How And Why It Began

  I stumbles into City Union Mission one afternoon in 2017, I was a rotten drunk with no where else to go. The mission was a homeless shelter, someplace I never imagined I would end up, but at the same time not at all surprised I was there,  I'd burned a lot of bridges, and for now this was all I had. 

 I made a few acquaintances there, one gentleman I became good friends with, we had both come up in the punk rock community so we had fun stuff to talk about. He was staying there just to fit some requirements for medical assistance, he wasn't homeless at all, he had a nice place with a group of friends down by the river, some call it a homeless camp, but they called it The Muddy Riviera, they called it home.

 My friend invited me to come stay down there, it was paradise, they had everything they need he said, especially freedom. I reluctantly accepted the invitation, I knew the guy, but really, how much does anyone really know anyone. My thought was this could be awesome, he sure made it sound so, or I could be killed by a serial killer, or sacrificed by some weirdo cult. Eh, at that low point in my life any of those choices would have been fine. 

 At the Riviera booze, and drugs were abundant though I stayed sober, and didn't partake. They had a bbq pit, and a pitmaster that could be a bbq contest champion. plenty of good food, they had running hot water coming from a large container found by the railroad tracks, pipes connecting water to some of the tents. They had solar panels, running a tv, and lights. These folks had everything they needed to survive. Whatever they needed they figured out a way to get, granted sometimes that may have meant stealing it, but often it was just putting their heads together and making whatever it was that were needing happen. This all absolutely blew my mind.

 I did'nt stay long, a couple days then I returned to the shelter, but my mind was racing, the whole idea of that kind of self sufficiency was something I never thought possible having grown up in our modern, buy everything at the walmart, amazon kind of times. 

  So this began my quest to become 100% self sufficient, and though I still have a long way to go, I have come a long way, and am pretty confident of my new found survival skills. 

 To be continued...