Hector is so still, at times, so unresponsive to the world outside his thick serenity that I wonder if he hasn’t quietly died in the back of the carrier. More than once I have poked and prodded and called out to him through the open bars and he has either been in such a deep sleep or has had enough reason to fake such a state that he only ‘wakes’ upon tumbling out of the tilted box like a medicine ball before chewing at his lettuce in a drowsy stupor. A veterinarian has said the creature is old but reasonably healthy, minus the clear UV-callusing of the body and the probable abuse-callusing of the mind.

Water. Food. Comfortable bedding. These are the things Hector needs in retirement and I fall into the habit of providing them. The animal hardly notices.

‘‘Daylight Savings’ is the company with which the American bourgeois prefers to stockpile its summers. It’s headquartered in central Florida but maintains several regional branches for personal deposits and withdrawals, the density of which increases as one moves toward the U.S./Canada border. These locations are popular with the lower class, as well, who sometimes huddle near the buildings come winter, waiting for a bus or otherwise loitering with the goal of skimming a little warmth from the upper echelons.

This practice is based upon the misconception that ‘Daylight Savings’ still stores significant quantities of daylight in their regional sun safes. In reality, modern fiberoptic networks allow for the vast majority of deposited summer to be transferred immediately to a location that remains undisclosed and is very likely some sunny, offshore haven that caters specifically to shady forms of sun tax evasion.

The many lawyers employed by ‘Daylight Savings’ have stated that the cloak-and-dagger keeping of the nation’s excess summers are to avoid disasters like the botched daylight heist of 1886 that resulted in ‘The Oklahoma Sunspot’ and may have inadvertently triggered the nation’s ‘Big Die-Up.’

‘When all that stands between a few bandits and a scorched-earth disaster is a family-owned business like ‘Daylight Savings,’ they claim, ‘Then America must have faith in those who have invested the most in its daylight and in its security: the wealthy elite.’’

We don’t get very close to ‘The Oklahoma Sunspot’ before I notice Hector’s uncharacteristic agitation. He’s pacing back and forth in the carrier at the rim of the great, black disc and by the time we reach the edge of the scorching-proper he’s begun to chew his way out. Nothing in my research suggested that ‘The Sunspot’ emitted even faint radiation, but the rabbit is familiar with sunlight and wants nothing to do with the charred landscape where there once stood a town.

I drive far enough back that Hector calms and then we hike to a viewpoint just off the highway and up a short hill. From there, I snap a few pictures of the blast zone and spend some time fussing over sketches of the white-warped shadows of old buildings, each pointed away from the old sun bank with the same dire certainty as Hector.

-traveler

Traveling has made me comfortable in most environments, no matter how harsh or unpredictable the terrain, but the local bar is far and away the venue I dread most. I’m not talking about one in a chain of bars, regional, national, or otherwise. I’m not referring to the loud, popular bars downtown or along trendy streets. Not the brew-pubs. Not the clinical dives.

I’m talking about the discreet brown-brick locales with broken neon signs in the windows and two sets of warped plastic lawn furniture on the sidewalk out front where people hover to smoke. The place with a pool table that nobody uses and a single television in the corner, its screen vaguely rainbowed by some unrepaired collision, not muted, exactly, but at a volume that renders the words of sports commentators garbled. The place you step inside and wonder whether or not you need to be a war veteran to order a drink, where, at any given time, the total number of human legs is an odd number or an even number, oddly distributed.

I don’t know how long it takes to become a local at one of these places but my line of work has not yet yielded a residency and, until now, I haven’t yet understood how best to play my suspicious appearing role. It’s in my nature to act like a guest in somebody’s home, to compliment mundane features of the bar or force small talk with people sitting nearby. I inevitably get the feeling they would rather be left alone.

Against all odds, it’s Hector that changes the equation as I step into ‘Bar on 144^th’ and immediately spy ‘The Out of Order Jukebox’ across the room. It’s dead silent in the bar: an early Tuesday evening crowd, the majority of which looks up at me as I enter. Not the atmosphere I hoped for but very much in line with what I expected.

Hector shifts heavily in the kennel and I adjust my arm, roll my shoulder, and step up to the bar. The bartender, a woman in her sixties, scratches the skin above her eye and slides a decrepit plastic drinks menu across the way, asking what I’ll have without giving me time to consider. I order a drink and a basket of fries and a side salad and so little changes that I wonder whether she’s heard me or whether I said anything at all. Eventually, she speaks again:

“Who you got down there?”

“Sorry,” I tell her, “I can sit outside if he’s not allowed. I came in on a bike and…”

“Just curious.”

Fifteen minutes later, the bar denizens have all crowded around Hector who, looking like the wart off an old man’s back, chews at shredded carrots and occasionally hops about on the dirty wooden floor. He’s warmed, some, since the rescue. Seems comfortable in human hands. Petting doesn’t seem to evoke any response in the blind creature, which makes me wonder whether he can feel anything at all along his leathery back. He’s happy for gentle massaging and fresh vegetables and he expresses as much by rubbing his feet together. The small, doting crowd laughs as he hobbles over to nibble at an old man’s shoe laces. They feed him more of the salad, which arrived in record time, while I wait for the fries and fret about the jukebox.

‘One assumes that management keeps ‘The Out of Order Jukebox’ plugged into the wall mainly for aesthetic purposes and, perhaps, out of some respect for the whims of the machine which occasionally plays back-to-back albums for hours on end but is just as likely to dip into a bouts of silence that last days, sometimes weeks, at a time. ‘The Out of Order Jukebox’ responds to no outside input, happily rejecting quarters and disregarding coded requests. The original ‘out of order’ sign has been replaced with one carved from wood so that regulars can wordlessly point out the naivety of the uninitiated, these otherwise stoic locals inwardly grinning at the friendly insult.

Even more sporadic than the music are the flutterings of the machine’s inner catalogue, which have grown dusty in retirement. Hidden there, between the pages, is said to be a handwritten note- a line or two of unrecorded prose. Those who see it, or claim to have seen it, walk away with the mien of a person slightly changed for the better, having been granted a subtle happiness or small piece of wisdom.’

Another bout of laughter erupts from the locals and I turn to see Hector licking curiously at an empty beer bottle. I watch to make sure nobody thinks to get the decrepit rabbit drunk but swing back around when the silent jukebox twitches. Dust floats about inside the glass, surely disturbed by a change in the delicate inner atmosphere. I try to remember what page the catalog had been on when I first looked, try to peer through the curved glass along the sides to decide whether or not I believe there might be as esoteric truth wedged there.

Someone taps on my shoulder and I turn around to find the bartender. She points at the wooden ‘out of order’ sign and the bar erupts in laughter again. I smile in a way that I hope looks resigned to being the butt of the joke.

“Fries are on the table, hon,” the woman says, squeezing my shoulder, and they all go back to patting, feeding, and otherwise entertaining Hector.

I shrug at the jukebox and walk over to my food. I’m not sure what could make me happier.

-traveler

‘Curated, ostensibly, by the Rangers and run by the most bored man in the American South, ‘The Sunburn Experience’ is one of many cautionary adventures presented by the Wayside. In typical Wayside fashion, ‘The Experience’ draws inspiration from older fables in that its moral is ambiguous at best but delivered with enough trauma that one can’t help but recall the wisdom it imparts, subconsciously or otherwise.’

It should be said, somewhere, that I also visit the more mainstream national and state parks as I bounce between oceans. It would be impossible not to visit them, sometimes, they being a source of clean bathrooms and comfortable benches and water fountains in landscapes otherwise parched. More than that, though, I enjoy visiting them. It’s a worthy system, run by enthusiastic people. I have annual passes just about everywhere I go: a better value for me than most.

But I stand out at these parks.

Traveling has instilled the sort of paranoia in me that makes others afraid- a paranoia that doesn’t ever really wane but that certainly intensifies in environments that I have been conditioned to find dangerous. National and state parks, having much in common with their rejected Wayside cousins, are enough to trigger that response. The response is enough to agitate others, an ancient raising of hackles. I find myself tailed, sometimes, by well-meaning staff. Mostly, I find myself alone.

All this to say that I am in my element when I step into ‘The Sunburn Experience’ because it is a Wayside destination and I am already waiting for the other shoe to drop when a blast of UV radiation strikes me in the face as I open the door. I recoil and swing around a corner where I find the restrooms and a water fountain.

“Sorry,” a man’s voice calls, “That’s been acting up. It’s… hold on. It’s off now.”

I pull my sleeve over my hand and reach around the corner at head-height. I am promptly high-fived by the owner of the voice.

“All clear, like I said.”

‘The Sunburn Experience’ could very well be one of the smaller state park sites, consisting mainly of a single large room with several quick exhibits. Immediately opposite the door is a counter with four hatches, each increasingly difficult to look at for all the light blazing from underneath. Other displays are less… vibrant.

“Gotcha good,” the man says.

He’s not wrong. A mirror near the glowing hatches reveals a four-inch square of raw, pink skin centered on my nose.

“What are these for if not this?” I ask, gesturing to my face.

The man presses a button on one of the hatches and it swings open again. I shield my eyes and see him hold his own hand in front of the display. He shows me his arm when it closes- tan, perhaps, but unburned.

“We’ve got a selection of sunblocks to trial over there,” he says, pointing to something that looks like a soft-serve machine, “Some sunglasses… These are just for experimenting. So, they’re for what happened to your face, only you expect it.”

“Seems dangerous.”

“Lotta lobsters walking out of here,” he shrugs, “But they know better next time.”

The man looks about the room, betraying a certain pride that makes me like him a little more. I follow as he walks to another wall.

“Over here we’ve got our timeline- folks who start with this normally don’t get caught by the box-light. That’s a fresh burn- still hot.”

The timeline consists of several human backs embedded in the display, ranging from bright red to dry and peeling. The man presses his hand into the first and we watch the shape of it slowly fade from normal, to pinkish, and finally back to crimson.

“Try it out.”

I begin to spell my name with my finger and the display shifts uncomfortably.

“Sheesh, man,” he says, “Take it easy on the interns.”

I recoil and he laughs in a way that makes it difficult to tell if he’s being serious. He leads me past the timeline, casually pulling a strip of peeled skin from the last display, and toward a glass cage, the contents of which are a relative model of the desert that surrounds us.

Inside is a single, shaved rabbit, its skin motley with tanning. Above it are a variety of filters and, above those, an impressively large, thankfully-inactive lamp.

“Seems up your alley based on your performance back there,” he says, “Dial in a pattern on the display and get to toasting.”

The man taps through several animal prints and holds down a large, red button. Blinding light fills the little cage for a second or two before he lets off. The rabbit has become faintly tiger-striped and its bowl of celery has wilted.

“Hector!” the man calls through the glass, “Looking ferocious!”

The rabbits eyes are pale white. It picks lethargically at the celery.

‘The Sunburn Experience’ has no real security to speak of, but, upon shimmying open the door in the dead of night, I do forget about the malfunctioning counter and stumble blindly through the dark for several minutes before my sight returns.

Hector is a hefty, leather lump: naturally calm or tormented past a point of traumatic serenity. I spend exactly five minutes trying to convince him to wander off into the brush before admitting to myself that I would survive in the desert longer than the broken creature at my feet. He goes back into a comfortable kennel and the kennel goes on the back of the bike, insulated against wind to the best of my ability. I’ll look up shelters when I’m back in cell range.

‘The Sunburn Experience’ burns to the ground, not so strange considering the high intensity bulbs and the faulty displays. The story is picked up in the local papers and, by then, Hector and I are miles away.

-Traveler

A thin sliver of cell service reaches me at just the right moment and, rather than risk losing it for a more convenient pullover, I balance the motorcycle on the far edge of the shoulder and wait for the map to load. ‘The Hair Dump’ is not a tourist friendly place- not hidden, exactly, but purposefully unadvertised to prevent gawkers and fetishists from hanging around the front and trying to take pictures or collecting stray hair.

I confirm where I’m headed and pocket my phone in time to see a brunette tumbleweed flop lazily down the center of the highway.

Rumor has it that bribing one’s way into ‘The Hair Dump’ isn’t particularly hard, but I think I’ll content myself with the view from the gate.

‘One assumes the government could manufacture a reasonable explanation for its federally funded collection of disposed human hair but it chooses not to. Instead, it all but refuses to acknowledge the existence of ‘The Hair Dump’ and speaks in threatening legalese to those who broadcast its location.’

A day later I stand over the bike in the parking lot of a department store, watching it shudder and choke and wondering what I could have possibly done to the thing. A man, loading groceries into his SUV, breaks away from his family and approaches, wordlessly kicking the exhaust with his boot. The pipe coughs out a baseball-sized clump of hair: jet black with blonde highlights. It expands slightly and rolls off in the breeze.

“What it is to be young,” the man chuckles, watching the thing depart.

Now, when I think of aging, I think of that little ball of hair and I wonder what wisdom the man had hoped to impart.

-traveler

Out in the far west of Minnesota, hills and forests settle to flatland and, eventually, to pavement. A mile out, the air becomes thick with the chemical smell of cracked asphalt but I recognize ‘The Lotland’ from a longer ways off, the autumn’s unseasonable warmth releasing heat shivers into the atmosphere above. A multisensory mirage of a mirage, ‘The Lotland’ doesn’t look the way it should from a distance, but it doesn’t look like anything else either.

‘The well-traveled will have heard numerous variations on the American gold paradise, the recessive specter, no doubt, of its violent colonizers (their lust for treasure, their violent means). An exhaustive study of its supposed manifestations would fill several novels, suffice to say that the great American jackpot is not a where so much as it is a will-o-wisp: shiny, ever-distant, and ultimately fatal. The truth of the matter is that humanity understood the price of gold from the days of human sacrifice- wealth arrives at the expense of others. For all our great humanitarian leaps, ‘civilization’ is really just the understanding that the requisite death need not be a spectacle.

All this to say that ‘The Lotland’ is famous only for being one of the few remaining question marks on the map. It is a paved wasteland so vast that its peculiar heat signature plays tricks with satellite imagery and so distant that no locality can be pinned with ownership. The terrain is unapologetically grim, such a scab on the earth that most life is instinctively repulsed. Those few that can’t help but pick at it are sure that a parking lot so massive must serve something equally immense at the center and they seek this thing, disappearing with such confidence that their boisterous mortality furthers the legend- a series of celebratory sending-offs and muted, off-screen deaths.’

There is an aspect of me that is drawn to these sorts of things- a curiosity that supersedes health. Luckily, I’ve survived long enough to recognize the tendency and to mitigate it. Perhaps unluckily, the mitigation has taken the form of walking up to a theoretical point-of-no-return rather than crossing it entirely and so, in approaching ‘The Lotland,’ I am constantly performing the subtle calculations of the impoverished traveler, checking and re-checking mileage and gas and water and food, considering, even, the slope leading toward my destination and how it will make coasting out impossible. All this tedious worry to avoid what is abundantly clear: the safest course of action is to avoid the wasteland entirely.

I park at the turnoff and make a few final notes. I chalk the gas gauge, erect a small flag from sticks and a bright orange cap I picked out from a gas station discount bin. I set off into ‘The Lotland’ and immediately understand why a person might lose themselves here: freedom.

The stretch of interstate previous to ‘The Lotland’ is a single straight shot, the landscape a repeating cartoon backdrop and the sky an unbroken blue. The interstate system as a whole is a series of relatively straight lines and, given a fixed destination, the choices one makes there are mostly arbitrary – there is, at most, the short way, the scenic way, and sometimes the detour. Arguably, ‘The Lotland’ presents two choices: inward or outward but, in practice, the choices are endless.

There are lines painted along the pavement of ‘The Lotland’ that present guidelines for traffic and parking, but they quickly lose meaning as I attempt to keep my exit ‘flag’ directly behind me. When the orange cap disappears in the shimmering distance, I stop for a drink of water and try to discern where the lines would have me go, finding they mean less than I had even considered. Some branch in a pattern that appears meaningful and others would guide a vehicle in endless circles. ‘Exit’ is painted on the ground in several places, each arrow pointing another direction which is true, in the sense that there must be technical exits on all sides, but dangerous in that several sides of ‘The Lotland’ must open onto fields where cars and motorcycles would struggle, further stranding the lost.

The map on my phone fails to load and the GPS struggles to make contact with its network, both situations I expected. Two old compasses twitch in the sun before agreeing on magnetic north. I mark the position of the disappeared flag and hop back on the bike. Plenty of fuel yet.

After an hour of driving in a relatively straight line I begin to notice cigarette butts on the ground and it isn’t until I stop to verify their reality that I realize how dizzy I’ve become with ‘The Lotland’s’ mirage. I stumble and stretch and close my eyes against the sun for a while. The butts are real and scattered about like frozen insects, occasionally turning over in the wind. I re-check the compasses and find that I’ve been veering east- a slight mistake that, over an hour, has probably put me a few miles off-course. I correct and remind myself to pay closer attention, staring out in all directions with my hand a visor to my forehead like a wide salute to ‘The Lotland’s’ trickery.

I find a skeleton after an hour- a skeleton car and a skeleton driver, both dead for a long time. To the extent that I allow myself to investigate I recognize that everything useful has already been taken. The last item of interest is a chalked compass on the dash that disagrees with both of mine entirely. Not a good sign. A sign so ominous, in fact, that I begin to consider turning back early and am congratulating myself on the personal growth when I notice the shadow of a structure in the man’s rearview mirror. Something is out there and it quickly overcomes my budding sense of caution.

The structure is a long way off and not at all in the direction I was planning to go. I’m sweating underneath my jacket by the time I cover the distance and confirm what I had begun to expect with a sense of both disappointment and awe:

It’s a parking structure, casting a long honey-combed shadow across ‘The Lotland’ and the top of which disappears into the wavering blue sky. I stop outside, again, to check my compasses and fuel. Rough calculations suggest that I can either delve further into the heart of ‘The Lotland’ or explore the lower levels of the structure. Attempting both would be a half-measure at best, a dangerous stretching of resources at worst.

When I lift the cracked visor of my helmet I spot movement from within the structure- cloth or tarp billows intermittently from a space ten or twelve stories above me. That more or less settles it.

I quickly find that the misleading nature of the painted lines take a dangerous form within the structure. They’re easy to ignore on flat terrain but the spiraling climb of the structure calls upon so many previously ingrained habits that I’m soon lulled into following them. The first time it happens I realize I’ve been driving between the same two levels over and over, following ‘further parking’ signs up and down needlessly.

A waste of fuel.

The second time is the first indication that the lines are random only to disguise occasional malevolence. Up until the eighth or ninth floor, the guides suggest a relatively straightforward path until the intersections become switched. Past that, the base of the structure narrows and an inner wall falls away, revealing a deep cement shaft at the center. The lines begin to divert traffic just before the proper intersection, a detour that passes between two pillars which obstruct the driver’s view to what lies beyond them. The new path leads directly into the center shaft- a swift death I avoid only for riding in the opposite lane (my attempt to break the rhythmic stupor of the place). By then, the darkness of the shaft is too deep for any of my light sources to penetrate fully, but the smell of spilt gasoline rises up from the shadows there.

I take the next several floors slowly and eventually reach the billowing tarp, finding the abandoned remains of a shelter. Another car, in better condition, looks out onto ‘The Lotland’ and somebody rests in the backseat- a body, I assume, because the doors are locked and the blanket-covered form is dusty and skeletal. It’s hard to tell from the empty cans of food and beer, from the semi-permanent tarp walls and the improvised furniture, whether this woman chose to stay or became stranded. The cardinal directions are spray-painted along the pavement and differ in their opinion of north both with my compasses and with the broken compass from the previous car.

Not a good sign.

New calculations suggest this is the end of the road for me. Assuming I coast easily down the structure and make it back to the hat/flag in something of a straight line I should have gas to get me back to the nearest station. Hopefully, by then, the mystery of ‘The Lotland’ will be distant enough that I don’t feel compelled to return.

It’s damned hot, though, so I check my watch and wait until the sun begins to set before heading out, sharing space with the woman for a while and helping myself to an ancient soda.

When I do finally roll out of the structure I see a light further into ‘The Lotland’ and this is where Shitholes saves me. I remember the will-o-wisp and keep my back to it, finding that the tempting light is as good as my makeshift flag was to start.

It represents the exact wrong direction.

-traveler