Telltale Cart

I was on a business trip earlier this week, and took the chance to duck out of a team-building activity to get in some exercise and take in the local scenery by walking back to the hotel. About three blocks from my destination, I was coming up on a Roku building and saw a trio of shopping carts standing by the corner. They were piled with stuff, mostly clothes, but also some other odds and ends; the sort of things that were only saved from being garbage by the fact that they'd been collected in the carts.

There was a stand of trees nearby, with a rather conspicuous trail that meandered from a gap in the foliage to about 10 feet away from where the carts stood. There was a small clearing visible, with some milk crates and an overturned plastic chair. And just the hint of a tent. It wasn't exactly concealed, but it had been placed such that it was only partially visible from the sidewalk, and even then only for a short time. At any sort of speed, it was effectively invisible; I hadn't seen it when I was being dropped off the previous night.

Whomever it was that had come to call the place their home, I felt for them. Thunderstorms had rolled through the previous day and it had rained for seven or eight straight hours. Spending that time in a tent struck me as unpleasant, at best.

I turned the corner. A slight gap in the leaves revealed that there were two tents erected in the space; the standard dome-like camping tents that can be had from any half-way decent sporting goods store. A blonde woman looked up from what she was eating to look back at me. She appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties (not that I'm a good judge of age), clad in in a light sweatshirt. She regarded me suspiciously as I walked past. Perhaps she thought that I might call the police to roust her from the encampment.

I had no such intent. Her life was already likely more than hard enough without someone like me looking to make things even more difficult for her. As I completed the walk to the hotel, I idly speculated about the circumstances that had brought her, and whomever else shared the little clearing with her, to that place. It was an exercise in futility; possible reasons ran from horizon to horizon.