portland2

May 14, 2021

Bicycling Through Homelessness (Part 2)

I bicycled approximately 30 miles round trip on what is officially known as the Springwater Corridor Trail and during my journey and encountered approximately 250 tents, structures, hovels, shelters, and other oddball domiciles. During the ride I saw an estimated 50-75 people outside these installations and several more moving inside.

The pedestrians, bicyclists and joggers were apparently there for fitness and recreation. I wasn’t. What was I there for?

The bicycle/pedestrian trail I traversed during my ride parallels a salmon bearing stream that has been extensively restored in recent years to improve salmon habitat. So as I rode and noticed such restoration, it dawned on me I was also riding through human decay where little, if any, restoration is happening.

I rode by a Latina woman sitting on the ground and when she saw my old school, Rasta-colored bicycle she said, smiling, “I love your bike. It’s pretty cool for a white guy.”

Upon hearing this, I laughed aloud and slapped my thigh. “Thank you,” I said.

She looked back at me and smiled wider.

One round dwelling was encircled with wood and the entrance was framed with giant sticks of beaverwood doubtless harvested from the nearby creek. I guess there is another beaverwood nut in Portland besides me. I’d like to talk to him or her about their obsession.

I saw an obese shirtless man flat on his back attended by medics with a could of Sheriff’s deputies standing around in body armor. The man looked dead, although I never seen a dead man.

Is there another bicycle/pedestrian trail in Portland or Oregon or all of America for that matter where a person can ride or jog or walk right though hundreds of homeless encampments a few feet away and see these homeless people, hear them, interact with them if so desired?

I never saw another bicyclist or jogger or walker interact with the homeless people along the trail, although I did see many homeless people try to interact with non-homeless people. All of what I was heard was friendly. Of course it was a nice day. A couple years ago, a homeless man along this trail was feigning attacks on pedestrians and cyclists with a machete. Or they might have been real. There are many people who refuse to use this trail because of a perceived danger.

Support Meditations Blog

The Old Crow

Book Club

$11.99 + $3 Shipping

In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

$22.99 + $3 Shipping

Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.