Homeless people living in national forests

[Uriah]

cool video. will someone smarter than me please calculate the doubling rate for say...the Appalachian Trail. Thanks in advance.

There are too many variables involved (not to mention no concrete figures even to this point). As world population expands, the AT (et al) may very well see a larger rate of increase, since many of us will need a coping mechanism in place, to help us deal with the increase in population.

[Dogwood]

Dogwood highlights the negative side of homelessness but ignores the other part of the conversation we've been having here---the desire to live outdoors in the woods in primitive structures for the love of the outdoors and done with a conscious desire to embrace poverty and spend little to no effort developing a career---What I call the secret to life: Seeing how little money you can make and still be happy.

During my 21 years of Tipi life I never made more than $5,000 a year working one day a week as a church janitor 10 miles away in a small town. I sometimes bicycled to work, often hitchhiked, later used a cheap motorcycle that got 75 miles to the gallon. I wanted no career which would impede my opportunity to live outdoors. I was legal on 40 acres of mountain land from the land owners, and I had no drivable access to my ridgetop home---just a one mile trail I cut in with a tough elevation gain of a thousand feet.

To American standards I was homeless. To Dogwood's standard I was probably the dregs of society. But to me? I thought of myself as the luckiest man in America, a combination of John Muir, Ed Abbey and Milarepa. And I bought wholly into the mindset of both Native American spirituality and Yoga philosophy: The real church is a couple people sitting under a tree. A Lakota medicine man Matthew King said it best: "God is Nature. Nature is God."

I was even inspired by Jesus and his "homelessness" and his words: "Take no thought for your life." "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin."

Amen, pass the bowsaw and the kindling.

Do you want to know what the real impediments are that will keep a person from this kind of life?
** Reproduction and rearing children. Once the nanny state figures you're raising your family in a structure w/o water and electricity, they'll swoop down hard like when Custer massacred the Cheyenne on the Wasita River---and take your children away.
** The desire for the plugged in life---electricity, central air, smartfones, the wall thermostat. televised football etc.
** The bane of debt whereby you'll never leave the workplace.
** The choking indifference to Nature and wilderness and your place in it.
** The stifling smothering thought of what your parents or what your friends will think.

ETC ETC

Your sentiments were beautifully expressed.

To restate it again, in a way I can make no clearer, I am one of those who has lived homeless to seek that spoken about Thoreau like experience. However, it is being thoroughly disingenuous to say one has to be homeless to have a Thoreau like experience. I share your beliefs about connecting with Nature by immersing in it and recognizing humanity as not apart and above the environment but inextricably part of it. As Chief Seattle Leader Of The Suquamish and Duwamish Tribes expresses, "humankind is but one thread in an interconnected web of life. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are (somehow) bound together. All things connect.' I don't see Nature as something to be recklessly raped and pillaged for economic gain. I do believe in a Higher Power who I call GOD and I don't believe it ever intended that humans destroy the Earth justifying it through twisting of a Bible verse. Humans were originally meant to love and care for the Earth with GOD adored more than it.

My heart wells up when I read of Muir's quotes. I intimately think and believe as Muir and share Aldo Leopold's sentiments. I am a Naturalist and environmentalist by any sense of the definition.

I share many of the same considerations about U.S. culture that result in waste, environmental destruction, rampant consumerism, and idolatry of money that you and a few others have shared. I see truth in what Steve Howe, once field editor of Backpacker, said in response to his Sierra High Route experiences 'ever notice how unhealthy civilization can be?' I recognize truth and wisdom in Sun Bear of the Chippewa Tribe's observation: "I do not think the measure of a civilization is how tall its buildings of concrete are but rather how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and fellow man.'


However, I can't ignore the facts. I can't ignore study after confirmed study. I can't ignore my own extensive observations. I can't ignore considering people based on their character. I can't ignore we reap what we sow. I can't ignore there is great purpose in work however it's defined. I can't ignore quality passionate work produces fruit in so many forms where an abundance of fruit can be shared with others who have less. I can't ignore there is honor and satisfaction in work. I can't ignore for every Dick Proenneke, Eustace Conway, or perhaps some on Live Free or Die, or even like you Tipi there are 100 others who are homeless who are not after a Thoreau like experience and want to live more off the work of others than off the work of their own labor, who are criminally minded, who are utterly self absorbed, have drug habits, are mentally ill, and who want to somehow benefit from the same system or culture they despise while not being subjected to it in any way.

How much of this will be ignored?

You can't ignore people's character and motivations no matter how well intentioned. Even with the best intentions can come bitter disappointment. "Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions" T.S. Eliot

[SWODaddy]

You might want to watch this. You might even see me sitting in class.

I can't watch the video right now. Can you summarize the 74min lecture? Any estimates I've seen assuming exponential population growth make a lot of poor assumptions. UN Medium estimates for world population top out just under 10 billion and then decline. Personally, I think the low estimate peak of ~7.5 is closer to reality.

[Dogwood]

It is laughable to imply the majority of the impoverished streethomeless, some of which are now becoming/have become more ruralized, have at the top of their priority list a keen interest in Naturalism, Environmentalism/environmental protection, or Conservatism. Living "carefree" or "free" or "off the land" SO OFTEN results in being careless, living free for oneself doing only as oneself wants while somehow neglecting others or the systems they despise yet somehow benefitting from those same systems, or off others. These are the people who should be allowed to roam freely doing as they desire in National Forests, National Parks, Wilderness Areas, or on a National Scenic Trail such as the Appalachian Trail? Are National Forests, or "the woods" however the woods be defined, typically equipped to handle influxes of impoverished homeless without dire consequences to Nature and the environment? While were at it why don't we let logging or mining or utility/water companies run rampant on the same lands?

[Uriah]

...I can't ignore the facts. I can't ignore study after confirmed study. I can't ignore my own extensive observations. I can't ignore considering people based on their character. I can't ignore we reap what we sow. I can't ignore there is great purpose in work however it's defined. I can't ignore quality passionate work produces fruit in so many forms where an abundance of fruit can be shared with others who have less. I can't ignore there is honor and satisfaction in work. I can't ignore for every Dick Proenneke, Eustace Conway, or perhaps some on Live Free or Die, or even like you Tipi there are 100 others who are homeless who are not after a Thoreau like experience and want to live more off the work of others than off the work of their own labor, who are criminally minded, who are utterly self absorbed, have drug habits, are mentally ill, and who want to somehow benefit from the same system or culture they despise while not being subjected to it in any way. How much of this will be ignored? You can't ignore people's character and motivations no matter how well intentioned. Even with the best intentions can come bitter disappointment. "Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions" T.S. Eliot

In failing to ignore these considerations, these facts, you must then consider what you can do about them, no? I mean, what good is paying attention to it all (or any other negative input), without giving an honest effort to change it, if even just some of it or a small part of it?

"Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul," said that wise old desert rat.

I know my place in this world, and it is way beyond small. Utterly insignificant, in fact.

Sure, another wise guy once said, "Be the change you want to see," but in knowing we cannot change others or the world around us, it then becomes easier to set our focus elsewhere. Our time is short, so we best spend it how we see fit. We're lucky we get to do so.

This is all a bit negative perhaps, but it is a fact that I cannot ignore.

[Tipi Walter]

These are the people who should be allowed to roam freely doing as they desire in National Forests, National Parks, Wilderness Areas, or on a National Scenic Trail such as the Appalachian Trail? Are National Forests, or "the woods" however the woods be defined, typically equipped to handle influxes of impoverished homeless without dire consequences to Nature and the environment? While were at it why don't we let logging or mining or utility/water companies run rampant on the same lands?

What would happen if all these homeless bums you speak about invade my woods? Well, Miss Nature and her daughters Severe Cold, High Winds, Deep Snows, Cold Rain and Unbearable Heat will sort them out quick enough. There are only 500,000 homeless people in the United States, and most are in cities. Will they all become backpackers living in national forests? Doubtful. Where will they get their free meals and street drugs and whiskey? How will they ever climb the Nutbuster Trail? How will they roll a shopping cart down a rocky foot trail?

But if we have a true catastrophe or total war like the invasion by Germany into Russia in 1941 on the Eastern Front all bets are off. Hordes of people not killed off will be living everywhere and we'll be eating our dead. Whatever national forests are left will be so irradiated as to be dead zones. The goal of modern civilizations will have been realized and the War on Nature complete: Utter destruction.

Until then lets sleep under what trees are left and let's drink clean cold spring water. Get your gear and go. I was born in 1950 which means: We can be annihilated at any moment by the touch of a button. "Until then" became my generation's mantra. So go get your gear and hit the woods.

[Dogwood]

I don't think you're being negative. It is a thought I've had many times followed up by massive action.

That same wise guy was relating by changing ourselves we in some measure are changing the world. So, when I decided to not behave as and be an impoverished homeless non working self absorbed drug abusing criminally minded environmentally destructive person was I not doing what he said?

When spending time with the widow, offering to mow her lawn and cut her shrubs for free, and sharing lunch with her, or shoveling the snow off a widower's walkway, holding the hands of an AIDS patient in the later stages in a hospital bed abandoned by family and friends offering non-fearful unstigmatized human touch with a willingness to feel something of what they were feeling, singing Christmas carols to the elderly and infirm in an assisted living facility bringing joy to their faces and maybe offering a small material present, volunteering washing dishes and feeding people through sweat of my own rewarding honorable labor at homeless shelters, being in the grocery store check out line noting an impoverished unwed single mother with two young children struggling offering to pay the families groceries, offering jobs in my own companies to homeless people willing to work, literally removing a shirt off the back or getting off a bicycle and giving it to someone needier than me...is that sentiment without action?

I absolutely believe we can have a wide ranging influence on others solely on our own. One person's actions can change the world! Umm, Gandhi, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Einstein, Newton, Mother Teresa, Hitler, Stalin, JFK...

[Dogwood]

What would happen if all these homeless bums you speak about invade my woods?

What does that mean to you? your woods, my woods. That seems very exclusive of others which is a dominating mindset among the homeless. Are you speaking about something you own, are somehow legally entitled to? "Woods" are, as far as I know, usually privately or publicly owned. I thought National Forests were collectively owned by the American people for the benefit of all people BUT MANAGED BY THE USFS NOT MANAGED BY YOU SPECIFICALLY OUTSIDE OF ITS MANAGEMENT? So, isn't it our woods you are referring not your or my woods?

You already have shared your disdain for "red necks with ozark trail tents", "redneck camping", "redneck detritus", and "redneck pigs" leaving trash behind. I share the same general feelings about environmental lack of consideration but will not use that type of language or prejudicial language. What will happen to "your woods" if homeless people move in EVEN IF ON A SEASONAL OR SHORT TERM BASIS? What are you going to do?

LOOK AT YOUR OWN PICTURES AND READ YOUR OWN WORDS!

http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/vbg/showimage.php?i=51269&c=555
http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/show...he-Cranberries
http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/show...man-Trail-Pigs
http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=522790

[Uriah]

I don't think you're being negative. It is a thought I've had many times followed up by massive action. That same wise guy was relating by changing ourselves we in some measure are changing the world. So, when I decided to not behave as and be an impoverished homeless non working self absorbed drug abusing criminally minded environmentally destructive person was I not doing what he said?

You were essentially doing what he said, and that's undeniably a good thing. A small effect, but an effect nonetheless, and I believe well worth the effort, if it makes you happy. Whether it makes a difference on a grander scale is debatable at best.

When spending time with the widow, offering to mow her lawn and cut her shrubs for free, and sharing lunch with her, or shoveling the snow off a widower's walkway, holding the hands of an AIDS patient in the later stages in a hospital bed abandoned by family and friends offering non-fearful unstigmatized human touch with a willingness to feel something of what they were feeling, singing Christmas carols to the elderly and infirm in an assisted living facility bringing joy to their faces and maybe offering a small material present, volunteering washing dishes and feeding people through sweat of my own rewarding honorable labor at homeless shelters, being in the grocery store check out line noting an impoverished unwed single mother with two young children struggling offering to pay the families groceries, offering jobs in my own companies to homeless people willing to work, literally removing a shirt off the back or getting off a bicycle and giving it to someone needier than me...is that sentiment without action?

All noble deeds, again without question. You are clearly a decent human.

I absolutely believe we can have a wide ranging influence on others solely on our own. One person's actions can change the world! Umm, Gandhi, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Einstein, Newton, Mother Teresa, Hitler, Stalin, JFK...

And this is where we differ. I don't harbor much hope on the grander scale, though I am very much a personal optimist. None of those you mentioned have had a major impact upon my life or the lives of those around me (namely the animals and the landscapes in which they live and depend upon). I freely admit however that Thoreau and Abbey and in particular Muir have had a substantial impact, and you could have just as easily brought them up, and so I understand your point.

But the truth is humanity is heading full steam ahead, into new, uncharted territory. He always has of course, only now there is a far, far greater [er, worse] number of us, each with a much larger footprint/effect. History has shown (and will continue to) the effect others have had to this point, but little of what they did (or said) can stop the issues we confront today, and the issues we will continue to face in the future, some we may not even know about right now. Few things will affect mankind like human overcrowding and/or population, dwindling "resources", widespread pollution and contamination, climatic change, and so forth. Have you heard of Universe 25, by chance, that most intriguing behavioral sink? I do not think we humans are any different than those rats, personally. When push comes to shove, we'll likely see more problems.

The video link I pasted earlier basically comes down to overpopulation and its effects, and what might be done to prevent of it, given the inclination toward economic prosperity and humanistic greed. (Keep in mind Dr. Bartlett is a wise, intelligent human being, on the same sort of scale as some of those you mentioned above.) None of the solutions are (currently) desirable, but may very well be obligatory.

[rocketsocks]

I don't think you're being negative. It is a thought I've had many times followed up by massive action.

That same wise guy was relating by changing ourselves we in some measure are changing the world. So, when I decided to not behave as and be an impoverished homeless non working self absorbed drug abusing criminally minded environmentally destructive person was I not doing what he said?

When spending time with the widow, offering to mow her lawn and cut her shrubs for free, and sharing lunch with her, or shoveling the snow off a widower's walkway, holding the hands of an AIDS patient in the later stages in a hospital bed abandoned by family and friends offering non-fearful unstigmatized human touch with a willingness to feel something of what they were feeling, singing Christmas carols to the elderly and infirm in an assisted living facility bringing joy to their faces and maybe offering a small material present, volunteering washing dishes and feeding people through sweat of my own rewarding honorable labor at homeless shelters, being in the grocery store check out line noting an impoverished unwed single mother with two young children struggling offering to pay the families groceries, offering jobs in my own companies to homeless people willing to work, literally removing a shirt off the back or getting off a bicycle and giving it to someone needier than me...is that sentiment without action?

I absolutely believe we can have a wide ranging influence on others solely on our own. One person's actions can change the world! Umm, Gandhi, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Einstein, Newton, Mother Teresa, Hitler, Stalin, JFK...

...and Bob Dylan.

[pickNgrin]

This has been an interesting discussion. I admire the "Thoreau" homeless and sometimes fantasize about being one of them. A lifelong dream of mine has been to be a hermit. The other type of homeless… not so much.

If you are single and unattached, it is a seductive lifestyle. But it begins to break down if you want to have a family and raise kids. To inflict a nonstandard lifestyle on kids and possibly limit their opportunities is not cool IMHO. The Thoreau lifestyle is somewhat selfish.

For me, I can drop out of the "normal" lifestyle and adopt the ways of the homeless. This is called camping. It is hard to go the other way. If you commit to the Thoreau life, you are all in. It would be difficult to break out of. If medical issues crop up, or other financial issues, or if you simply get tired of living that way, it would be difficult to "drop back in" to normal society.

I would love to win the lottery and then live the simple life! It would be the best of both worlds.

[Lone Wolf]

...and Bob Dylan.

he's terrible

[Wise Old Owl]

What would happen if all these homeless bums you speak about invade my woods? Well, Miss Nature and her daughters Severe Cold, High Winds, Deep Snows, Cold Rain and Unbearable Heat will sort them out quick enough. There are only 500,000 homeless people in the United States, and most are in cities. Will they all become backpackers living in national forests? Doubtful. Where will they get their free meals and street drugs and whiskey? How will they ever climb the Nutbuster Trail? How will they roll a shopping cart down a rocky foot trail?

But if we have a true catastrophe or total war like the invasion by Germany into Russia in 1941 on the Eastern Front all bets are off. Hordes of people not killed off will be living everywhere and we'll be eating our dead. Whatever national forests are left will be so irradiated as to be dead zones. The goal of modern civilizations will have been realized and the War on Nature complete: Utter destruction.

Until then lets sleep under what trees are left and let's drink clean cold spring water. Get your gear and go. I was born in 1950 which means: We can be annihilated at any moment by the touch of a button. "Until then" became my generation's mantra. So go get your gear and hit the woods.

No biggie the statistic you mentioned was faulted. When a small county seat in the middle of Chester County houses 90 men and 15 women each night many are turned away and have to stay at a nearby church I am familiar with.

Perhaps this would enlighten you, but it too is suspect to me.

CLICK

[left52side]

I would love to win the lottery and then live the simple life! It would be the best of both worlds.

One can dream cant they lone wolf.
But oh the joy I would spread to the less fortunate....

[Tipi Walter]

What would happen if all these homeless bums you speak about invade my woods?

What will happen to "your woods" if homeless people move in EVEN IF ON A SEASONAL OR SHORT TERM BASIS? What are you going to do?

LOOK AT YOUR OWN PICTURES AND READ YOUR OWN WORDS!

http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/vbg/showimage.php?i=51269&c=555
http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/show...he-Cranberries
http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/show...man-Trail-Pigs
http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=522790

What am I going to do? What are we going to do? We clean up after the motards and miscreants and keep hiking. We put out their burning fires and dismantle their camp furniture and gather up all their trash and keep hiking.


I spent 30 minutes at my campsite in Cold Spring Gap gathering up this redneck effluvia and placing it in one spot which was later carted out by some backpacking friends.


I discovered this mess on the North Fork Citico Creek and and spent an hour away from my camp tearing it apart and scattering all the wood. Sad part is, the idiots cut down several living trees to make them feel like wannabe Davy Crocketts for a day.


And the saddest part of all is they left their campfire burning but were long gone and driving down the interstate.


But you worry about what the homeless will do to our forests---it's the forest service who do the most damage by far. This is the top of Hangover Mt in the middle of the Joyce Kilmer Slickrock wilderness after they clearcut an acre of the mountaintop to land a helicopter in 2007. You'd think a designated wilderness would be safe from such idiocy. It is not.


Did the homeless ravage this mountain with a clearcut? No, it was the forest service. Saw this on my last trip in the Cherokee NF below Waucheesi Bald.

[Uriah]

This has been an interesting discussion. I admire the "Thoreau" homeless and sometimes fantasize about being one of them. A lifelong dream of mine has been to be a hermit....

...The Thoreau lifestyle is somewhat selfish.

Some of us could argue (ad nauseam) that 'selfish' is having children...a replica of thyself. All creatures under the sun are selfish, so we needn't go there.

[Tipi Walter]

Some of us could argue (ad nauseam) that 'selfish' is having children...a replica of thyself. All creatures under the sun are selfish, so we needn't go there.

I immediately thought the same thing but I wasn't going to be the one to say it. I would go further to say not only could having children be considered selfish, but with overpopulation choking out the natural world more and more, reproducing could be considered even criminal.

[rafe]

he's terrible

It wasn't Ted Nugent making the headlines today.

[Slo-go'en]

I doubt there is any risk of the woods being overrun with homeless, but I definitely saw plenty of evidence of it from PA through to CT this spring. From Walmart tents set up near trail heads to "hikers" who haven't moved from the area in weeks. The ones I meet were harmless enough, but some were not quite all there.

[Dogwood]

... None of those you mentioned have had a major impact upon my life or the lives of those around me (namely the animals and the landscapes in which they live and depend upon). I freely admit however that Thoreau and Abbey and in particular Muir have had a substantial impact, and you could have just as easily brought them up, and so I understand your point...

Have you ever seen It's a Wonderful Life? For those who haven't it's a story about a man portrayed by the great Jimmy Stewart who thought just such thing. He found out that every action he took and every action he didn't take, because he wasn't there, he was given a gift to see what the Universe would be like if he hadn't been born; he set into motion a whole series of events with consequences unknown to him by being born and every action he took. No matter how famous or known or influential each of us think we are or are not every action we take and every action not taken has profound far reaching effects that we may never entirely know about. Each individual action is like a stone thrown into the surface of a large pond that ripples far to the edge of the pond where we even can't currently see.

Every one's LIFE has great impact, meaning, and purpose. And we each can choose how we will live and act. This extends to all life not just humanity.