Swept Away (Part 1)

I was walking the neighborhood on the morning of December 4^th when I heard siren after siren and thought nothing more of it than a probable automobile accident on a dangerous stretch of Highway 99 that parallels Westmoreland Park.

That evening, I watched the news on television and learned what the sirens were all about: at approximately 7:30 AM, high water on Johnson Creek in SE Portland swept away a man under the Tacoma Street bridge, the site of a homeless encampment.

Television crews broadcast from the bridge site and interviewed a resident of the encampment, who said the deceased man was his best friend, a tattoo artist, and they'd tried to save him but the current was too wild. It was unclear from the reports whether the missing man resided in the encampment, but he was there nonetheless. I did know he wasn't a member of the Old Crow Book Club and that fact greatly relieved me.

The man's body was discovered by a downstream homeowner two days later.

Five days after the death, the weather front that had produced record rainfall had moved east and the morning was dry and bright. By then, I'd read more media reports of the drowning and failed attempts at rescue. The man had yet to be identified to the public, perhaps he never would.

It was time to visit my father at his assisted living center. We would discuss the man's death and converse about homelessness, one of our main topics of conversation.

I set out on foot. Not far from the house, I decided to detour to the exact site where the sweeping away occurred because I wanted to see it for myself. There was something about this death that really got to me. It seemed so much more awesome a tragedy than an overdose under a highway overpass. As soon as I reached the bridge, a thought overwhelmed me: what an immature writer's conceit to consider this man's tragic death something literary. I felt ashamed.

In the moments when I talk to my father about the deaths or imminent deaths of homeless men and women in my neighborhood, he always quotes a line from John Donne, “Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,” and he undoubtedly would again after hearing the terrible news of happened a quarter mile from where he lived.

I stood on the bridge and peered down to the encampment. It looked like a mortar round had scored a direct hit. People still lived there. I saw no makeshift memorial at the creek's edge but perhaps that would come later after the water level receded. It was still running with fury.

Unsatisfied with the view from above, I took a side street off the bridge for closer inspection. I saw a well-worn path that led straight into the encampment but didn't take it. It didn't feel right—at this point in time.

What struck me about the entrance to the path was seeing several neat piles of split firewood. This was grade A Doug fir, seasoned and obviously not harvested from the woods in the area. Someone in the neighborhood was supplying the encampment with the firewood.

I kept walking. Fifty feet from the encampment a newly razed former manufacturing plant on a roughly two-acre lot was being graded and prepped for future construction. A thought materialized: this was a perfect spot for a temporary homeless encampment. It had water and power already on site. It had sewer hookups. It was surrounded by concrete and railroad tracks. There wasn't a residential dwelling in site. There were already 20 or 30 homeless people living along the creek and in nearby RVs within shouting distance. The neighbor across the street was a public golf course.

If there were any urgency addressing the emergency of homelessness in Portland, this site could host temporary housing for 30-50 people in purchased second-hand trailers and fifth wheels. It would take two weeks to set up. Hire an onsite manager. Establish a residents' council and draw up some rules. No accumulating shit. One strike and you're out.

It was so obvious to me as an ad hoc solution.

I saw two men coordinating the grading and surveying of the site. I went up to them and asked what was planned for the space.

“Storage units. We'll break ground in a month and have them opened by late spring.”

Storage units. Heated no doubt. I walked away knowing that my state probably builds more heated storage units than it erects unheated temporary housing units.

Swept away. Such poetry in that vivid image; it has the force of a folk song commenting on monumental loss. (Think “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” or that song Dylan wrote about a bear mauling people at a picnic.) Someone should write a song for this drowned man, but it wouldn't be me, Someone should write an elegy for this drowned man, but it wouldn't be me. I didn't know what to do with the story.