The Midwest Passage Part I: 610 miles logged.
I pulled into the West Branch Campground under a pasty autumn sky that was dimming fast. I had spent the whole day driving I-80 from the city, through Jersey and Pennsylvania and finally, across the border into Ohio. The campground was in the town of Ravenna, just east of Akron. There are perhaps 200 sites in the park, set up alongside a good-sized lake. To get there, I had to drive about five miles off the intestate to turn onto an entrance road that led down to the main camping area.
With Halloween approaching in about three weeks, the park rangers seemed to have enjoyed themselves decorating the roadside. Here was a tree filled with mangled scarecrows. Spider webs had been hung out of the tree branches, orange inflatable pumpkins glowed along the roadside. The Styrofoam tombstones served to remind we travelers that sometimes death is riding next to us in the left-hand lane, veering in our direction as he types out a text message and eats a sloppy sandwich with the other hand.
The road went down for about a mile and a half or so before it arrived at the check in station.
“Are you the one who called in a while ago?” the ranger asked.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“I didn’t think it would take you that long to get here from Penn.”
“I, uh, overshot the exit—ended up getting a little lost.”
She gave me a map of the grounds so that I could go find a tent site that I liked.
“Say,” I asked, vaguely curious, “What are you guys doing with all the Halloween stuff up? Is there a haunted hayride here or something?”
“Yes,” she said, “But we don’t start those until Friday.”
I went and found a good enough looking spot to tent and then wandered back to the station to pay the $22.00 tenting fee.
Some trail maps on the wall caught my eye. Though it was getting dark fast, I thought that I might be inclined to try a run. The ranger recommended that I try the horseback trails, which are flat and smooth going. This sounded good because it meant I wouldn’t be as likely to trip and break myself if I couldn’t see where the hell I was going.
After I had set up camp, I decided that I should probably stick to the entrance road because the light had almost entirely left. I grabbed a headlamp out of my car and headed off. The moonlight shone down through the clouds, casting its witchy illumination upon the landscape. Fall looked like it had just got started here. Most of the trees still had their leaves, while the crickets chirped in the woods. The warm, humid air reminded me of the end of summer around late August.
But there was a creepy undercurrent as well. A steady mist fell from the sky, clung to my skin. It drifted in ghastly whirls across my headlamp beam. Then there were the scarecrows, hanging out, being dead in the branches up above.
It was pleased at the creepiness of it, glad to be experiencing something different from the earlier monotony of drifting from rest stop to rest stop. Never mind that tomorrow I would be back to doing exactly that.
In comparison to driving, running makes a place seem far more real to me. It covers more ground than walking, but unlike travel in a vehicle, it connects the perception of distance with real effort. Outside the car I can be aware of many things that I would have overlooked otherwise—sensations like the suspicion that there might be something somewhere out in the darkness. Watching.
But I did not turn back to the well-lit campsite. Instead, I went turned off down the horse trail, where they would be holding the haunted hayride. I didn’t even need the headlamp, with the bright sky illuminating the path. The surface was gravel and free of stones or roots that I might trip over. I did however splash my way into the odd puddle.
Beside the sounds of nature, I could hear some cars going down the highway nearby, as well as somebody blowing stuff up across the lake with perhaps the world’s biggest cache of illegal fireworks. A dull red glow lit the sky from the direction of Akron. As I ran out, the highway noise faded, but the glow endured. A cluster of swamp snags looked properly menacing against the hellish atmosphere.
Suddenly, I became aware of a white light filtering through the woods—headed in my direction. A dull rumble was on the air, growing louder as it approached. It was a freight engine, moving westward down the tracks. The shadowy bulk of the train ran alongside me on the other side of some trees, pushing toward Chicago in the night. For about five minutes, the thunder of the engine and the wheels drowned out my footfalls and all else. The railcars screeched and groaned as they went along, making their way like some procession of the damned.
After the train, I kept going for perhaps ten more minutes until I arrived at a cul de sac in an open field. It seemed like as good a place as any to turn around. Approaching the road again, I saw an owl swoop down off its branch. The shadow whirled away into the night to look for whatever helpless animals it could devour.
I had thought that when I got back to the road I would simply head back to the campsite where I would jimmy open a can of beans open for my dinner. When I returned to the pavement though, I was far too wired. It was the adrenaline of running at night, the adventure of starting west. Instead of going back, I turned right, determined to explore the park roads until I was satisfied. It took me quite some time.
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