A while back, an elderly man began tent camping near my domicile. I observed him for a few days and took the opportunity to meet him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He had arrived in strange fashion:\nanother elderly man, driving a beat-up muscle car from the 60s, had\ndriven him to the camp site, but abandoned him sometime in the middle\nof the night, and now he was alone and without transportation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the next few days, he \u201ccamped\u201d\nand drank malt liquor from cans, smoked from a pot pipe, listened to\na tiny transistor radio, and kept a fire going, which he regular\ndoused with lighter fluid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was all very odd. He had virtually\nno gear and I never saw him eating. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One morning before work, I had some\nextra coffee and went up to him and offered a cup. He gladly accepted\nand I brought it over. He was one the gauntest men I’d ever seen and\nhis shirtless body was covered in tattoos. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I asked what happened to his traveling\nbuddy. He told me he got \u201cinto a funk\u201d after hitting the vodka\nand drove away. The man didn’t own a phone so there was no way to\nreach his \u201cfriend.\u201d I didn’t know what to say. The man thanked me\nfor the coffee, called me \u201cbro,\u201d and offered me a hit off the\npipe. I declined and wished him well. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A day later, I came home from work and\nthe man was gone. A neighbor said he’d thrown away the tent in a\ndumpster and walked away. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Who was he? Where was he going? How\nwould he survive? Who are these people? I want to learn their\nstories. I want to help. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A while back, an elderly man began tent camping near my domicile. I observed him for a few days and took the opportunity to meet him. He had arrived in strange fashion: another elderly man, driving a beat-up muscle car from the 60s, had driven him to the camp site, but abandoned him sometime in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5327,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5326"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5329,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5326\/revisions\/5329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}