I’ve never been very good at the places where you’re supposed to find something other than the destination. I didn’t have much luck at the diamond fields or any of the presumed meteor landing sites. Panning for gold, I never found anything but mud and rocks. When I find something it tends to be a nasty surprise- usually what’s left of whoever came before me. I suppose that’s its own kind of luck.
I try to learn from their mistakes.
‘Travelers will want to confirm their tetanus vaccinations before attempting to comb ‘The Lure Trench,’ a narrow valley in the already-recessed Crease. ‘The Lure Trench’ might have been a mainstream destination if not for the danger it presents. And for the smell. It is geographically interesting in that it remains so narrow despite a large majority of the country’s fresh water passing through it. This is due, in part, to the porous rock formations that precede it, these acting to lower the water pressure to a trickle so that, despite the filtration, the water stagnates and runs still. Those fish who attempt to pass through ‘The Lure Trench’ rarely survive and their bodies further thicken the waterway.
Evolutionarily speaking, these fish should have learned their lesson by now but this too can be explained by the relatively mundane. The mountain at the far side of ‘The Lure Trench’ (which also serves as the safest and most accessible viewpoint into the Crease) emits a magnetic field and the fish that choose to attempt ‘The Lure Trench’ all have one thing in common: they carry metal.
It’s fishhooks, mostly, all of them sharp despite the rust. But among those hooks are lures and any fisher worth their rod will tell you that good lures are lost to the sport all the time. These lures can be expensive and rare and there are collectors out there willing to pay a fortune for something that can be dug up for free (discounting personal safety).
Leave your magnets and your metal detectors at home. They work too well, here, failing to differentiate between the trash and the treasure. Travelers hoping for a souvenir should search with a partner and both should prepare for difficult, bloody work.’
The few men in ‘The Lure Trench’ when I arrive bleeding freely from their feet and legs, where hooks and lures hang by shallow folds of flesh. I’ve read that dedicated searchers here forgo protective garments after a few days. Cloth beneath the knee snags and slows them down, trips them up. Offers minimal protection. When something catches their legs they know right away, can stop to see whether it’s worth extraction in the moment or if it can wait until a break.
I watch some of the men pull lures from the shallow, stinking muck that technically constitutes a river. Sometimes, when they are impressed, they plug them into their arms. It serves to differentiate them from the refuse, I suppose. And it gives them status.
These people are not well.
I don’t move beyond the shore but as I’m starting back on the path to the Crease’s main thoroughfare I feel a sharp, plucking sting in my heel. A deep red lure with bright white eyes stares up from the back of my shoe, where its hook disappears into the fabric. It takes me an hour to remove because I am a baby about these things and because I refuse to give it up to the men who see me struggling, who offer to help if I’m willing to give them the find.
I carry it back in my hand because I’m afraid it will burrow into anything I try to store it in. Back at the trailer, I drop it into a glass bottle from the side of the road. The smell makes me want a beer for the first time in months. The bottle goes into the cup holder while I patch up my heal, wondering where I’d even begin finding my medical records without the help of my family.
Someone at home would know whether this might kill me.
Nobody at home knows I’m still alive.
Some people have tried to draw parallels between the number of metal fillings one has and their willingness to search ‘The Lure Trench’ for profit. Just like the fish, the more metal one carries, the more likely they are to find themselves in water no sane creature should want to brave. The contrary opinion suggests a third variable and a cause for both: desperation via poverty.
Whatever the cause, I fit neatly within that correlation: my mouth largely alloy, my foot still bleeding from ‘The Trench,’ my finances a wreck.
I would prefer to know that I do this against my own free will but it seems too easy to be true.
-traveler
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