Oakridge and Glide
One might have thought you wouldn't see homeless people on the various curving and forested roads leading to and from Crater Lake National Park.
And you would be wrong.
There she was, an elderly woman with sprawling hair, sitting on a sidewalk in Oakridge. She was encircled by two grocery carts full of possessions and assorted blankets and bags.
It was 9:30 in the morning. Her face looked utterly vacant.
A few blocks away, in a county park, someone had rigged up a tent/tarp shanty under some alders near a creek.
In Glide, easily the most mellifluous name of any town in Oregon (Zigzag is second), several people lived under a bridge spanning the Lower Umpqua River. They protected themselves from rain by attaching huge tarps to an abutment. I've seen the exact same set up in Jacksonville and another place in the Willamette Valley I no longer recall.
Surviving homelessness in Portland or even Gold Beach I can grasp. I've observed it.
But Oakridge and Glide? It's unfathomable.
As for the view of Crater Lake, it was shrouded in fog and smoke. Almost invisible.