It’s a Sunday morning, early. The sun is out. I just bicycled past a man standing outside the van he’s living in, yell, “Freedom! Freedom!” He was surrounded by empty bottles of German beer.

I’m sitting on metal bleachers facing the third base line of a softball field. To my right, rests a homeless encampment. The current scorecard is: eight trailers or RVs, one tent, one tarp, four vans, five or six other vehicles, and five or six hauling contraptions full of shit. I use the word shit because there is no other word that so accurately describes what is stuffed in these haulers.

These bleachers are my preferred vantage point to observe the encampment and appear as if I am not observing. All I have to do is crane my neck a bit to the right, and watch life unfold or not unfold. Usually it’s the latter.

A man emerges from one of the trailers with a leashed brown dog. Next to his trailer is parked a newer, sleek, spotless, black sedan.

Is it wrong for me to sit in these bleachers, in quasi stealth, and observe this encampment, document and synthesize my observations? That I am sitting on bleachers constructed for the purpose of seating spectators to watch a game feels somewhat ironical, But then again, maybe the bleachers have discovered new purpose by seating spectators for the ongoing unraveling of American life.

It dawns on me that if I want a better view, I could get off my ass and move the bleachers to face the encampment and thus dispense with the sly peeks and glimpses, the actions of a journalistic coward, I think, but perhaps not a novelist.

I consider doing that, but look down and see the bleachers are bolted to a concrete slab.

A man covered in grime emerges from a van and heads my way. He calls out to a friend, something I can’t catch, but I think it’s call to join him. The man angles his way through a dugout onto the diamond and toward me. I watch him and he watches me with my pen and notebook. I can tell he’s checking me out. Writing in public unnerves a lot of people these days. If he asks me what I’m writing, I’ll say a poem. If he asks me about what, I’ll say bleachers. If he asks me to read it, I’ll hand it over and not worry, because nobody can read my handwriting, not even me.

I say hello and he says hello. He slides past me on his way across a field where geese are grazing.

The man with the dog returns and the dog jumps into the trailer. The man pops the trunk on his sedan and brings out a gas can. He carries it to a generator and fills the generator. He cranks it up. Power!

It occurs to me that I could bring a date here. Maybe a poet or musician, and we could observe and analyze together and maybe produce something interesting as a result. Shallow? Pretentious? Phony? Hey, at least I’m here, looking, thinking, wondering.

A park employee limes a baseball field to my left. A jogger jogs by with her dog. A man plays fetch with his two dogs.

I look at the large mounds of bark dust and chips near the encampment, recycled from fallen and pruned trees and branches, buzzed through grinding metal for order, discipline and utility. Is that a metaphor for what’s going to happen to the residents of the encampment? They’ve fallen or been pruned and need to get chopped and chipped up so they can get the hell out of the way and be put to productive use as mulch around trees and better footing for the pedestrian path.

The wooden mulch might enrich the landscape, and definitely decorate it. The potential for human mulch? Not so much. I suspect this mulch, a unique home-grown American mulch, may better serve as a warning for the sluggards, the non conformists, the apostates, the idle. Work! The chipper is coming for you. Shit, it’s already spit most of you clean through! Doesn’t it feel good being a warning? How do you dig being the decoration for the debasing party that is degrading capitalism? How do you like being the subject of a writer sitting on a bleacher taking all your degradation in like he’s watching a softball game?

What the fuck am I doing here at 7 in the morning while others prepare to attend church, where after the service, the congregation will gather in the basement and feast upon the next generation of Christian Jello salads—sliced organic persimmons instead of shredded canned carrots? Yeah, what am doing here?

What exactly were the salad days of America? What does that phrase even mean?

I walked the neighbor’s dog in the morning. We took our usual route through a big park with athletic fields, trees, a creek, homeless encampment and a man-made mini lake that long ago used to host the Rose Festival milk carton races, an event and a Portland that today seem like from prehistoric times.

As usual, a man was practicing his fly fishing casts from the lake. He’s there every day. Ducks floated here and there and paid him no attention.

I approached a bench that rested at the edge of the lake. Behind, it flowed the creek. All and all, a superb bench in a superb spot.

It was the same bench where I have seen an elderly black homeless man sleeping in the mornings. He was not asleep this morning. He was reading a book and drinking a tall coffee.

The dog and I stopped near him. I asked what he was reading. He smiled and showed me the cover and said it was a book about doctors. I noticed he had a pen in hand and was obviously annotating the book.

It is quite a sight to see a homeless man reading and annotating a book about doctors while sitting on a bench in such a bucolic setting. It was yet another one of those jarring juxtapositions that I seem to encounter on a daily basis and can make absolutely no sense of.

He was a fine looking, man, short hair, trimmed gray beard. He wore clean clothes His red sleeping bag was rolled up. His red rolling luggage kit rested upright near him. That was it for his possessions.

I asked him if had somewhere to cool off later. He asked me how hot it was supposed to get today. I told him 100 plus degrees. He said he’d find shade in the trees and pointed toward a grove of Douglass firs.

I remarked he traveled light. He said that was the way to live. I agreed. I had no money or book or water to give him. I was woefully unprepared to assist a homeless person when opportunity struck and I guarantee that won’t happen again and so should everyone reading this.

As we conversed, I was struck by his highly articulated speech and deliberate manner of talking. It occurred to me that he might have been some sort of professional in a former life. Or maybe not, but he radiated intelligence and there was certainly nothing deranged or addled in his face.

I told him to take care. He told me the streets would take care of him. I wasn’t sure about that, but I didn’t say anything. He did have the park and the lake and trees and ducks, though.

Later that day, or tomorrow morning, I would go looking for him and check on his status.

And yes, he would be getting one of my books. He was a reader after all!

Mark the Book Chat Man was stationed at his usual literary review spot—the sidewalk near the convenience store.

But today he wasn’t reading or drinking or smoking or going to stop reading, drinking or smoking to discuss books with me. He had a woman with him sitting on the sidewalk! They were holding hands! She was younger, vaguely Asian, a little squirrelly. She appeared drunk or high.

I crossed the street to say hello to Mark. He saw me and waved me over. I asked what he was reading and he dipped into his backpack and pulled out a book.

“It’s called The Sheltering Sky,” he said.

I told him I’d read it, probably 30 years ago. It was written by Paul Bowles and the novel is a modern classic and cult book.

His girlfriend said something unintelligible. He didn’t introduce me but mentioned to her that I was the Author. I told him when he’d finished reading the novel that I’d loved to discuss it with him. He said it might take him a while, but he’d up for it.

I knew I was. Mark was probably the only homeless man in America reading The Sheltering Sky on a sidewalk or in a tent or RV or plywood shanty or official shelter, and I also knew that his reading this particular novel was a partially cosmic intersection with my writing and thinking about the homeless issue. How did I know that? I just did.

As I walked, I raked through my mind to recall the novel. I did remember Debra Winger was in the movie. Or was she?

It takes place in Morocco or somewhere else in North Africa, post WW I or II and a married American couple goes on some kind trip, a caravan, and they get kidnapped or something, the man gets castrated and left behind and joins a circus of some kind, and the woman becomes a piece of property to a nomadic tribal chieftain. Or was that one of Bowles’ short stories, which I also read and marveled at because of their shattering bleakness and bizarre settings?

I could be totally wrong on the summary of the novel. I could Google it but I wanted to reread the novel before Googling it. I know it somehow will connect to this new American Diaspora I have been writing about. I don’t know how, but I sense it does.

We said our goodbyes and I walked away to go purchase the book from the local bookstore.

Shattering bleakness and bizarre settings. That sounded a lot like the homeless encampments, although both occurred in America, not far from my front door, not North Africa or Central America.

He’s bicycling up Cape Sebastian on a kid’s bike loaded up with so much gear he sometimes coasts backward.

Shaggy beard, creased face, tan to the point of darkness, he’s close to 70.

Fog enshrouds his upward ride, but once he reaches the top, sunshine.

How did he get here? He once rode a kid’s bike for fun, now he’s riding one for survival. There weren’t men in my youth riding kid bikes like this; now I see it all the time, on Highway 101, on Powell Boulevard. In Sellwood, in Elkton. Why?

I slow down to watch him pedal. Some optimistic soul music from the 70s plays on CD. Ohhhh child, things are going to get much brighter…

Are they 50 years later?

I wonder what will happen when the man makes it to the top of Cape Sebastian. The descent to the ocean is a good two miles and he could hit 40 miles an hour if the bike doesn’t tear apart. What will he think when he rounds that turn out of the trees and sees the ocean and the sun blasts his face? Will he smile? Will he think the view beautiful? Will he nod? Will he reflect? Do men like this have this luxury? He’s got miles to go before he sleeps, and has no place to sleep except off the shoulder in a hidey hole of brush.

But when he does sleep, he might hear that old sound of the ocean, the rolling sound that has rolled long before human beings and will roll long after we are gone.

I drove a long way to a place that helped save my life, a disheveled RV Park that rests within ear shot of the ocean and named after a dead Indian tribe.

In 2016 I found it by sheer chance, while I had lit out for the unknown territory after my life blew up. I somehow found this place, met Earl and Carolyn, Wendy and Kevin, Gary and Linda, the Sea Star, Turkey’s, secret beaches, Gold Beach Books, the Rogue River, the residents of the RV park, and began to rebuild an identity and forge a new sense of purpose. Sometimes can’t even believed it happened. Had it not, well, I probably wouldn’t be around. I met new people who had an interest in my rehabilitation, while people I thought were my friends did not care. Funny how crisis brings that out.

I rallied here. I wrote well. I amassed the greatest collection of beaverwood in the history of the world. I built 500 driftwood forts. I became the Shiner Kid on a construction site. I planted thousands of trees in a wrecked watershed. I took magic mushrooms for the first time and communed with chipmunks. I took my fiction in an entirely new direction. I took one of the great loves of my life on a trip along the Elk River. I found an interesting and unique voice for my Oregon writing. I also started a podcast and explored that creative format.

All of that was ending when my stepmother died and duty called me to take care of my father. I answered that call.

So I came here for one last check in, to say thanks, to meditate on my time here. I know a book of some kind is emerging from my experience on the Southern Oregon Coast, and it will somehow merge with my new experience in Portland with the homeless community. I was thinking about that on the drive down from Portland, when I was watching elk, and meandering in the fog of Pistol River. I have no idea when I will start that book.

I also have no idea if I will ever return to the park. It seems that time is truly over.