I discovered a hobo camp today.

I don't recall if you remember those "nature day" posts I used to make, where I'd go into the woods across from my house and talk about the wildlife that I saw. Anyway, I always knew from the trash that homelesws people and crackheads hung out in the woods, because there'd be trash all over the place. Like, you'd be walking into the woods for a while and suddenly start passing oil cans and dirty blankets and used condoms. But I never thought I'd discover an actual hobo settlement, right in the middle of the woods.

Anyway, government (not sure if state, city, or county) had been doing work in the woods. Clearing out paths, building birdhouses, planting trees, building bridges over streams, that sort of thing. And just recently, they set up a sign on the side of the street, just a couple houses down from me, displaying the area as a nature preserve. Which I thought was odd, since I didn't think that they were actually woods, but rather just a pretty small stretch of trees that hadn't been cleared out yet. But they'd also set out a sign detailing what they are doing. Apparently, these woods are just the tip of a 1300 acre swamp, and they're making nature trails and stuff in order to preserve it as a wetland.

"That's cool", I thought. I decided to walk into the woods and follow the trails and see what the swamp looked like.

So on my way into the woods, there was some sort of creepy stuff. Like, I'd follow the path, then you'd see someone's trailer just beyond the trees, and then the path would veer off back into the woods again. But that's the unsettling thing. It's like, some of these people's houses/trailers are right next to the woods. So you're following the trail through the woods and all of a sudden you find yourself in some hillbilly's backyard. And I've seen Deliverance, so that's uncomfortable to me.

Anyway, the strangest thing I found was an apparent hobo village. I followed the trail and I came to this clearing. Right in the middle of the clearing there was a big oak tree. They had used trash to build a treehouse in the tree, apparently as a sentry point to watch out for oncoming intruders. Around the perimeter of the clearing, there were oil drums and wooden boxes marked "trash". Apparently this is where all of the trash in the woods was coming from. The hobos obviously didn't want to dump trash in their own village. So I'm assuming that when their trash cans were full, they just dragged them out into the woods and dumped them. Strangest thing was the "houses". They were all the big concrete circles. You know, looks like premanufactured segments that would be fitted together to form sewage pipes or something. How these hobos got these pipe segments into the woods or where they even found them, I will never know. But there were about two dozen of them arranged in a ring around the central lookout tree. And inside a lot of them you could see matresses or blankets or pillows. And there were two big black spots which looked like they used to be campfires.

I don't know what happened to the hobos. There were none of them there when I passed by. Maybe they were just out for the day. Or maybe the city chased them off while building the trail through the woods. But that was DISTURBING. I would like to go back into the woods, go to the swamp, and take pictures of nature with my expensive new digital camera. But not if I have to pass through a hobo village in order to do it.

You have to understand, I wasn't just passing through the woods. These hobos actually set up a COMMUNITY. One that they obviously intended to stay in for quite some time. You and I may call them "homeless", but for them, I'll bet that THAT was home. And how would you feel if you returned home one day and found some random stranger standing in your bedroom? Because that's exactly what that was. Their bedroom, their kitchen, their party room.

Just gives me shivers to think how things could have turned out if I'd happened to discover the hobo village when all of them were still there. If the state/county/city/whatever wants people to use their new nature trails, they need to do something about that first. Because there is no way in HELL that I'm going back into those woods after this.

You should make friends with them, i'm sure they have plenty of good stories to tell :)

i go on nature walks, it's nice to take a walk through teh woods. there is a bench in the wooded area of the park where i live, and someone carved out "Bench of Widsom" on a bench that is along one of the paths.

You should make friends with them, i'm sure they have plenty of good stories to tell :)

Poedon

they actually do have amazing stories....i once had a long chat with a hobo....pretty insightful

so you discovered a hoover-ville? except im not sure we can blame this one on hoover. bush-ville? nah, he gets enough **** already. ill go with drugaddiction-ville.LoG-Sacrament

Reagan-Ville????

You should make friends with them, i'm sure they have plenty of good stories to tell :)

i go on nature walks, it's nice to take a walk through teh woods. there is a bench in the wooded area of the park where i live, and someone carved out "Bench of Widsom" on a bench that is along one of the paths.

Poedon

You know, I actually think that would be pretty cool. What I think would be awesome is actually if they just let me hang out with them, and then I could photo-document how they live. I could actually make a photographic book documenting the lives and times of hobos. I think it could work great. It shows a side of humanity that we like to ignore or overlook, but the cool thing is that I could also show how hobos are people too. How even though they are hobos, they still love and dream, and they've come together in the woods and cooperated in order to form a safe society for them to live.

The only problem (aside from the fact that they might not even live there anymore) is that approaching them with such a prospect is sort of scary.

I mean, let's just assume that the community at large is cool with the idea. The problem is that a community is made up of individuals, and in any community there are going to be dissenters.

So like, the whole hobo community might be cool with it, with the exception of one dude who doesn't like me. I could then document their lives for a month. Then one day I arrive at the hobo camp, and the only hobo around is the one who doesn't like me. And for convenience, it's only a five minute walk to the swamp. So then, a couple months later, they're all sitting around a campfire and someone asks, "hey, whatever happened to that guy with the camera? MrGeezer, I think that was his name." Then the dude who hated me just shrugs his shoulders and says "beats me! I guess we'll never know!"

Also there's the fact that some of them might see what I'm doing as exploitation. Granted, I'd try to portray them in a positive light, but some of them might just think that I'm only pretending to care about them for personal benefit. Which, to be honest, would probably be pretty close to the truth.

Still, I actually think that it would be cool to be friends with them. I could document them and stuff, and it might even be fun to hang out with them for a while. But how the hell do you ask a community of hobos for that? How do you walk up to a village full of 2 dozen hobos and ask if you can hang around with them and just take pictures of them?

Also, my camera cost a bit of money. And if some hobos decide to take it and sell it so that they can buy a few more matresses, the **** am I gonna do about it?

Furthermore, even if everyone went well, they might start thinking that I'm their friend. Then they might start showing up at MY doorstep and asking ME for things.

Some hobos have good wisdom.

My friend was once told by a hobo that if you put your remote car starter under your chin, it extends the range. So my friend pressed the button and nothing happened (the car was out of range)

So then he held it under his chin and tried again and the car started!

Seriously the guy had mythical wisdom or something!

[QUOTE="Poedon"]

You should make friends with them, i'm sure they have plenty of good stories to tell :)

Raged-wolverine

they actually do have amazing stories....i once had a long chat with a hobo....pretty insightful

I've met hobos before too, but a good many of them turned out to be absolutely insane. You know, guys who want to talk with you forever about how Bush is an alien or how Jesus was actually born in Spain.

But then again, these were also urban hobos. And I'll bet that many urban hobos are pretty lonely. And loneliness can make people go crazy, particularly if they are ALREADY crazy, and especially if they are already crazy and are alcoholics/drug addicts.

But maybe forest hobos are different. The forest is a lot different from the despair of the city, and these guys had their own little community going on, so I doubt that they'd be driven to craziness due to being lonely. The place actually reminded me a bit of The Shire.

[QUOTE="Raged-wolverine"][QUOTE="Poedon"]

You should make friends with them, i'm sure they have plenty of good stories to tell :)

MrGeezer

they actually do have amazing stories....i once had a long chat with a hobo....pretty insightful

I've met hobos before too, but a good many of them turned out to be absolutely insane. You know, guys who want to talk with you forever about how Bush is an alien or how Jesus was actually born in Spain.

But then again, these were also urban hobos. And I'll bet that many urban hobos are pretty lonely. And loneliness can make people go crazy, particularly if they are ALREADY crazy, and especially if they are already crazy and are alcoholics/drug addicts.

But maybe forest hobos are different. The forest is a lot different from the despair of the city, and these guys had their own little community going on, so I doubt that they'd be driven to craziness due to being lonely. The place actually reminded me a bit of The Shire.

You can be Gandalf. The wizard with your fancy camera and other cool electronics that rides through every now and then. :P

You MIGHT want to at least talk to them so you won't have to be so worried when you walk past their joint. OR you won't be able to go through there at at all.