‘‘The Rocky Mountain Hotspot’ is among the dwindling sites that remain unrecognized by state and federal governments and, therefore, remains unmarked and difficult to find. This non-acknowledgement contributes to its quirk, which is that it’s only feasible to pinpoint ‘The Hotspot’s’ exact dimensions with sensitive infrared equipment or to arrive after a storm when it stands out in the snow. The deep volcanic warmth at the center of this mountainous field keeps it warm and relatively dry during mid-winter blizzards and veils the area in a charming mist that freezes on beards and eyelashes as soon as a visitor leaves its borders. The effect is difficult to recreate digitally and so it has become a destination for the hardier brand of travel-flavored social media influencers in Colorado’s kinder months (October and November, specifically).

Few spend the night directly over ‘The Rocky Mountain Hotspot,’ though it would be, by all accounts, a novel experience. Those who have tried claim the mist becomes claustrophobic in the dark, that it fills up tents and makes the air too thick for human lungs. Others cite the unbearable warmth of the earth below or say that the grass seems to squirm silently under the fabric of their sleeping bags. Still others recount the sighting of beasts that come in from the cold to sleep nearby- things that eye them with wide pupils, things that could kill them if provoked.

Whatever the story, ‘The Rocky Mountain Hotspot’ exudes an otherworldly sense of taboo with a dark horizon. Though there have been no reports of fatalities in the fields as of this entry, nobody will be particularly surprised at the first.’

I experience a suitable amount of regret when the last embers of sunset extinguish, though there is little choice left but to remain. The long, cold drive has exaggerated ‘The Hotspot’s’ ambient temperature and, when the wind scours the field, I realize how damp my clothes have become and how dangerous it will be to suffer the night. The storm arrived just after I did. It would be impossible to navigate the bike back down.

Another hour passes before I submit fully, laying directly on the earth to expose as much of myself to the warmth there as is humanly possible. Even now I rotate at ten minutes intervals or whenever my upward extremities start to numb. The mist is dizzying even in dim light but when I switch it off something shifts in the dark, breaking sticks and huffing like a tired mule. I close my eyes and roll circles around my electric lantern on its lowest setting, counting the seconds till morning.

-traveler

Just past the border of West Virginia, I stop at a booth in the parking lot of a department store and enjoy the best cup of coffee I have ever had. It’s barely six in the morning and the horizon is growing red with eventual daybreak. An intermittent wind cuts with autumnal edge and pushes dried leaves over the pavement. They rattle quietly under the park bench where I sit.

It’s going to be a long day- a longer day than I’ve allowed myself in a while. A storm hovers in the far west of the country and shakes its fist at the center. I’d like to make it to Colorado before the interstates close. If I don’t, I’ll waste money on liminal motel stays. If I do, I may be struck by the storm before finding a vacancy. If I wait too long, the storm will pass and ‘The Rocky Mountain Hot Spot’ will be just another patch of ground.

But it’s difficult to leave the park bench, to imagine life without another cup of coffee from the booth. Moments like these don’t last long. The store will open. The parking lot will fill with cars. The sun will rise and expose the chewed gum and trash among the leaves. The coffee will get cold. The sitting will become a concern. Fifteen minutes is long enough to enjoy a cup of coffee in a parking lot. Two cups of coffee is enough for any sober traveler. Any more and the man in the booth will start to wonder. Any more and the man will start to worry.

Much is made of the bird and the cage as metaphor. I would be happy to say that I am the untamed bird- I’ve probably suggested the same to attractive men in run-down hostels before. In reality, I’m more of a splinter, worked from the skin by the slow processes of the body. As a traveler, no place can bear me long.

I order another coffee, my last before the ride. I can spare another 15 minutes. The man’s tag reads ‘Smitty,’ a clarification to the booth’s glowing signage which, due to malfunction or age, reads ‘S itty Coffee.’ Smitty has capitalized on the ambiguity of the missing letter and has become famous for grossly exaggerated negative reviews of his booth. His is rated the worst coffee on any of the numerous mainstream travel sites. He sells mugs that read ‘I drank S*itty Coffee.’ He responds angrily to five star reviews, to anyone that doesn’t take up the joke. It’s unknown whether the online persona is a clever act or the ramblings of a man who hardly knows how to use the internet. Negativity has become his brand.

The man’s not spoken a word to me, but the silence is comfortable. He hands me my cup and steps out the back to smoke. I return to the bench but find the contentment has passed. The horizon swells with red infection and the bike’s engine clicks irritably. Time to go.

‘Of the world’s myriad poisons, none are so potent as the rancid coffee served at ‘Smitty Coffee.’ It stains a clean mug in a single use. It browns teeth. It is considered a cancer-causing agent in the state of California and may be the source of several other ailments in several other states. Purchasing the stuff as a solvent only pads the pocket of a madman. Travelers are suggested to avoid the booth at all costs.’

-traveler

‘What the temporary art scene lacks in brand recognition, it makes up for with an atmosphere that encourages flagrant experimentation, skirting the edge of style so closely that it often falls from it. Permanence taboos allow for the culling of anything too offensive but maintain a healthy system of memetic trends, ensuring artist output is predictable enough to hold the attention of outsiders and outrageous enough to be considered transgressive by those hoping to buy into the label. Breaching the taboos leads to the overabundance of health one might find in a horse’s unkempt hooves or a hamster’s unworn teeth- the familiar spirals into something monstrous, the monstrous kills the familiar.

‘The Unwashed Hopscotch’ on the streets of Belgard, New Mexico is the monster that consumes it. Spawned from the annual ‘Belgard Hopscotch Festival’ in 2016 (which has previously run without incident) the small town has seen so little rain in three years that a whimsical, chalk-based obstacle course that once stretched the length of a block now curls for miles in every direction. ‘The Unwashed Hopscotch’ has been in place long enough that the early stages have begun to wear into the pavement. Potholes are common and considered the only legal move by those who hope to complete one of the myriad branches of the labyrinthine hopscotch system that has grown in the absence of cleansing precipitation. Traps (as crude as broken glass and as clever as hinged boards) are discouraged, but present along the routes. Obstacles that require participants to maneuver into cafes, along busy streets, and across narrow alley ways while avoiding local authorities are considered fair game.  

‘The Unwashed Hopscotch’ remained in Belgard for a year as a sort-of auxiliary destination aside the previously existing art scene before it began to draw the crowds that drew it, in turn. 2017 marked the first instance of active preservation: a group of visiting artists that had already made several attempts on the infamous ‘Birch Street Pass’ (where ‘The Unwashed Hopscotch’ descends into a narrow drainage trench) learned of a thunderhead forming in the south. They laid down tarps to protect the core and the ‘Pass’ so they could finish what they began, inadvertently violating the spirit of the festival and setting the precedent that later teams would maintain the paths they attempted (like strange, urban mountaineers).

Two years have passed and ‘The Unwashed Hopscotch’ continues to disrupt day-to-day business in Belgard, filling the streets with inattentive pedestrians and sucking life from the infrastructure that sustains it. Belgard artists, who sell hopscotch-related merchandise almost exclusively, have formed a militia that simultaneously highlights the piece’s fragility and protects it with force that borders upon illegality. The roads of inner-Belgard have degraded beyond any ability to sustain traffic and the Bell Guard patrols the outskirts in shifts. The town has fallen to ‘The Unwashed Hopscotch.’

We wonder what draws humanity to monsters, why cultists flock to grim deities and why soldiers march for despots.

Monsters pay well.’

I initially underestimate Shitholes in its description of the Bell Guard Militia and attempt to enter the town, on foot, without a permit. I am escorted out- not quickly, as one might expect, but via  a route made circuitous by the protected winding of ‘The Unwashed Hopscotch.’ It turns out that my initial entry point was within a ‘sanctuary zone’ where some of the chalk lines have been eroded by wind from the desert. Only the Bell Guard and highly competitive hopscotchers are allowed there.

I’m taken to a gift shop where I pay a fine ($50) in order to pay for a day pass ($25). The permit comes with a piece of chalk and the expectation that I’ll be adding to the mess of Belgard (say what you will of the militia’s draconic preservation policies, they only add or improve routes during festival dates). My bag is searched and I’m forced to check anything that could potentially hold liquids into a locker. I’m verbally reminded of the serious consequences that would follow public urination. Several of the Guard escort me to Main Street, hopping service routes along the way but allowing me to simply step over the lines as an approved visitor.

The square at the center of town is darkened by a haphazard shelter that protects ‘The Unwashed Hopscotch’ core. Though more members of the militia watch over the area, I’m left to explore a three block radius of the town relatively unsupervised, its redundancies being enough to consider it non-fragile.

I didn’t enter Belgard with the intention of disturbing ‘The Unwashed Hopscotch’ but I find myself shuffling my feet through some of the lines all the same. I stop in part because some speculate the art piece is actually a complex sigil of protection- think a circle of salt on a massive scale. Mostly, though, my chafing at authority is dwarfed by my fear of it.

More embarrassing, perhaps, is that I try a few routes when I think I’m alone. My body has healed from the wounds of my early travel. I think I’m a healthier person, now, than I was when we began. I do well, well enough for an amateur anyway. I even manage a route that requires kicking off a wall and hopping up a short flight of stairs. At the end, someone has drawn the sunset in chalk with the word ‘Congratulations’ floating in the clouds and it occurs to me that this is the first thing I’ve finished in a long, long time.

-traveler

‘There is an illusion of chaos about the world and, though this writer’s experiences are isolated to a relatively thin realm, he can say for certain that very little of what happens on the ‘Wayside’ should be taken at face value, particularly in regards to patterned behavior. Having realized this independently, a woman known only by her internet handle, Rozzalind_420, managed to discover something new and, like most non-male innovators, she has been made to regret it. In publishing her discovery, the author hopes to take on a modicum of that suffering (though no man ever saved a witch by jumping on the pyre).

Rozzalind’s unspecified work involved relatively constant travel and, initially in jest, she created a blog in which she eloquently reviewed highway rest stops and rated them based on location, cleanliness, and ‘overall ambience.’ Rozzalind became a minor internet celebrity when a particularly damning review of a stop outside El Paso went viral, resulting in an investigation by the CDC and a state-issued apology.

The attention initially seemed to have almost no effect on the blog itself, which continued to churn out weekly or bi-weekly reviews. Critics suggested much of the writing was likely faked as Rozzalind seemed able to cover vast distances in relatively little time and would not describe what sort of job would have her so consistently on the road. She eventually admitted that posts were published out of order to avoid being easily followed and to keep the site active even when she was ‘working from the office.’ When these reasonable explanations failed to silence her ‘fans,’ Rozzalind disabled comments on the posts and went about business as usual.

Cut off from the world, Rozzalind’s sanity seemed to quickly decline. Her old rating system was supplemented by an increasingly complex ‘checklist’ of features that, to most, seemed relatively neutral in the grander scheme of things. At times, this checklist included things like ‘creaking door on stalls,’ ‘floor drain situated as to be viewable from toilet,’ ‘toilet paper installed to unravel in clockwise fashion (facing visitor),’ and ‘handprint on mirror.’ More to the point, the checklist was the first indication of ‘The Persistent Knocker.’

Rozzalind first noted ‘The Persistent Knocker’ in a series of posts on Mid-west toilets, describing the phenomenon of a person that enters a restroom and attempts to open a stall (normal behavior) and, finding it locked, tries at least once more (unnatural behavior, according to Rozzalind). She later began associating ‘The Knocker’ with, what many would assume, were phone numbers scrawled across (or carved into) the stalls but which she correctly deduced was a sort of cant left by ‘The Persistent Knocker’ that arrived when the stall was unoccupied.

Her audience having mostly jumped-ship, the public discovery of ‘Rozzalind Rooms’ would have remained muted if not for a sudden, panicked outcry by lurking members of several Rozzalind-adjacent forums and chatrooms hoping to find a quick means by which to contact her. Those who thought to re-visit the blog to see what all the fuss was about found the last post Rozzalind would ever publish: a short video of a masked woman (thought by most to be Rozzalind herself), slamming her body over and over into a locked stall until the door gives way, revealing a second door and, beyond that, a hidden bathroom.

‘Rozzalind Rooms’ are estimated to exist in at least 20% of American rest stops, always behind seemingly-locked stalls (built with an angled latch that slides up the door with each successive push and falls back into place under no pressure). Their historic exclusivity meant that they remained cleaner and quieter than traditional toilets, though accessing them bred the rest stop pest Rozzalind once dubbed ‘The Persistent Knocker.’ Rozzalind’s last post put a quick end to the secrecy and inspired a new generation of meddling vloggers, upsetting an ecosystem that had remained balanced for decades. Those clued in to ‘Rozzalind Rooms’ previous to the blog resent both the name and the loss of their roadside sanctuaries and Rozzalind, once well-respected for her work toward rest stop transparency, is now widely condemned for it.

The true condemnation belongs to the architect of this predator/prey duality who has instilled, in the traveler, a craving for privacy and an excuse to take it from others. Ghosts are harder to catch than witches, however, and they don’t burn nearly as bright.‘

-excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘The surface of the Earth is many things, sometimes ugly and often melancholic, but, unsatisfied to the extent at which it was either, humanity looked to space for inspiration and the result was America’s ‘Lunar Wonderland.’ Adverts on cereal boxes and between episodes of beloved Saturday morning cartoons promised kids a true-to-life moon-walking adventure- something that eighties’ children and concept designers understood very, very differently.

Imagine the growing pit in a child’s stomach, then, as the family car crests the last hill before the touted ‘Lunar Wonderland’ to find it glowing eerily under a massive glass dome. Imagine that, through the windows, the child notices no other families inside. Imagine a theme park that has created and employed a state-of-the-art acoustic design method that swallows up sound in order to replicate the oppressive silence of space. Imagine, as a child, tripping into a shallow crater and being unable to hear your family call for you or to see them through the asbestos moon-dust that now coats your helmet, or to reach them due to the life-like heaviness of your child-sized replica space suit.

‘Lunar Wonderland’s’ ten-year run is impressive, considering the lengths it took to make itself as frightening as possible for its target audience. Like many of the eighties’ conceptual flops, it remains relatively intact in the deserts of the deep south, too plastic, really, to decompose and too expensive to dismantle (experts suggest that removing any part of the dome would spread a catastrophic amount of the aforementioned asbestos‘…like a child blowing apart a dandelion).’

More recently, millennial retro-lust has created a small market for ‘moonshine’ which, here, means paying a local to haul out and plug their generator into the ‘Wonderland’s’ grid. Parties otherwise too young to have witnessed the moon in its prime can experience the vacant terror of the lunar surface for the first time and eighties-kids, now grown, can exorcise the cool, white nightmares that pulse beneath pleasanter dreams.’

The local that offers me ‘moonshine’ insists that we arrive after dark and that I ride shotgun in his pick-up. His truck reeks of a cigarette-smoking grandfather, the smell far too stale to belong to anyone in his own generation. It reminds me of my own truck when the sun would dredge up the same sort of smells from between the cracks of the fake leather- perfume, body odor: ghosts of people still living.

‘Lunar Wonderland’ is dormant when we arrive, of course. The complex is larger than anything I could have possibly imagined and the false terrain beneath the dome glows, dimly reflecting the light of its real-life counterpart. When I circle back around to the man I find his upper-half fully engulfed by the conglomerate systems of the exposed machine. He emerges for air and startles to see me standing close.

“There’s a suit for you in the truck,” he says, “Your 30 minutes starts as soon as the lights come on.”

I take the hint and begin the lengthy process of pulling the space suit on. It’s small, for me, and shares the scent profile of the truck to intensely that I wonder if it isn’t the source, but the sudden quiet, the sudden protection from the desert wind severs my ties to the earth and instills a certain calm. I walk noisily back to the man and he says something, his voice too muffled by the helmet for me to understand. He waves, then, and leads me to the entrance where I see that the keypad on the outside glows with a small red light. When the man passes a haphazard card-key across it, the doors open and I step inside.

The false moon is glowing, now, and past an initial wave of fear I find myself stumbling with a bout of dizziness. The ground buzzes through the thick soles of the space boots and I understand that the surface of the moon, which rises from the floor like a wide hill, is rotating. The guides don’t mention this and it means that, embedded in the earth below me, is a scale replica of the moon in full. I turn to look back and the man motions to me through the glass. He scribbles ‘22’ in the dust, there: my remaining time.

Best get to it, then.

There is always a question of what it means to experience a site from Autumn by the Wayside. At the defunct ‘Lunar Wonderland,’ I content myself with sitting quietly is a small, dusty crater as the glowing replica earth passes overhead, shifting, occasionally, as the cumbersome suit digs into my back.

Before long I feel the incline of the surface sloping downward and see the man gesturing angrily through the glass. I’ve lost track of time- maybe fallen asleep. I stand on stiff legs and write back that I’m willing to pay for more. The man indicates something- a rate increase, potentially, but we walk away from the dome having reached some sort of accord.

The complex is a labyrinth of old ice cream parlors and souvenir shops so I seek out a service door and find someone has pried it open before me. The stairway beyond is plain but functional compared to the pageantry above. Navigating it in the suit proves difficult, however, and I’m out of breath by the time I find the next door. It’s labeled: ‘Dust Recollection and Filter Access.’

‘Moon dust’ pours from the room as I swing the door open, covering the boots of the space suit. I begin to itch, inwardly, and hope that the locked-in smell of smoke is a testament to the suit’s tight chemical barrier. The floor inside is coated with the stuff and illuminated by the far wall- a wide portion of the moon’s rotating surface. There are brushes in place, seemingly to collect and redistribute the dust on the floor, but a powdery mountain has formed where there should be an outgoing belt and so it builds here instead.

I dig the pile out, finding several generations’ worth of lost-and-found items in the process including dozens of small flags likely planted by those who purchased moonshine like me. I wonder, briefly, if I’ll ever travel abroad and decide that I probably won’t.

The lowest level exits into the basement of the complex where a full half of the glowing replica is laid bare. The material is translucent where the powder has been brushed away completely except for a thin, rust-colored line off the center. I puzzle over this inclusion for a while, trying to remember what I’d learned of the moon in elementary school science, when I stumble though a pile of asbestos dust and upon a flattened space suit inside of which is the flattened body of a woman. In the moment of inspection I manage before revulsion sets in, I realize that she, like me, had reached into the filter and she, unlike me, had been pulled into orbit.

In the light of the rotating ceiling I see the patches on her suit indicate arrival on the same imaginary spacecraft as mine and for the second time in a matter of weeks I’m reminded that I am alone again. The Editor likely wouldn’t have stopped me putting my arm in the filter and she probably wouldn’t have been able to pull me out in time, but she would have been there to understand how I met my end. Where did they look for her when they realized she was gone? Could their guesses have ever come close to something like this?

The false moon darkens abruptly and, except for the glowing afterimage of the red-projected ring, the room is cast into darkness. I’m forced to feel my way back to the surface, a punishment the man above seems to think is fitting enough for keeping him so long. It gives me time to remember the dangers of the ‘Wayside,’ the long drops and the small spaces.

-traveler

‘‘The Shining Face of Seattle’ is actually an hour outside the city but the name sticks all the same. It’s positioned far enough into the wooded acreage of an otherwise unremarkable rest stop that it sees little traffic, but travelers who happen to read the signs outside the bathroom will have no trouble identifying the short path that leads to the statue. It is not uncommon to see others moving that way.

The origin of the statue is entirely unknown. Bolts at the base suggest there may have existed a dedicating plaque but it has been missing long enough that its absence is clear in all existent pictures of ‘The Shining Face.’ The statue itself depicts a man in bronze, doubled over but looking up and forward, as though struggling to finish a race. His clothes suggest a modern sculptor (which makes the absent history all the more strange) and the foundations of a second, small platform that may have once held the object of his gaze can be found ahead of him in the brush. The man’s metal has oxidized black with the exception of his face which, local lore would have you believe, grants preternatural foresight to those who rub it. As one might expect, it shines.

What many don’t expect is that the ‘The Shining Face’ has worn so thin over the years that its features have smoothed or collapsed entirely, forming something like a gaping mask. Guesses regarding ‘The Face’s’ emotional state vary from terrified to ecstatic, these interpretations being reflected in the poses of those who post pictures of the statue online. One may wrap his arm around the statue’s shoulders as though consoling him, for instance, and another may bend nearby as though bowled over by the same hilarious joke.

There are surprisingly few pictures of people actually rubbing the statue, a phenomenon that can be attributed to an entirely different local tradition- booby-trapping the face. The only evidence of this dates back to 2013 when pranksters filled ‘The Shining Face of Seattle’ with raw meat (presumably pressing it through the smoothed mouth and eyes) so that when a group of scouts approached to place their hands on the metal, several bloated rats streamed out of the head. A clip of the incident can be found with a simple internet search. Legend would suggest that, at other points in time, ‘The Face’ has been covered in glue, electrified, filled with insects, wired to screech at being touched, and that the mouth has been widened, sharpened, and turned inwards so that an unwitting visitor might reach for a light inside and find themselves trapped by lips made razor, though why anyone would attempt-’

There was a time, not so long ago, when the Editor would read aloud from Shitholes as we approached a site, preparing us for what we were about to experience. In the span of a week I’ve fallen back on old habits, which is to say, I’ve gone back to skimming the entries.

It’s grown dark except for the lit eyes of ‘The Shining Face of Seattle.’ I’ve left ‘Autumn by the Wayside’ in the bike’s trailer, along with my pack- along with most of what I own. I twist for a view of the trail and feel the razor-mouth of ‘The Face’ peel back another quarter-inch of skin. The lower half of my jacket’s sleeve was cut cleanly away in my initial attempt to get free. The bare arm inside is cold and wet with blood.

My left hand fumbles, again, for my cellphone. I scroll through my contacts and reach the bottom of the list in three short seconds.

Nobody is coming.

-traveler

The editor returning to Zeitgeist is like a missing cog falling back into the works of a massively complex, deeply broken machine. She pulls a manuscript and a pile of sticky-notes from the drawer below the gun and places a call that rings on a phone hardly 20 feet from her open office door. In the brief interim, she makes several quick proofing marks on the final page of the manuscript and slides it into an envelope. The man she called steps past me to take the package from her and sets a basket on the desk, filled to overflowing with what appears, at first glance, to be garbage.

The man leaves and I shut the door behind him.

“What the fuck?”

The editor sighs and pulls a dirty paper towel from the pile. When she unfolds it, I see there’s writing on the inside.

“Sept. 21,” it says, “Saw blue bird hanging upside down from tree. Eight in a row?”

A rough illustration of the same is scribbled underneath.

“This,” she says, “Is the editing process. This is what your book looked like when we received it. It’s what would happen if you turned your backpack over into the garbage can and asked me to make something of it. More than that, it’s what did happen.”

“You remember all this now?”

“Yes…” she says, “I think so. It’s hard to explain. Something happened to…”

The phone rings and the editor’s arm has nearly crossed the distance when she stops herself. As soon as her hand touches the desk again the phone quiets.

“There’s a system in place here,” she tries again, “Zeitgeist is trying to… preserve these weird, shitty…”

She pauses again, but maintains the wherewithal to frown at her adjective choice before starting over.

“In a capitalist society, the fast-track to preservation is sales,” she explains, pulling another sheet from the basket, “There is writing here- here in the country I mean- so much writing that just doesn’t go anywhere. Nobody wants to take something like this and make it coherent because it’s tedious as fuck and…”

The ringing starts again and this time the editor’s arm shoots across the desk. She pulls the phone from its cradle and flings it against the door where it shatters into several pieces. The dial tone plays dully from the components still attached to the cord.

“It’s tedious because it’s all so complicated and it’s all so… fragile.” The editor clicks a red pen open and closed. “It’s like a… imagine a…”

“Imagine a path,” I say, and she nods.

“Yeah, imagine this untouched wilderness- pretty enough that it’s got to be sitting on an oil field somewhere. Imagine the government says we can keep it, but only if we make it safe for people to enter so they can see the beauty of it. And the danger. Now it’s your job to tame it- to cut a path into this paradise without collapsing the thing. In order to preserve it, you have to carve into it. You have to hurt it a little. You have to sell passes and stuffed bears. Does that make sense?”

A phone rings in the editor’s desk before I can answer. She’s about to open a drawer before we realize, at the same time, it’s the drawer that holds the pistol.

“Zeitgeist is doing for shitty writing what you do for shitty attractions,” she says, keeping her voice above the sound of the ringing, “Preservation by monetization. Selling to save.”

The ringing stops, again, and I rub my eyes.

“How did you keep coming back to life?”

“An editor can make changes to a piece as long as the spirit of the story is kept intact,” she shrugs, “I may have been heavy-handed early on, but I needed to understand where the story was going before I could set you on the right course. You’re a tough guy to track down.”

My eyes are sore and red under my thumbs. A headache has begun to form and it pulses with the dull warning of a distant thunderhead.

“What do you want?” I ask, and the editor pulls the top sticky-note from her pile. There, written and underlined in red pen, are two words:

‘An epilogue.’

‘It used to be that a traveler could happen upon a woman selling pirated DVD’s from the back of her blue pick-up truck. She was everywhere, this woman, in every state, along every highway. The woman never had the movie you wanted, but she could often recommend something like it that she did have. The movies were invariably strange- nearly unwatchable both for the quality of the video and of the content. When the woman’s ties to the gray infrastructure were called into scrutiny, research discovered the DVDs were, in fact, unique to each sale. A mass collection campaign has been organized to study the chronology and ‘mythos,’ as it were, of the ‘Roadside Attractions.’

The woman and her blue pick-up have vanished from the public eye and, while many blame the gray road community for forcing her into hiding, many more insist that the sudden abundance of esoteric streaming services have simply made obsolete another time-honored American job.’

-traveler

We are inside ‘Zeitgeist Publishing’ for an hour before I realize we will learn nothing from the people there. They couldn’t help us if they wanted to.

‘Preface

This is not a destination guide, reader. No one place between the covers warrants visiting on its own. This book shares more in common with the average trail guide than it does with any popular travel publication. It attempts to do the work of a trail guide for roadways, the half-mad cardiovascular system of America with all of its cracked, weeping asphalt and all of its cracked, weeping people. It attempts to describe the way between things and, in doing so, the book has become as mad and winding as the road.

I’m sorry, for this, but there is no other way.

I don’t understand how ‘Zeitgeist’ came to know about my writing or in what form they will publish it. I don’t understand what they want when they ask me to write a preface. This must be what a ranger feels when they are tasked with describing their park in short sentences for a single sign at the trailhead: entice the reader- and warn them.

Let me entice you.

Strangeness is inherent to the periphery. A speeding vehicle strikes a deer. The animal drags its body to the outer edge of the forest and succumbs to death. It becomes strange, there. Its shape changes. It fills with new life. It becomes a niche ecosystem for things neither afraid of the traffic nor of the woodland predators. It exists, for a short time, in limbo. And then it is forgotten.

The wayside attractions are much the same- repulsive and fleeting. To purchase this book, to follow it as a guide, is not to become the driver or the deer. It is to become the weird life that inhabits the corpse in the interim.

Let me warn you.

Carry water, always. Tell your loved ones where you are going and when you hope to return. Carry a blanket and a length of rope. Tell your loved ones when you are going and how you hope to return. Carry a flashlight and fresh batteries. Tell your loved ones how you are going and why you hope to return. Carry a shovel and something sharp. Tell your loved ones why you are going and where you hope to return. Carry a map- any map.

Carry water.

My limited understanding of German suggests that ‘geist’ is just as likely to translate to ‘ghost’ as it is to ‘spirit.’ My limited understanding of things unknown is that there is a huge difference between the two. The spirits of the forest. Team spirit. Fine spirits. Spirituality. There is nothing in these words to suggest menace. Or death. Ghosts, on the other hand, are always dead and often unhappily so. Maybe that’s why we lean on ‘spirit’ in our understanding of ‘zeitgeist,’ though my own experiences would suggest that lost time can be as bitter and haunting as the restless dead.

A preface is strange, reader. Like the ranger’s sign, it must be written by someone who has already completed the task it defines. It’s the reader’s beginning and the author’s end.’

There is an art to looking busy and everyone inside the small office that constitutes this branch of ‘Zeitgeist Publishing’ excels at it. I excelled at it in a past life, which is why it only takes me the hour to see through the charade. A man scribbles on a note pad and throws out the pages. Blank paper pours from the copier and a woman arrives to cycle it back into the machine. Several people appear to be mouthing silently at phones in the back and they end their calls as I pass on my way to the restroom. The man at the front desk keeps us waiting and, assuming that’s his job, he’s the only one currently performing it well.

The Editor is quiet and I take the silence as apprehension until she readily agrees to investigate on the way back from the toilet. We find her office, or, we find the editor’s office and her name is on the plaque. It’s empty until she enters and then she seems to vacillate between the Editor I know and the editor that she should be.

“I think I’ve been here before,” she says, opening a drawer and setting her gun inside, “Isn’t this where we started?”

-traveler

We arrive in a Zeitgeist hub town and as we coast around the corner toward the supposed branch’s address, I feel the Editor’s fingers digging into my sides. They release, suddenly, as we pass. It appears, by all accounts, to be open.

Of course, after weeks of travel, the Editor begins to lose her nerve. I see it in the way her hands shake at the gas station, rattling the ice in her plastic soda fountain cup. I hear it in deep breaths she takes when she thinks I’m not close enough to notice. The Editor, faced with the end of journey, is panicking. All of her work has been with things unfinished.

She jumps on the idea of taking a hotel room for the evening (“It’s getting late,” I say, “They may not be open much longer.”). She grips me again as we pass the branch on the way, straining her neck to catch a glimpse of… what? Another self? I look too but I see the windows of Zeitgeist Publishing are mirrors and turn back to the road before I can make eye contact with her. The door seems to be opening as we pass but I don’t see the person leaving and, if the Editor does, she keeps it to herself.

By sheer happenstance there is a Zeitgeist Publishing product catalog in the drawer of the hotel room (along with a phonebook, the Bible). It’s a slim pamphlet, made up entirely of esoteric travel writing.

“‘Check Under the Bed’: a Guide to Cheap Hotels”

“‘An English-to-Forest Translation Guide’: Make Them Listen to your Poetry!”

“Biting Insects Back: Alternative Protein Recipes.”

Finally, near the back, is Autumn by the Wayside, its subtitle playfully censored by exclamation points. Its description is as follows:

‘How long can you be lost on a circular path? Follow the curious traveler as he attempts to find out. Tag along on his journey into America’s living room, where he digs into the spaces between couch cushions to find things otherwise forgotten. Follow him, and tell us where you are. He has been gone so long.

‘Autumn by the Wayside:’ a travel guide for those who mean to lose themselves.‘

-traveler

‘A small, mid-western university, Prairie College, is renowned for two things: producing well-equipped students of agriculture and a growing monument to failure that spreads across its expansive campus dubbed ‘Academic Rigor Mortis’ (or, sometimes, the ARM). In practice, the ARM restates a situation made relatively clear in the institution’s public documents- that the success of their small number of graduates is achieved at the cost of the large percentage of students that fail or drop-out. The academic targets of Prairie College are impossibly demanding and students are expected to fulfill physical farming duties in addition to coursework. The administration has leaned into this trend, creating something that shares more aspects with an obstacle course than it does with any other accredited educational program in the country. Its workload has been deemed psychologically damaging by several local psychiatrists who describe failed students as ‘irrevocably broken.’

‘Academic Rigor Mortis’ is the result of a particularly cruel policy, one that states that ‘Prairie College’ will not release documents for transfer before a student buries her completed physical coursework on campus, erecting a small headstone that displays their proposed (and unfinished) thesis to mark the lot. The ARM, then, is a field sown with failure and failure grows there, the paper and ink leaching into the earth and creating a dark chemical shadow.

‘Prairie College’s’ founding documents famously refer to its ideal graduates as ‘enlightened farmers’ and famously digress into something like a summons for a singular being: ‘The Enlightened Farmer.’ The school’s tightening filter, it’s suggested, will someday result in its final graduating class- a class of one. This student will end the ARM’s decay and, perhaps, the punishing educational cycle of the institution from which it extends.’

There was a time when I thought I may have wanted to be a farmer. I would tend the garden in the backyard and read books about the end of the world. Looking out over the ‘ARM,’ I wonder how long we’ve been preparing for disaster. Humanity is bracing itself for an apocalypse and the end-times are crowded with prophecies. The longer we draw this out, the stranger the world will become.

-traveler