Sunday Morning (Part 3)
What I am about to describe is not solely the recollection of my first glance over the wall. That would have proved impossible because what I saw so shocked and angered me that I wasn't able to accurately convey the horror with one unexpected brief visit that left me dazed, almost punch drunk.
Thus, in the immediate aftermath, I returned on almost daily for several weeks to observe and document the carnage.
No, my anger did not dissipate with subsequent visits. In fact, it ratcheted up.
What I saw over the wall, some 40-60 feet below: an 80-yard wide riparian area along a 100-yard long curving stretch of a rushing and rippling Johnson Creek surrounded by roadways and endless traffic.
It was a tiny pocket, a fish bowl, a live action diorama of nature in the big city, a kind of oasis for wildlife in a desert of concrete.
And it was utterly destroyed by a homeless encampment of an estimated ten people situated on both sides of the creek. The destruction was complete but ongoing because the encampment was active as evidenced by two people and a dog milling around.
I've walked along many destroyed Oregon creeks in my lifetime where clearcuts were the evil culprits, but this somehow rated worst in my mind, much worse. At least clearcuts left mandatory buffer zones and then the loggers and machinery left the scene of the crime. Haphazard healing then commenced.
Not here. And yes, what humans were perpetrating against this short length of a salmon-bearing stream in the process of being restored constituted a crime, murder.
I didn't care if there was someone in this encampment who played a harp or was reading the collected works of Jules Verne. I didn't give a shit why they ended up in squalor down by the creek. I wanted them out!
Why do I care so much less if a homeless encampment pollutes an urban landscape such as a sidewalk in front of a fancy hotel or a median of an Interstate Highway rather than inflicting trauma (often fatal) upon habitats in nature such as riparian areas, wetlands and forests, which homeless people are doing all around Oregon. I've seen it with my own eyes. I've walked through the trauma. This type of affront against nature disgusts me. It's on par with the amorality of willful and lucrative corporate destruction, just on a microscopic level but equally as willful, but without profit motive, and yet possibly more vile.
It makes me want to kick someone's ass and that's never a good way to feel.
And here I was looking at this affront again, and it was the worst I'd ever seen.
Trash strewn everywhere. Trash floating down the creek. Trash hung up in the branches and brambles. Mattresses in the mud. Ropes in the trees with drying clothes. Shopping carts. Tarps and canopies over tents. Multiple VCR players. Bicycle parts. Buckets and chairs. Baby strollers. Carpets and pallets. Barbecues. Cardboard. Propane tanks. Gas cans. Horrible erosion on one stream bank and compaction of soil higher up. The nearest portable toilet was a tough climb over the wall and 30 stairs up and out of the hellhole and another 100 yards away, so you get the picture where all their shit was going.
I also saw what struck me as a rag tag military field kitchen near a battlefield, and indeed, this was a battlefield of some kind. Or maybe the people living here were refugees of a great war.
Whatever it was, when you look at this scene, you will be provoked.
To think that any professional or amateur advocate on behalf of the homeless could advocate for this encampment to remain killing this riparian area in the name of not inflicting more trauma on the residents is ludicrous, delusional, a crime against a watershed.
Give me two dumpsters, a security guard, a couple of friends, and I could clean this place up in half a day. Give me three hours after that, and with the right native plants and trees, and I could begin the process of undoing the murder.
Here's an interesting and relevant question: has anyone from the local watershed council, and it currently employees about a half dozen people, tried reaching out to the homeless people living along this stretch of creek, educating them about their destructive presence, asking them politely to move out, and also offering assistance to relocate?
A day later, I emailed the local watershed and asked that very question. The answer was no. It is not our role.
This struck me as reasonable, considering the obvious derangement of some of the people who lived along the creek.
But I also remembered that I once served as a watershed council coordinator on the North Oregon Coast for two years, and would have made it my immediate and primary duty to conduct outreach to people who were destroying a riparian area my council had restored because riparian restoration was our primary duty! I would have taken along my then colleague, friend and riparian restoration specialist Tom and we would have worked something out with the people. He had the best way with people about matters of improving nature I have ever observed. And in the last 20 years, he's restored over 110 stream miles and talked to hundreds of people about taking better care of their private property in riparian areas, and many of those people weren't initially too keen on doing anything to help.
I never faced the type of challenge this city coordinator is facing. Times have changed, I think. Or I think not when it comes to human destruction of watersheds. That comes in various forms. New ones arise all the time.
The city watershed council directed to me to a web site and/or telephone number where I could lodge a complaint or learn what had happened with the site. I was unable to log on to the web site and gave up. I called the number and spoke to an actual human being. She asked me to describe the location and particulars of the encampment and I did. She asked me a series of questions:
Blocking any sidewalk or roadway? No.
Children or people in wheelchairs present? No.
Vehicles? No.
Aggressive or menacing behavior. Not that I had ever observed but I was typically there at dawn.
Open drug use? Not that I had ever observed but I was typically there at dawn.
I reiterated the environmental damage.
She got it all down and said she would make a report.
I just knew this wasn't going to do any damn good. I knew I was going to have do something myself, and that something would certainly have to call upon unconventional wisdom to take form.
Time to get creative. Maybe give Tom a call.