The other day I was slothfully languishing in bed, getting ready to call er a night, absent-mindedly watching Black Widow while reading my cousin @sapadetzero's Discord post about character development and creation in an upcoming RPG campaign we are going to be engaging in, when my phone buzzed to life.
Now here's the thing, I don't like talking on the phone. At all. I love texts and email because it doesn't infringe on my time and can be answered when convenient. Talking to people in person is my marmalade, I dig all the biochemical festivities that occur when engaging in in-human contact, but the phone, while it is necessary and convenient to a point, I just don't dig wandering around with it stuck to me head or streaming through my various devices. I think spending time with no phone in a logging camp growing up might have done something to me. Yah, that's it.
Anyway, phone diatribe aside, on the screen I saw that the caller was my friend J. J avoids the phone more than I do, so I knew the only reason she would be calling was due to an emergency of some sort, so I obviously answered.
"Hey Kat, I am so sorry to bug you, but can I ask you and T (my hubs) a favor?"she inquired with a bit of uncharacteristic desperation in her southern drawl.
"Of course you can, what's up?"I replied.
She went on to tell me that they had discovered a squatter encampment on their property. They had had the sheriff out to investigate, and the cops hadn't found anyone in residence, but my friend was worried that they were going to get shot in the back while they were cleaning up the mess and wanted to know if we would come watch over them while the clean up commenced.
Well, I was a bit touched by the phone call. One, because when it comes to firearms I am about as useless as teats on a boar, and two, my friend was truly in need and of course I wanted to be of assistance in anyway I could.
Now my hubs is a good guy to have around for firearms related stuff. He's a certified firearms instructor, and RSO (Range Safety Officer), trains competitive shooters of all disciplines, was a competitive shooter himself, and was in the military for his career, etc. ad, nauseum. He's beyond competent in the arena of firearms, as are my children who are competitive markspeople themselves.
Me, I am slightly above proficient. Okay, I am well-trained thanks to my Hubs. Like, my Sig and I have been drilled together in all manner of efficient, competent firearms training, but I just don't like carrying guns all that much, I mean, l loath carrying anything, even purses, so it's not even a gun thing, I just hate person dandruff of the material kind hanging off of me.
However, all that I have to carry stuff on me cringe goes right out the window when there is an emergency or someone needs my help, so Wednesday morning I slapped my hair into two tactical pigtails, shoved my Sig into my leather belt holster, and hopped into the car with my hubs and his various armaments.
I felt tactical.
We met our friends at their property, and it was announced that I would ride down with J on the ATV and the Hubs would ride with her husband in the Trail Cat (It's a Kubota vehicle with every possible attachment and a dump bed) to the encampment. What made the whole invader thing worse is that they put their squat in the middle of this cedar grove that I absolutely adore. I was kinda sad about the whole thing because my friends are the kind of people who would help anyone out, so that some folks just snuck onto their property and made a big mess over the summer was a bit, well, just meh.
But I was being tactical, so I pushed that thought from my mind, made sure I had my gun and phone secure, because I was supposed to call the Sheriff if there were any actual humans there, and enjoyed the ride down over the hill to the Cedar Grove.
As my friends haven't cut in a trail for vehicles to the Grove, we had to hike the last 100 yards to the encampment. Garbage started peppering my view after a few feet of hiking.
I HATE LITTER!
Ooh, it infuriates me. I had snowshoed along the banks of Caribou Creek and in Cedar Grove this past winter, and lest you think I am some 1%er elitist think again, I grew up in trailers and wear 15 year old polyester pants. I don't care about what people have or where they're from, but garbage, especially garbage tossed into our wild spaces makes me madder than a murder hornet being harassed by the USDA.
Now, up until this point I was led to believe that the squat was a tent sort of scenario. I mean, the last time our friends had hiked out to the cedar grove was in June (they had a busy summer so they didn't hike all parts of their property as much as they normally do). Well, as I stalked through the grove and beheld the structure, I knew it was a much bigger job to deal with than I first thought.
The architecture is mind boggling! There was a strange and eerie sort of crackhead beauty to it. Trailing behind me was our friend's teenage daughter, A, the other adults were further back still. I un-holstered my gun and called,
"Hello, anyone here?"
Even though the cops had investigated the place, I had no way of knowing if anyone had come back.
The amount of refuse around the dwelling was staggering. How did they get that much stuff amassed in a 3 month period? They had to carry it all in, quite a ways from the road.
I pounded on the side of the outer wall and called Hello? again. At this point I wasn't really nervous because the ground clearly showed no one had been in residence for at least a couple of weeks. My face cracked a smile as I saw the beautiful mushrooms chalked onto the tar paper adorning each side of the opening to the cabin. That smile evaporated when I saw a baby play pen next to a mattress inside the filthy dwelling.
I cleared the building like I had been taught, and there was no one there, but guys, the place just made me sad. You could tell the inhabitants had left in a hurry, as there was fairly fresh food strung about. But the chaos of the place bespoke of a long history of substance abuse and untreated mental illness. My heart hurt a bit, especially for the at least two children who spent the summer in that hell hole.
Aside from used needles and other assorted paraphernalia, we found some really interesting signs of the wildlife that inhabited the squat. I was especially enthralled by the homemade PVC and electrical tape nun chucks. They were also artistic folks, there was masterpieces everywhere!
For some reason their original bathroom wasn't working for them, so they made bathroom number deuce, I'll give them points for comfort, privacy however, not so much.
The way they interwove available wood resources with artifacts from the local dump was also impressive. As I kicked in one wall I was surprised to find a strip of vinyl from a couch and a part of a foam closet door. Each wall yielded surprises.
After removing one of the beds from a wall the smell of death hit our noses. Our friend's daughter looked at me with a face full of terror and said, "I know we are going to find a dead baby in there!"
"More like a dead squirrel." I replied, my nose wrinkled from the foul odor. She and I bonded over our fascination with the creepy application of wasp nests as decor around the entire structure and throughout the surrounding woods. The wasps nests were like a cherry on top of the whole horror movie vibe the place emanated.
Now, from the start I saw that this was not a one day job, of which my friend J agreed. They had only seen the squat from a distance and didn't realize just how massive it was. So, after doing a bit of establishing dominance demolition, we agreed to reconvene with a mini excavator, ATV's with trailers, and a dumpster to do the job right.
After having worked and living among indigent populations for years, I have a strong feeling that the Cedar Grove Architects have wandered south for the winter to a more hospitable climate. I also think they might come back next summer. By then, of course, their dwelling will be gone, the wood burned and the garbage hauled to the dump. The whole experience, while a bit of an adventure, really speaks about the scale of a glaring, long standing, not fully addressed problem we have as a species.
So I guess at the end of the day, my first armed security foray was a success because no one got hurt, altercations were avoided, and I spent a ton of time in thought about the brokenness of humans.
And I got to feel the crisp breeze of fall glide through my pigtails as I drove a massive new four-wheeler through a river valley.