‘If one rides the Crease from West to East, exiting at the last possible moment before the ocean terminus, they will find themselves traveling under ‘The Hotel Tree,’ which makes for better souvenirs than the unremarkable ‘Muck Trough’ that marks the Western end. ‘The Hotel Tree’ takes its name in part from being the universal source for the materials from which hotel slippers are created. The tree’s bark peels away in scales, thicker and more flexible than birch. Its leaves, once matured, take on the texture of course velvet. It is resistant to burning and disease. 

And its resistant to pests, a categorical threat that includes the humans that strip it for parts. 

In the many decades since its discovery, ‘The Hotel Tree’ has attempted several adaptations to ward of human interference with its growth. Its leaves induce rashes. Its peeled creates sappy blisters of venomous liquid. It has sprouted all manner of prickles and thorns and its branches have developed a fragility at the joints that causes them to sporadically drop, leaving those beneath it injured and itchy. Sometimes dead. 

But humans are stubborn and they crave routine. Sometimes that routine involves the highly specific coarseness of hotel slippers in residences four-stars and above, now boiled and bleached and processed to remove the tree’s resistances. The domination of the tree continues, the routine of suffering toward pleasure writ small but constant at the very edge of the country. 

This is the story of the Crease: danger well-contained.’

Following an internet tutorial, the video for which I have to backtrack up a hill and download through two thin bars of cellular service, I slide a knife between ‘The Hotel Tree’ and a scale of its bark. I snip a leaf, my face masked and hands gloved to ward off the itching hairs it sheds in the process. Pulling the stems and its veins from the leaf is like de-boning a fish. Like what I imagining de-boning a fish is like, I guess. This splits the leaf. A thorn from the tree works as a needle. The fibrous leaf veins, thread. 

In an hour I have a natural approximation of a hotel slipper, a thing that looks quaint and inviting but would give me a rash on the bottom of my foot, where it’s hard to itch without tickling. The internet suggests these make great prank gifts in circles where one can appreciate the irony and the thought leaves me feeling emptier than I expected. Community seems like such a distant concept to me, now. 

Day breaks over the Crease and I make the ascent, driving up the steepest stretch of interstate in the country. I crest and see the ocean ahead. Soon I’m driving parallel to the water, south finally, no longer charging the sun. Behind me, in the mirror, the Crease seems to close like a wound, thinning until it is a heat mirage then disappearing from view altogether. 

-traveler