Randonauting pt 1

I think if you’ve been on the creepy internet, you’ve probably heard of this app. Essentially, it generates random points within a radius that you specify (though that seems a simplification, necessary not to get bogged into the details here). The app says you should “set an intention” for what you want to see and experience on the way to this point. New age nonsense language aside, I’ve recently moved to a city from the middle of nowhere. When living in the middle of nowhere, it’s easy to find random points of interest and “power spots” at which to do various magical acts. In a city, I find, this is not quite as simple a recipe, and with people around almost always, much harder to do inconspicuously. In the country, you can arrive at a random crossroads and not see anyone on your entire visit. In a city, you’re self-conscious constantly.

Still, a sorceress has to do what she has to do. For the first few months here I spent my time establishing my home base in my apartment. I learned that the backyard of this house is full of wisteria and rabbits. I also learned the entire property is infested with copperheads. A deer and her baby frequent the place in the mornings. The house spirits were unsurprised by me, and amiable as most are. So, after a few months, it seemed past time to explore, but the self-conscious part of the brain overrode furiously. I’d been pondering how to explore at random when a post about this Radonautica app crossed my feeds.

Of course, it was presented in a very creepypasta way. Evidently someone “intending” the keyword “travel” found a body…in a suitcase. The very stuff of internet urban legend, this! In any case, it seemed a very literal answer to the problem I’d been trying to solve, and so I resolved to use the thing. After all, in theory, this is an extremely magically useful little thing — attending to points outside of one’s typical routes and routines is usually where there is something powerful to be found. The obvious need for edgelords to edgelord notwithstanding, this seemed like fun.

For the first journey, I delayed for quite some time, with what seemed like tropical storm weather rolling in and knowing that I hadn’t walked this city much yet. Originally intended to go Saturday, but time got away from me and so promised myself that I’d go Sunday morning.

I drove to grab a coffee up the road and originally meant to set out from the coffee shop, however, the man there yelled at me because I guess I didn’t do the line right so I decided just to set off from home. The vibe, if you will, was simply not correct.

The intention for this first journey was “where local land spirits gather”, which seems a good enough move for someone who has just moved in and finished establishing a home base. I set the radius for about a mile — just under, technically. It gave me a point along a road I normally drive on, on the side with no sidewalk. The point was listed as a “void” spot. I don’t really know what these point types mean, but my understanding is that this indicates a point at which there was a pattern of a few randomly generated points. This made about as much sense to me as it could, considering that, in my experience, spirits in places where few people are paying attention to their interactions with the liminal tend to avoid spots where many oblivious people gather.

So, armed with headphones, cigarettes, and my phone, I popped on a playlist and got to walking. The point, because the radius I’d specified was rather small, was not at all a bad walk from my house. I walked up a side road, and onto a busy avenue, where I crossed at the crosswalk. There was still a sidewalk here for this part — a very wide paved path, which was lined with both kudzu and wildflowers. It was also lined with spraypainted marks indicating buried cables and the continued refrain there was “LOCATE” which I thought was mildly hilarious, but obviously not unusual in any way.

As I approached the part of the journey where there would be no more sidewalk, something in the woods along the right side of the path caught my eye. I stopped and peered past the chain link fence and realized it was a deer. Probably, I realized as I studied her, the same deer that visits my backyard regularly, though where her baby was hiding I couldn’t tell. I waved hello in the way that you greet a new acquaintance who you’re more than excited to make a friend out of, and she regarded me only a moment before leaning down to munch on some of the ground cover. Excellent start, I thought. I kept walking.

I turned the corner. At this point, I could not quite recall where there was actually a sidewalk on this side of the street and was secretly holding out some hope that I might have just been mistaken. I wasn’t, though, and the ground was wet and soft and full of fire ant landmines. The self-consciousness set in again, as I realized that the cars passing me were looking at me, or rather their drivers were. To my right, there was an entrance to a small college campus, and I briefly thought that this might be the best way to go, but wary of trespassing in full view of yuppies (it’s that kind of neighborhood), continued down the sidewalk-less stretch.

The app, when you press the “go” button, begins counting how much time you took to get to a point. It also, I would shortly learn, began beeping when you approached the radius around the point specified. This put a damper on the playlist I was listening to, but it is cool that it lets you know when you’re getting close. The first thing I noticed when it started to beep was a tree stump, also to the right of me, on which was growing a single mushroom, black and decaying, and on which was placed (carefully, in the center) a golf ball. The point itself was further to my right, and in the woods, I veered in that direction but quickly realized that the chainlink fence ran right around the college completely. Meaning that I would not be able to get to the center of the radius picked out for me. Instead, I walked along a little more, until I was about parallel with that point.

A ditch, or what was probably more properly a very tiny creek, wound its way away to my right, with the road on the left. Possibly due to erosion, or also possibly just due to how the fence had been placed, the chainlink part of the fence was completely gone, and the small creek rand underneath what would have been the top bar of the fence. This, however, was absolutely crusted with kudzu, creating a kind of invasive green bridge over the creek. A pipe ran across the creek as well, and nearer to the water, some red flowers and blue berries were blooming.

Curious, I peeked around the side of the brush that was growing around the creek ditch and realized that, if I wanted to, I very likely could have walked through to go into the college campus. Thistle bloomed there, shooting up amongst the kudzu crust and the pokeberry. Could I walk through? I would be knee-deep in kudzu if I did — the entire thing was so thick that I couldn’t even see the ground at all, so I was completely unsure where the bank of the ditch began. It looked like a trick place, a fairy place.

More logically, I realized I should have entered the college campus, and approached more from the west side, where there was more likely to be a trail to follow. Still, this place, with water, flowers, and a bridge made of tenacious greens, seemed as likely a spot for local spirits to gather as anything.

The app allows you to bookmark and label places, so, I thought, I might as well return from the other direction at a later date, rather than risk falling into a two-inch creek and being smothered by kudzu. I marked the spot and turned around. Upon doing so, I realized a woman walking her dog on the other side of the street was looking at me strangely — in all honesty, she had no right to, I might as well have been just taking a peek at an interesting flower. I intentionally ignored the look and walked back up the way I came.

At that point, my shuffled songs started playing One Hit, one of my favorite songs by The Knife, and the kind of song I absolutely cannot resist dancing to. So I did, the whole way back to the sidewalk, snapping, skipping, spinning, around the fire ant landmines and the soggy spots, and no doubt with onlookers laughing at the weirdo in the green sweater, with the green circle sunglasses and the mostly drunk iced coffee gallivanting along where the sidewalk doesn’t go.

I did it the whole way home, catching stares from bicyclists, joggers, a bus driver taking a break, and possibly even a few neighbors I couldn’t even see. It’s too crowded to be self-conscious in a city forever, I realized, and anyway, the fairies are meeting right alongside the road where nobody ever walks, and if they don’t give a shit why should I?