Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
through the forest on its hind legs at dusk and “screamed like a woman.” Or so said Billy
somebody, who told his friends, who were friends of mine, who told me. I never saw the
Argyle Monster myself, but it ran on its hind legs through my imaginings and colored the
dusk of this unremarkable state park a deep and thrilling sepia when I walked back to the
picnic area after fishing. It's been decades since I went there; I regret that I quit being afraid
of the Argyle Monster long ago.
More recently, as a grownup supposedly immune to phantasms, I learned from Russians
whenIwastravelinginSiberiathatsomewhereinitsremotestpartsisCoca-ColaCity(Gorod
Koka-Kola),whichwasbuiltduringtheColdWarasareproductionofanAmericancity.The
residents of Coca-Cola City speak perfect English and use American products and behave
like Americans, providing a realistic setting in which the Russian spymasters can train spe-
cial operatives who will be sent to the U.S. Coca-Cola City is alleged to be the topmost of
top-secret sites, and it is closed, of course, to all visitors. I'm not sure if that's why I never
could pin it down on the map. I suspect that it does not exist and never did—but who can
say? The rumor of it made Siberia more Siberian for me.
Youmightnotthinkthatanyhumancreation ashardyasliescouldbeindangerofdyingout,
but I'm afraid that, at least outdoors, they are. Nowadays, a good outdoor what-if story has a
muchsmallerchanceforsurvival.Someyearsago,youmayremember,observersinthedeep
woodsofeasternArkansassaidtheyhadseenanivory-billedwoodpecker,thewonderfuland
near-mythic birdthat black people called theLordGodBirdbecause ofitssoul-shivering ap-
pearance. There had been no confirmed sightings of the ivorybill in decades, and its possible
extinctionwasandisbadnews.Theobserverswhosaidtheyhadseenitweren'ttryingtode-
ceive, just being wishful, and because they recorded it with a video camera their wishfulness
was eventually dashed—close analysis of the video revealed that the bird was not an ivory-
bill.
It would have been nice to think that the bird still survived someplace far away in the
forest. But truth is always better than error, I suppose. Consider the recent case of the giant
wild hog Hogzilla. A Georgia man said he had shot it while it was running around some-
place in the woods, and he posted pictures of it online. This 8-foot-long, 800-pound animal
was as monstrous a creature as the Georgia swamps had ever seen. The man added that he
had buried the hog in a grave marked with a cross (though feral, it had been a Christian hog,
apparently), and because of the excitement stirred up on the Internet the man eventually had
to submit the corpse for examination. Through DNA testing, experts determined that it was
a mix of wild hog and domestic pig. Its size suggested it had eaten a lot of hog feed. Such
a disappointment—Hogzilla, a pen-raised fake. How much more stimulating to believe that
there are 800-pound wild hogs infesting the swamps of Georgia. One hates to think what a
radio collar and a wildlife-management team would have done to William Faulkner's bear.
