The exit sign for route AB is not new. Ive driven past it a hundred times without looking at it because there was no reason to look at it, its a green sign with white letters, that is the entire category of object it belongs to, until Tuesday when I actually looked at it and realized something. Its the same exit. Not a similar exit, not an exit like it. The same one. The white truck took this ramp back in March, I have the timestamps, the second route pass is still up if anyone wants to check it against this, I keep the dates so I dont have to keep retyping them from memory every time something else lines up with something else.

Two letters. AB. Somebody in a district office picked those letters for a designation decades before I was ever going to be driving past it and I understand that, Im not saying the department of transportation knew my name, Im saying a designation gets picked once and then it sits there doing its job for fifty years without anybody re-picking it, and a thing that sits still that long becomes load bearing whether anyone meant it to or not. AB. Alpha bravo if you want to be formal about it and I dont, formal is for people who havent been paying attention this long.

Behind the guardrail theres a fenced hill. Chain link, the kind with the green privacy slats half rotted out of it so you can still see through in patches, and under the fence the grass is mowed in RINGS, not rows, rings, somebody drives that mower in circles around whatever is actually under there instead of back and forth like every other marked easement on that road for six miles either direction, I checked, I drove it both ways to check. Some guy emailed me last year asking if I chase crop circles. Actual crop circles. Aliens. Like Im standing in a field at 3am with a plank and a length of rope. I do not do that and I have never done that, I document what is already sitting there in daylight, I dont manufacture the pattern and Im not interested in the ones some bored teenager flattened into somebodys wheat in 1998, that email is still sitting in my inbox unanswered and its going to stay that way. I dont know what the hill covers. I know the grass grows in rings and I know its directly behind the exit the truck used and Im not required to know both of those things mean something before I write them down.

Thats three markers on one ramp if the truck pages count for anything, and I think they count for something. Im going back through that exit again this week, same time, and Im going to get closer to the fence this time, I didnt get close enough Tuesday, I know I didnt, I was still driving.

UPDATE 9/6:

Went back. Not this week like I said up there, that was Tuesday's plan and Tuesday's plan didn't survive Tuesday, I went last night instead, after dark, because the daylight version of me kept finding a reason to keep driving past the shoulder instead of stopping on it.

I got closer. not close, closer, theres a difference and Im not pretending Ive closed it yet. Pulled onto the gravel past the guardrail, hazards on, for maybe ninety seconds before a truck came up behind me too fast and I had to pull back onto the ramp. ninety seconds, I timed it off my phone after because I didnt trust my own count in the moment. In ninety seconds the camera couldnt hold an exposure long enough for the grass at that distance in that dark, everything under the fence line just went to black... which is its own kind of answer honestly. But above the fence, above where the rings are, theres a treeline I never once looked at in March because who looks up at a treeline doing sixty. it doesnt read as trees first. it reads as one shape, one solid mass against the glow off the highway lights, and only after you stare does it split back into branches, like your eyes have to be told twice its trees and not something holding still over the hill.

Hazards remind me of my fathers truck, the amber ones that stuck half the time, nothing to do with any of this, putting it down anyway because it came up. anyway. The white truck took that ramp in march, I already have the pages up top, the second pass is still there if you want the dates again, Im not retyping march a third time this year. Fence has been ringed since at least march. Now theres a canopy over the ring Im only noticing in september, identicle rings, different season, same grass. Which means either the trees have always looked like that and I never once looked up, or somebody let that canopy grow in on purpose to cover the hill from above the same way the mowing pattern covers it from the ground. Two ways to hide the same hill I guess, one from the road and maybe one from whatever flies over it, I dont know how else to put it and Im not going to dress it up cleaner than that. Keeps reminding me of the building with the two sightlines, not the same operation, Im not saying that, Im saying I now know two places built to be watched from more than one angle at once and I only found the second one by accident.

Ninety seconds isnt enough, not for what Im actually trying to get, so next time Im bringing the longer lens and Im not doing the hazards again. parking further up. walking back instead.

UPDATE 9/18:

Went back through the folder again tonight, not looking for anything new, just cleaning up the crop on the ramp sign because the wide version has too much sky in it and not enough sign, and thats when I actually looked at the panel instead of the letters. The AB panel sits inside the green like a patch. Ladue Rd underneath is cut into the sheeting itself, same reflective grain as the border, one piece, thats how these things get made, I looked it up. The panel is not that. The panel has an edge you can see with the room light off a laptop screen at midnight, a hairline, slightly proud of the surface, like something got measured and set into a hole that was already cut for it before I ever drove past it.

My mother used to cut coupons out with a hairline that clean, sunday paper, same table every week, none of this. anyway. Point is somebody swapped that panel in after the sign went up, and a sign that gets its designation changed after manufacture is not sequential anything, its assigned twice, first by whoever built it and then by whoever decided AB needed to go there instead, and thats the same conversation I already had on the phone about the camera numbers, two hundred fifty seven, two hundred seventy seven, you dont pick it, they pick it, except now Ive got a panel that says somebody picked it twice.

Havent driven back out to check the bolt pattern in person yet. dont have the right lens with me even if I did, its still in the bag by the door where I left it last week and I keep meaning to move it to the truck and keep not doing it.

UPDATE 9/25:

Moved the lens to the truck. actually did it this time, threw the bag on the passenger seat this morning so I wouldnt have the excuse anymore, and drove back out after work while there was still enough light to see the bolt heads without needing the flash for once. Parked past the shoulder same as before, no hazards, walked back instead like Ive been telling myself Id do since the 18th, and got close enough this time to actually count them.

Four bolt holes in the plate. Not four bolts. three bolts and one hole with nothing in it, clean, no rust ring around it, no stripped thread hanging out the back, like it was never filled or like it was filled once and somebody took the trouble to clean the hole out after, and I dont know which of those is worse so Im not picking one yet. counted it twice standing there because I didnt trust the first count with the sun going down behind me the way it was, three and one, three and one, same both times. sun was doing that orange thing it does in September where everything looks like its already on fire a little before it actually is, my mother used to say the same thing about the light back home in October, nothing to do with any of this. anyway. The panel itself still sits proud of the sign same as I said on the 18th, hairline edge, I checked that in person this time instead of off a laptop screen at midnight, its really cut into a hole that was already there, Im not imagining that part either.

A county truck came up the shoulder while I was still crouched at the base of the sign, no lights running, and I dont know if they were headed for the sign or just using the same shoulder I was already parked on, but I didnt stick around to find out which, I was back in my own truck before they would have had a reason to slow down for me. Same as the camera numbers, two fifty seven, two seventy seven, somebody assigns the number once and somebody else can apparently come back later and pull a bolt out of it, and Im starting to think the panel and the missing bolt are two separate visits by two separate people and neither one of them cleared it with the other first.

Didnt get the photo. lens was in my hand, not up, by the time the truck passed, and I wasnt setting up a shot with a county truck thirty feet behind me. next time. bag stays in the truck now, at least I got that much done.