Sheltered from the Inside

It was late September, the point in the year when the warmth of the day becomes questionable, that we saw it-- stumbled across it one might say. We discovered where the homeless had reassembled after being forced off an established encampment earlier that summer. My husband and I took a walk towards downtown. We veered off the road, hand in hand, climbing up to the top of the underpass, and walked the train tracks, plank by plank with the thrill of idleness in our hearts. We were heading towards the Wild--- the sun dipping directly in front of us, with cool breezes tousling the hair-- parting from civilization.

Before us this raw landscape opened up like new territories, unconquered. Until, we were met with more than merely tossed-off trash. Ugly, but useful things gave evidence that inhabitants already homesteaded over here.

My grip on his sleeve must have tightened, because my husband in low voice (with eerie implication) said, "don't worry... they'll think we belong here."

Like on cue, one middle aged woman appeared from the right, stepping out in underclothes to hang up the wash on the line running from one tree, under the tarp of a homemade tent, which was presumably knotted to another trunk.

Glimpsing his cherub grin, she warmly smiled back at us, shyly but somehow unselfconsciously. Others soon emerged, surfacing from nowhere, bringing mysterious packs for dinner in browned paper; some guiding precious bicycles, presumably arriving from work. We nodded mutually.

It was true we belonged-- received like a part of the moving landscape, like passengers on the train that subsequently passed us to the left in parallel, heading East.

Out of ear shot we began to discourse, could we do the same? Moreover, could I?? My husband had already devoted a year of deliberate homelessness to know what it is like from the other side.

I said reflexively, I could not. I am weak. I am cold at 70 degrees, too attached to the sight of books that I may never read, and to the idea of knowing where I will lay my head down to dream, and to tending to the comfort of my loved ones.

But, I said, it may very well be that these are the Healthy. The specimens that Civilization could not entrap, whose inner code of freedom was so integral that it remains uncorrupted. They would weather the weather, and suffer the inevitable physical decline, with beauty and dignity not defined by things or appearances. It's like there's no mirror of vanitas out here.

Yet, I worried. There was something insidious in the way stuff seemed to magnet more stuff, as if there were turncoats or bigots in the midst. Those not fully committed, or individuals misunderstanding the fundamental principle at risk. The foreign element of divisiveness was present in undercurrent. Perhaps this is how it begins-- the inching toward the barracks of Civilization.