My extended water fast brings about a desire to explore oft-forgotten conservation areas, river access points, and lonely fields where I could maximize reclaimed time. I find that this excess time would otherwise be reserved for intaking food, talking about food, or preparing it—in fact, the whole of the fishbowl that I’ve so exiled myself from is adorned, top to bottom, with food.
I must satiate myself with non-food, in whatever form that assumes. That is the way on day fifteen.
Parked in the back of some carwash, I slide through the options available to me after a cursory search for “conservation area near me,” “nature trail,” and their equivalents.
“No. Been there. Done that. No…”
The curated list of prime spots for hiking only yields locations that I know like the back of my hand. Must dig deeper.
Suddenly, my eye trained on a place within the town over—a field hugged up against a perennially washed-out glen that leads to a muddy, ugly river. I input its coordinates and go.
I back out and traverse the street corridor of chain restaurants; a blight upon the terrain that was once the stomping grounds of great mountain men and larger-than-life Corps of Discovery scouts. My how we’ve fallen—overlaying Red Robin signage over the once fractal-in-its-beauty domain of the red robin who is pushed out further into the recesses of what remains. Modern man and his perversions.
I drive through a hardware store parking lot where the seldomly-used road to the field trickles like a capillary from a main artery. Only one with the proper tools may detect this hidden annex, and, if found, would you want to go there in the first place? A lifelong loiterer of liminal spaces, like me, finds peace and solace in such a place.
I park. I step out and get a look around.
The temperature has a subtle bite to it, indicating that winter is nearing its curtain call and welcoming Spring around the corner and all its goldenrod/aster splendor. In the parking lot, there’s two nearly immaculate blue plastic garbage barrels fastened with chains to trees—shoulda been my first clue that anything not fastened down is good for the taking round here.
To my right is the forest, dense with thin towering trees devoid of leaves and the occasional smattering of some forms of hardy brush, sumac, and hollies. Can’t tell you the names of the trees—not a tree guy.
In front of me is the sprawling field, appearing to have perhaps once been a bustling place for local kids to play ball, though it is curiously still maintained despite its largely abandoned animo. This is just the place for a weirdo like me to smoke a cigarette or eight and get my sensory fill by walking the field and gazing into the gallery of things that constitute the still forest.
“A fossil? No, just a rock… A mushroom? No, just a bag…” rinse and repeat. This is what I do, and I get great enjoyment out of what some would find boring. Boring is good these days.
I go about this for a time, shuffling down the field and occasionally looking up and scanning about, noticing a buildup of garbage and tarps strewn throughout the interior of the woods.
“Is this a shanty town? Tweakers gotta live somewhere I spose…”
I realized that the brutal Missouri winter likely forced these folks out to… somewhere… anywhere but here… leaving a future archeologist’s bounty of trash right here in a typical bumfuck Midwestern town. Archeology really is the study of the garbage heaps of past civilizations, if you really think about it.
The fairy glen suddenly became a goblin forest. It’s a more interesting sight, that way, if you ask me.
My younger self perhaps would walk through the remains of the makeshift village, being the curious sort that I am, but I opted to leave it unmolested, lest I intrude. I do have some common sense and integrity and prefer not to find trouble—though trouble would surely find me on this day.
“I gotta take a piss,” I state under my breath, now across the entire length of the field. I relieve myself behind a tree, and then I walk back out to the clearing, now facing the direction of my beater Honda Civic way off in the distance.
I immediately notice what looks like a pirate in rags scoping out my car, taking great care to examine the interior through each window, and doing a curious thing that I only witnessed once before in Central America—this tendency to lean upon a vehicle with which you have no ownership as if to subtly claim it—almost a pose. A distinctive pose.
I holler “Hey! Can I help you?!”
The man fails to hear me the first time, and so I pull from deep down into the place where my military training long went to die, and he definitely heard me that time. I reserve it only for select occasions and much prefer not to make use of it.
The man turns around and assumes a stance, almost an about-face, and he’s clearly petrified and unwilling to budge from that spot until I make the full awkward walk over to
him.
It was indeed quite awkward, strolling across the length of a football field with eyes locked on the guy who was caught red-handed. I foolishly left my gun at home that day, but I knew that I had to signal that I had an extra set of teeth somehow, and so I make a universal gesture in my jacket pocket—a quick but very visible gesture that gave just enough of a hint not to be a silly goose way out here.
I’m now about 10 yards from the guy. “Can I help you with something?”
The ghoulish pirate who was somehow stuck in the twenty-first century must have come out from the bog when I was temporarily unawares.
His shrunken features began to move and he uttered, “No, every thang is good. I was just lookin’ at yer book in da back seat.”
“Ah, okay?” I stated, in a halfway inquiring tone.
I now smiled. This poor disheveled soul just gave the two of us the pretense, though flimsy, by which we may both part this interaction in peace. We both understood what he was up to, but it was the perfect way out.
His eyes were like two eclipsed moons. His mannerisms and speech were clear and not atypical, but nobody was home behind those corneas. His body trembled in fear, probably associating my military mode with undercover alphabet agency whatever.
I attempted to lighten the mood with “Pretty cool place, out here.”
“I guess…” the man trailed, indicating his familiarization with this forbidden, drug-addled place.
I continued, “Probably some good mushrooms up in there.”
The man’s countenance lightened, sensing an opportunity: “Shrooms are good!”
No dice, my guy. No blastoff tonight. I’m one of them teetotalling culinary mushroom types and long since retired my psychonautical ways. We are worlds apart, though I sense some kindred spirit in you right off the bat.
At this point, I wanted to land this conversation to a place where the two of us, who clearly want nothing to do with each other, may break and move on with our respective lives.
“So, you mentioned the book in the backseat. My buddy James LaFond wrote it. He’s one of a dying breed of traveling hobo, jumpin’ on trains and shit. Want me to show you?”
The man feigned an interest and mumbled a few affirmatives and then responded: “No thanks. Gotta photo of it, and I will look it up. What’s his name again? James LaFond?”
I concurred, and we exchanged a few other pleasantries as a means of gauging the others’ motives. After a time, I wiggled out of the already sunseted exchange back to my car without taking my eyes off him.
Delt with many a tweaker in my time and found myself in unscrupulous places in my youth. They are inherently cowardly, but tricky like coyotes—they’ll eat your chickens the very moment that you take your eye off them or, in my case, take a pee.
I pulled out of there and rendered a courtesy wave at the black-clad stranger and got the hell out of there. He stood at that same spot the entire time like some phantom apparition, lost and needing a mother and a prayer.
Somewhere down the road I took a glance at the back seat. There’s my daughter’s knitting supplies and yarn, a girl’s hairbrush, and other girly odds and ends. Dude must have been mighty confused to see a giant of a man come out of the woods and claim that tiny girly clown car, ha!
On top of it all was a large tome, and on the cover, it read:
“Ghosts of The Sunset World, by James LaFond”
I chuckled. I knew that James’s Sunset Saga had an energy about it, but this was out of hand!
James, you might have just gained another weirdo reader, you demented crackpot!
T—B Wright (2.26.2026)
