Don't Sleep on the Camas

A slight sprinkle of rain woke me at 5:45am this morning.
I had been having those half-asleep dreams where someone wakes me up, or jogs by or otherwise notices that I am sleeping in the park. Not sure how much sleep I’d gotten, but it seemed like a good time to get up.
Here in Victoria it’s now legal to sleep on city property from 11pm to 7am, as long as you don’t have anything more to protect you from the elements than a sleeping bag and small tarp. (The tarp can not be hung or tied to anything. It has to be draped over you or under you, otherwise it becomes an illegal abode.) I worry less about police or 'concerned citizens' than I do drunken teenagers or random fucked-up people.
I actually never get hassled sleeping outside. I ride my bike to a park outside the madness of the downtown core.
Last week I tried sleeping under a bush, behind a warehouse next to the railroad tracks. It was a well hidden area, and friends of mine had camped there before without any hassles.
The area was clean, which I was to find out after a few days there was because someone keeps it clean.
One night I laid cardboard down as a bed, and the next night when I returned it was gone.
That spooked me out of the spot, like a bird abandoning a nest that’s been touched by humans.
The last thing I need is someone coming up on me and giving me shit about camping on private property, or try to put a scare in me or something. I prefer to remain unseen, and I guess as such I should have not left the cardboard. It wasn’t exactly no trace camping.
There’s plenty of well hidden spots in the park where I’m living now. The camas flowers are in bloom right now however, and the park is home to a wonderful community of native plants, so I try to keep on the trail and rocky parts of the park. I found a nice little patch of rocky outcropping last night that was hidden from the trail, and I felt ten times safer than I did sleeping so close to downtown and the railroad tracks.
For those of you who don’t know me, I suffer from anxiety and depression and have been unable to hold a job for years. I don’t consider myself mentally ill because I have learned to avoid the things that push me over the edge. Money is hard for me to earn, and I have a real block when it comes to the idea of applying for government assistance. Politically, I don’t recognize the authority of the state. Physically, I go into panic attacks just thinking of the intrusive process that becoming certified disabled is. You want me to prove I’m crazy? Oh, I can show you crazy…no thanks.
So I am between a rock and a hard place. It really fucking sucks at times, but I’m working around it.
Food is out there to find and salvage, and I make a few bucks here and there, but generally I am flat broke all the time, and it’s a good thing I am not a materialist whatsoever. All I really desire right now is stable housing and access to food.
Stability is a myth however, even for middle class people, so I don’t stress too hard about it.
The rainy season is over, and I’d much rather sleep under the stars than in a square white room anyway.
When I think about how tiring being homeless can be for someone like myself, who likes sleeping outside, who has a great support network (who as broke as I am, but we work to help each other), and who thrives on situations that allow me to be ‘tough’ and ‘brave’, I realize just how much it truly truly sucks for most other people on the street. It’s brutal. It’s fucking brutal. Trust me. You know how you hear people say that you wouldn’t fully understand until you’ve been there yourself?
Well, that’s not just hot air. This is one case where it is 100% true. I spent two years working at a big city homeless shelter, and even from that angle I got nowhere close to the full picture.
Most days I am in plain old survival mode, seeking out food, seeking out a place to sit a place to lie down, a place to get washed up, some way to relax. The only way I can handle the fact that this is my reality is that I imagine it is close to what the other animals experience. Hunt, hunt, eat, eat, rest. Hunt, hunt, eat, eat, rest. I guess I am lucky that I don’t have the stress of running a business, or a country.
Many folks out here have much worse mental health issues than I do, or addictions, with less support from housed friends, and less acceptance within the community. It’s the mainstream attitude towards the homeless than inspires the largest portion of the disgust I have for mass society. People are starving and dying on the streets and overcrowded rooming houses of this and all other cities. The fact that this is nowhere near being recognized as the disaster that it is has shattered my faith in so many things.
When will our society redeem itself? I for one am a pessimist when it comes to this kind of thing, so don’t ask my opinion. And don’t be surprised when parts of Victoria become like the Downtown EastSide of Vancouver. Don’t say no one told you how to stop it from happening, because we’ve been doing it for decades. You’ll just have to deal with it, like the rest of us.