Elmer the husky and I strolled around the park on a Monday afternoon. It was cold and dry with a bit of breeze whipping through the trees.

A few minutes earlier we had stopped and I had a pleasant conversation with Perry, a homeless man in his late 60s who lives out of a kind of Conestoga wagon parked in front of an apartment building. He picks up trash all day long and I always tip him a few bucks when I see him working.

Perry was in fine spirits and he asked me my history of coming to the neighborhood. I told him about my father in assisted living. He asked how much that cost and when I shared the amount, he cursed. He admired Elmer. We said something about the park and then Elmer and I went along.

Thirty yards away a homeless woman on a bicycle was stopped in the parking lot. She had her possessions strapped across her back and the bicycle, an old mountain bike model. One of the possessions was a large metal pail.

She saw me and Elmer approaching and said hello and said what a good looking dog.

I asked her how she was doing and she said all right with a smile. I put her in her 30s or 40s. She wasn’t addled in any way.

We said goodbye and Elmer and I continued on to my car, roughly 50 yards away.

I loaded Elmer into the car and turned around to see the woman bicycling toward us, very slowly, a little ungainly. It was then I noticed she wore no hat and it was 40 degrees with colder temperatures forecast for the coming days.

Give her one of your extra stocking caps, I thought.

I called out to her, “Hey could you use a stocking cap?”

She rode up to me and stopped.

“Sure,” she said.

I dug out a real beauty—a hand knitted one, brown, green, orange, floppy, groovy, purchased from a real knitter at a craft fair over a decade ago. It was my emergency stocking cap and here was an emergency.

I gave her the cap.

“Wow, this is really nice,” she said, pulling it on, then pulling it down low. It looked good on her. Very 70s chic.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You are welcome. Be careful out there.”

She rode away, but not before making a subtle adjustment to the cap.

I felt good. It always feels good to give new purpose to an item that needs a new one and give it away to someone in need. It costs nothing.

Elmer the maniacal husky and I were returning from a madcap visit to the dog park. It was nine in the morning on a January weekday in the Rose City.

I beamed with a jolly mood. Elmer’s antics at the dog park always inspire that feeling. As does listening to tracks from James Brown’s Christmas album, which I was.

We were almost home. I was driving a sleepy two-lane avenue through my tony and leafy neighborhood.

I noticed a bicyclist pedaling toward me, about 50 yards away. Right at me, a hunched-over man zigzagging on a kid’s bike.

His hands were not on the handlebars. They were carrying a small box.

It was the unmistakable look of a homeless man recklessly riding a bicycle in defiance of basic traffic laws and common safety sense. I’d seen it a thousand times and nearly crashed into several of these wanton riders.

But I never had a man riding a bicycle without using his hands while carrying a box and coming right at me.

I slowed down. I checked the mirror behind me—two cars. No one was approaching me from the avenue’s other lane. I began formulating a plan to drive around the bicyclist.

The rider came into view. I recognized him as one of the local fentanyl miscreants. How he was still alive was impossible to imagine but I’m glad he was—he’s a member of a family somewhere in America.

At the last second before I began my swerve around the rider, swerved himself, off to a side street at breakneck speed at such an astonishing angle that I issued a profanity-laced hosanna of praise.

Mind you, he was not using his hands.

Before losing him, I saw: his left hand holding a box of Franz’s powdered donuts. His right hand held a donut and he was gobbling it down with gusto. The powder fell around him like so much so snow. He was wearing a white face with a semi smile attached to it. Donuts can do that to a man.

I laughed. How could I not? I said something to Elmer about the utter preposterous of what had just occurred. I knew for certainty the scene would work its way into a work of fiction one day.

The last nine mornings in a row, at approximately 6:30 a.m., I have seen the same blue heron standing on the same downed tree in the creek, hunting and angled toward the water in precisely the same manner.

On the fifth sighting, I was astonished. At number nine, I intuited something bordering on cosmic was going on.

Is this a message from the spirit world? Blue herons have played an interesting role in my creative life; I once taught a blue-heron themed writing workshop to students. I also had the extraordinary experience of observing a heron rookery.

I have read hundreds and hundreds of Native American tales of folklore involving animals, but have never read one where anyone or anything encounters the same being in nature nine mornings in a row.

Maybe I should write it up. If he’s there tomorrow morning and we hit ten, I will. I must.

In recent weeks, a stasis has gripped me resulting in some severe depression. It’s not permanent, but there, then gone, then back again.

I’ve still been walking the dog four or five times a day; I’ve still been writing and producing books, but everything else feels stuck in place as I dwell upon these questions:

How much longer in Portland?

Where to go after Portland?

How to live?

What to write?

Who will bother following through?

I have been writing in my journal and confiding to a friend that I had to alter my routines and see something new. Advance always.

The idea was to venture to Sauvie’s Island and run Elmer down the river beach. But every time I wanted to go, the prospect of the drive, about 20 miles, daunted and ultimately defeated me.

Then one weekday morning. The sun shined, and I was thinking about Sauvie’s Island when Elmer came up to me at the couch, and I bounded up and said, “Elmer! We’re going to Sauvie’s Island!”

And so we did, passing dozens of derelict RVs, cars, tents, tarp shanties, and wandering homeless people along the way.

We crossed the bridge and I saw Mt. St Helens, Adams, Rainier and Hood. I’d never seen them all together at the same time. Powerful.

Two hours later, I had:

Seen Sand Hill cranes for the first time, hundreds flying over rotting pumpkin patches, making their strange, wonderful sound.

Bald eagles.

A magical RV park where I want to stay and write a book.

Some of the best farmland in the world, all of it saved by Tom McCall’s land use bill, the historic one he signed into law in 1973. Without it, Sauvie’s Island would resemble Beaverton.

A freighter on the Columbia River headed to Portland that produced the largest wake from a ship I have have seen.

Run with Elmer on the beach.

Picked up a choice cut of beaverwood and stuck it in my back pocket.

Saw enough driftwood to build a magisterial fort (next visit).

Not seen a homeless person or tent or derelict RV on the island.

Got my mind right and knew I must return to Sauvie’s Island regularly before the summer/fall madness engulfs it.

A young homeless man dressed head to toe in black hunted through a bin of donated foot items in the lobby of the Milwaukie Public Library in Clackamas County, right on the edge of Portland.

He blocked my exit out into rain and temperatures in the high 30s on the last day of December. It was two or so in the afternoon.

I waited as he gripped a jar of peanut butter.

The man turned around. His face showed bruises and scratches and I recognized him as someone I had interacted with several times the past two years and once tried unsuccessfully to assist into housing. At the time he was addled or merely out of it from the deprivation that I assumed came from living outdoors. He was a skateboarder who rode all around the neighborhood with extreme abandon. I didn’t remember his name.

“Hey,” I said. “how are you?”

He looked at me but nothing of recognition registered in his face.

“I’m trying to get my SSI deposit on the first,” he said.

I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything.

“I really want to get off the streets,” he said staring right at me.

It was a call to action.

I asked him if he remembered our previous effort to get him housed.

He did not. I said I might be able to assist him if we chose Multnomah County and City of Portland’s programs because I was familiar with them, particularly the Safe Rest Village housing option.

He said he didn’t know what that was.

What ensued was a confusing five-minute conversation where he indicated he had no idea he was in Clackamas County and didn’t know anything about housing options in Portland.

I took a break from the conversation and asked him the whereabouts of his skateboard.

“I don’t have a skateboard,” he said.

He then pulled off his stocking cap to reveal a shaved head.

“Don’t you remember me, Matt” he said.

A thunderbolt struck me. He was not the skateboard kid. He was the kid from the street ministry in Oregon City where I volunteered two years ago but eventually stopped after my father went into assisted living.

I had forgotten his name. How in the world had he remembered mine?

“I’m Miguel,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, “I remember you now.”

We shook hands and it all came back to me.

During my stint volunteering at the street ministry, I worked a breakfast shift once a week. My job entailed pushing a coffee and tea cart through the dining area and then filling coffee and tea orders from homeless men and women. Some orders verged on the bizarre to say the least: Cheerios in a bowl of black coffee, no sugar, sprinkle some Lucky Charms on top. In time, I got to know people by their orders.

During my rounds, I often interacted with the men and women or eavesdropped on their conversations. Sometimes, toward the end of the shift, the place would thin out, and I would take a seat at a table with a man or woman and engage them with whatever topics came to their mind: UFOs, knives, trout, world geography, old movies, you name it. The more I engaged with these homeless people the more I learned. They all had former lives in houses and apartments and by and large, all held jobs. Then, disaster in one form or another struck, and here they were, in Oregon City, my hometown.

Serving coffee and tea is how I met Miguel and we had several lengthy conversations on whatever he felt like bringing up—usually something cosmic. He seemed a spacey young man, uneducated, smart, not (yet) under the influence of hard drugs. He always sat by himself and carried very little with him. At one point, I shared my name and he shared his. I was under the impression he was working with a social worker at the ministry, but wasn’t sure and didn’t ask about it.

And here he was, two years later, standing in front of me with a jar of peanut butter in his hand, confused, cold, still homeless, and looking a lot worse for wear.

I asked him if wanted to get into housing. He said yes. His eyes said yes.

There was no way working with the City of Portland or Multnomah County would get him housed. Miguel was of Clackamas County and had his routine set up there.

What to do? I knew nothing of shelter or housing options in Clackamas County. Why it should be any different than Multnomah and Washington Counties is stupid and inefficient. It’s all the same area with all the same problem but fiefdoms and egos have crept up, and undermine the work. Who gives a shit who gets credit!

Think Matt! I told Miguel that most of Clackamas County’s offices would be closed tomorrow. Could I drive him to the street ministry RIGHT NOW and try to see if they could get him a motel voucher, anything to get out of the cold for a few nights?

“I can’t go there except to get my SSI check,” he said.

“You got sideways with someone?” I said.

“They got every ways with me.”

I made a note to use that line in a piece of fiction.

Think Matt!

I told he would could meet him at the library at ten in the morning on January 2 and I would have a plan by then.

What plan?

If there was a sane and humane policy, I would have loaded Miguel in my car and driven him to a shelter in Clackamas or Multnomah or Washington County and then he could get off the streets IMMEDIATELY and begin making the transition into housing. No assessments or apps or web sites! He was ready! What more can you ask of a homeless man or woman. He was ready. Open the door.

Miguel agreed to my plan. I drove off and headed to a local cafe to do some writing. I couldn’t find a parking spot and circled around the block.

What the hell you are doing? A man needs help and you’re trying to find a spot to park and write some drivel?

I raced home and jumped on the computer, searching for housing resources in Clackamas County. I found a number for Coordinated Housing Access (CHA), Health, Housing and Human Services,
Clackamas County Social Services. I dialed the number expecting absolutely nothing.

A staffer picked up on the first ring!

I explained everything at breakneck speed, that I had someone who was ready to go into housing and was desperate.

The staffer said there was no place to take him in Clackamas County for immediate shelter, or so that’s what I understood. I expressed my frustration with this absurdity considering the millions upon millions of dollars being spent on the homeless in the county.

He didn’t disagree. His point was he needed to talk to Miguel himself and then they could come up with a plan.

Miguel had no phone. I asked if could have him use the library’s phone in a private area to call the staffer on January 2. I heard excitement in the staffer’s voice and he said he would email me in 15 minutes with some answers.

Fifteen minutes! Action.

Sure enough, 15 minutes later I read: Hey Matt, it was nice talking with you today! I called the Milwaukie Library, they said that they do have phone access, but for privacy’s sake it might be a good idea to call and reserve a conference room in advance, though they said they’d work with you guys.

If we can get into contact with him, we can hopefully provide more tailored assistance but that is the most general information I could find. Wishing both of you luck!

I arrived at the library at 9:45 in the morning on January 2 and sat in my car until it opened at ten.

The doors opened and I went inside the conference room to wait. I had printed out the list of services and a brief introduction to the staffer Miguel was going to call.

I waited until 10:20 and Miguel never showed.