Dear Wigleaf,

Depression, California sounds like one of those places that shouldn't be real, but is. Cape Disappointment. Paris, Texas. Rough and Ready, California. Hell, Michigan. Not to be confused with Depression Canyon, Arizona, another real place. I'm bad with directions so it's hard to describe how I got here, maybe even harder to describe the best route out—a challenge made all the more difficult by the fact that while Depression, California is a real place that exists (I have seen the sun-bleached welcome sign, felt its cream-colored dirt crush under the soles of my sneakers) it does not appear to be on any current map, including those online. Perhaps there are older maps that include Depression, California on them. There is only one main street with a tackle shop for fishing the lake nearby that's dried up. A tourist shop with a tin roof, where you can pay a dollar for a flat penny, and a few more dollars for a little statue of a gold miner. Postcards, surprisingly, are only twenty-five cents apiece. You can choose from four old photographs, one is of the cacti in the surrounding desert, another is of a strange geological formation, yet another is of an abandoned silver mine, and the last one shows a solar eclipse that occurred some time in the twenties, a black orb with a heavenly halo. I have bought one of each, but who can say when I'll get around to mailing them? Worse still, I'm unsure to what extent the mail comes and goes, from Depression, California.

Yours,
Dylan