards to the script, is a mechanism built into the script itself.

An oasis presents itself not long after- a grassy knoll not far from a stream. The stream is noisy enough that I wonder whether it would make conversation difficult- couples might avoid it. The stream is shallow and gentle, however, meaning that a family with small children might stop to let them play. Though Hector is intrigued by the noise, I choose to bookmark it as a potential for myself, knowing that if a better site presets itself I will likely have my answer.

Unfortunately, the next two clearings are of the same or higher caliber and the path terminates, not long after, at the top of a slight hill so that I might eat my gas-station sandwich with a view of the forest below and still be relatively hidden myself. I stop there for a moment, resting against a tree, and realize that this must be one of the paths on which the true site is located at the end. To perform off-script, I have my choice of any of the three or four previous sites, each sporting their own novelties.

Hector and I begin to walk back and I feel satisfied with my decision up until the point at which that satisfaction spills over the brim. What are the chances that the satisfaction of turning my back to the furthest site is, in fact, a feature of the sites previous? I’ve already decided that I will skip the first site on the way back, remembering the cooler air of the site just after, which means I’ve likely been fooled into choosing the true site after all.

Standing in the path, with Hector impatiently tugging at his leash, I’m eventually able to take a few calming breaths and resign myself to accepting the true site as the place where I’ll spend my next hour. It would be silly to rent a room at a nice hotel and then spend the evening searching for a mild downgrade- why not just enjoy the luxury that I paid for?

Imagine Hector’s surprise when, upon reaching the site that I’ve resigned myself to, I feel a tiny, almost non-existent flicker of disappointment. I realize that the picture I had in my head of this site which, in its favor, appears to be the most private- the picture I had formed was based upon the satisfaction I felt at turning my back to the hilly terminal site which, really, seems like the best of the bunch. What’s the need for privacy when I’m guaranteed this path for the next… 45 minutes? The terminal site is the true site and, if Hector and I turn back now, we should have time to eat our food and go.

More than enough time, really.

We spare another few minutes walking a little further back, just so that I can remember the flaws of the site previous to the private site (which is really, actually, maybe second best- really maybe actually as good as the terminal site) before rushing back to the end where the view is beautiful but where everything is a little too perfect, actually. Now that I see it clearly, the perfection there is strained- manicured like a golf course.

I check my watch and see that if we eat on the trail we should be able to enjoy the true, previous site for a few minutes on the way out and still get away without a late fee.

We turn back.

-traveler

The northern forests of Vermont take me the nearest I’ve been to another country in quite some time and I make it a point to drive out toward the border into Quebec just to have a look. It’s occurred to me that I may be squandering an amount of my youth (what remains of it, anyway) in this aimless reiteration of the United States, but the journey has always been about completing the book and the book winds and winds within the borders but never compels me to leave them. Hector and I share a sandwich and head back the way we came, stopping by ‘The Supernatural Reserve’ to see how things could always be a little worse.

‘For all that Americans like to tell their ghost stories, the only ghost that has been certified as real by the Federal Government currently resides at ‘The Supernatural Reserve’ in Vermont. Advertised as ‘Felicia Gonzales’ little slice of paradise,’ ‘The Supernatural Reserve’ is an old mansion maintained in a perpetual state of disrepair as an homage to the early days of Gonzales’ haunting, when she terrorized a succession of families who sought refuge from the city and were naïve enough to overlook the too-good-to-be-true price tag. Each family’s attempt to exorcise the old woman from the house involved the destruction of her remaining personal items and, eventually, her mortal remains which had been exhumed from the grounds for the detection of ‘satanic or otherwise devilish iconography,’ none of which was found. Given these circumstances, little is known about Gonzales as she lived which is the primary reason that she has been stripped of her humanity in death.

The close secondary reason for the stripping of Gonzales’ humanity is the supernatural patience with which she bears disgrace. The burnings, for instance, seemed to annoy the ghost but did nothing to decrease the frequency of her hauntings. The only indications of anger noted in this period were perceived as increasingly frequent side-eyeing as Gonzales acted out the final hours before the fatal lightning strike that would kill her. Whether this patience is borne of the otherworldly state, or whether the woman has always been willing to turn the other cheek is hotly debated by resident parapsychologists, both sides of which test the lengths of her calm unendingly.

The final culprit in Gonzales’ dehumanizing is the operation of ‘The Supernatural Reserve’ through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department, which is standard procedure for most reserves, natural or otherwise. People aren’t really accounted for in the department’s wheelhouse and, given Gonzales’ unique situation, they’ve had no blueprint from which to work. In the absence of novel solutions, the department proposed that ‘The Supernatural Reserve’ be treated like any other. Visitors are kept to certain numbers and the mansion is kept exactly as it was found, the cracks neither fixed nor allowed to widen. Gonzales is left to fend for herself in her ‘natural habitat,’ with the exception, of course, of the researchers who sometimes dress in period clothes or leap from closets in an attempt to jar her from her cycle, all the while assuring their superiors that the process is all quite scientifically sound.

It’s easy to see that Gonzales has become a harried specter. Her side-eyes have become frantic, as though she’s wrestled just that from the loop she treads each day and sees, now, the shuffling crowds in her peripheries. The loops have become long and erratic, never changing, exactly, but often freezing or repeating in the middle like a lazy plotline. Her clothes have become tattered and unwashed and they hang from her form. She is, by all accounts, dying and nobody seems to know what that means for her.

Paranormal activists have drawn parallels between Gonzales’ behavior and the pacing of a tiger kept too long in a zoo. They’ve joined the researchers and the tourists at the site, organizing rallies and sit-ins, sometimes breaking into the mansion in the evenings to steal items they believe Gonzales may be anchored to. The ghost carries on in the meantime, seemingly oblivious if not for the wide-eyed gaping with which she performs her mortal chores.’

Hector is not at all impressed with ‘The Supernatural Reserve,’ intuiting something in the smell or aura of the place that eludes me. I had suspected an amount of tackiness and am surprised by just how understated the grounds really are. If not for signs and a few ADA compliant structures for leveling out the forested approach, the mansion would look like any of a number of derelicts I see off the side of highways.

Gonzales is in the kitchen, which is where all the current visitors are as well. Signs in the preceding rooms point out historical motifs that were added along the way by the families that attempted to live with the ghost but, as expected, nothing of Gonzales’ remains. A family peels off from the group as I arrive and I slide neatly into an opening with which to view the woman. She’s feeding something into a fireplace- wood, I assume at first, but as she continues to shudder and loop I see it’s more likely invisible food fed into a pot that no longer hangs there. An official stands nearby and whistles each time one of the children present attempts to run a stick through the apparition.

“Save it for the yard,” he shouts.

The yard is the only portion of the grounds at which visitors are allowed to interact with Gonzales. Interact, in this case, means further whipping of the stick through her form, trying to kiss, hug, or scare the woman, and, for one man at least, lying on the ground in her path to ascertain whether or not he can see up her dress. Gonzales does not appear in pictures so the march is free of that, at least, and compared to the time she spent in the kitchen I can’t help but feel as though she hurries through the yard to be done with it all.

“That’s intermission, folks,” the man calls and he climbs into his truck to smoke.

Intermission occurs when Gonzalez retreats to the outhouse to relieve herself, a scene that live-in families found so unseemly that they tore the structure down and replaced it with a nearby boulder. For the last half-century, Gonzales is able to disappear into the boulder for this business, at the very least, and she spends the vast majority of each afternoon in solitude before finishing up the last few chores and combusting. Researchers have lobbied to have the boulder removed, arguing it’s historical only up to a point, but the operators have remained opposed, citing their current ‘as-is’ procedure with a particular sneer. Activists pile books, magazines, and other reading material around the boulder to express the woman’s need for privacy.

With Gonzales solidly entombed, Hector is a little more willing to take a walk and relieve himself as well. I consider waiting for ‘intermission’ to end but worry, already, that Gonzales has seen me among her tormentors. I’ve had enough of ghosts already and wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end when the patience with which she performs her scenes turns to wrath. Hector and I dive back into the Midwest, instead, no more or less haunted than before.

-traveler