Furniture and Annihilation

A hutch. Plush recliner. Sofa. Office chair. Ottoman.

Such are the pieces of furniture that have showed up recently in and around the homeless encampment located on a stretch of Coos Bay beach that Elmer and I traverse every morning. The collection continues to grow.

I have never seen anyone use the furniture. I have never seen anyone carrying the pieces to the encampment. I have no idea how they will be removed. Fire? King tide and storm surge? Community clean-up? Never?

The furniture angers me and I dislike feeling anything angry in connection to the homeless.

Regular readers of this newsletter know I will not truck with homeless people destroying natural areas and this encampment is well on its way to destroying an approximately three-acre wooded site adjacent to a rivulet that empties into Coos Bay. The damage: compacted soil, stripped branches for firewood, fires, garbage, creatures squashed or driven away. It infuriates me and I don’t give a damn for the jargon-laded reasons homeless advocates excuse the carnage to a watershed.

Four months ago, when I first moved to the area, this encampment did not exist. A tent every now and then, but never more than a couple days.

These new residents, and I’ve met several of them, are slightly or overtly menacing. They do strange things in the sand and mudflats with rakes and their bare hands. Some cannot speak or refuse to speak. There is the whiff of hard drug abuse and possible prostitution going on.

Should I start carrying a knife? It has occurred to me, but that feels like a surrender of some kind. What about my phone? I never carry my phone with me on my morning walks.

These walks in the early mornings with Elmer along Coos Bay have completely revitalized my mind and body and after the stasis, depression and creative drought that crept in after the death of my father and the disposition of his estate. These walks have become a physical routine, creative bonanza, and spiritual necessity.

Now they are becoming despoiled by the encampment and the habits of its residents.

In recent mornings, I’ve seen homeless people on the beach doing something inexplicable and I just turn around; I didn’t want to edge near the weirdness and start my day by detouring around a freak and then having to watch my back. And yes, I have started watching my back. So has Elmer. He exhibits a very aggressive posture when we encounter certain homeless people. He did the same in Portland.

I sense a conflict within me by writing about this. Perhaps my feelings demonstrate selfishness, privilege (a hackneyed word I absolutely loathe).

We’re talking about ruining an estuary ambiance of tranquility on my morning walks. The people doing the ruining are shattered Americans with parents, siblings and children somewhere out there. I am face to face with them every day, when they have faces.

I really don’t what to think when I see 40 brown pelicans undulating in the fog above the bay at dawn and revel in the staggering haiku beauty…

and….

then that magical moment is annihilated by something new, sick, twisted and ugly emanating from the encampment.

On the walk home all I can recall is the shit not the beauty.

How do I go about trying to rid myself of the anger at the annihilation, something that’s happening almost every morning?