For Wilshire Baptist Church
Saturday morning LeAnn and I jumped on our bikes and rode the Cottonwood Creek Trail. It’s a bike/walk trail that forks off the White Rock Creek Trail just north of Royal Oaks Country Club and meanders for 3.6 miles along Cottonwood Creek north to Spring Valley Road. We’ve been exploring a lot of the Dallas area’s urban trails in recent years – on bike and on foot – and we hadn’t ticked Cottonwood off the list and it was time. I grew up in Richardson and swam at the pool and played in Heights Park on Cottonwood Creek. And as an adult writing about local history, I learned that outlaws once camped along the creek between what is now Central Expressway and Texas Instruments. So, I was excited to give the trail a ride and see the creek up close, but it was not what I expected.
The trail itself is a marvel of planning and engineering with the broad pavement hugging the creek and meandering below overpasses and through attractive architectural plazas and across distinctive bridges. There are some pretty areas for sure, but there is a constant roar of traffic from US 75 and I-635 that reminds you that you’re still in the city. And like many urban creeks, when not flowing through parks, Cottonwood is a backyard to businesses and loading docks and places that people don’t care about. And sadly, it has become home to people that we seemingly don’t care about.
Under Forest Lane and especially under the bridges of the High Five interchange, there are honeycombs of humanity identifiable by actual tents, walls of tarps hung between concrete beams under the bridges, and piles of what looks like debris but is actually someone’s worldly possessions. But “homelessness” is not really just about these ramshackle camps; it is about the people who inhabit them, and we found people scattered all along the trail who obviously were not out for recreation like us. There were groups of men standing about, a man slumped on a bench, a woman under a bridge who looked to be folding her laundry, a man or woman sleeping under a pile of blankets.
I only bring this up to say that while we bemoan the inconvenience of another week or two of having to remain isolated in place at home, there still are hundreds if not thousands of people who live in the perpetual isolation of having no home. While it was such a joy for us to be out of the house and in the sunshine for a while, the uncomfortable irony of that is it put us among people who have no home at all and know isolation on levels that we can’t comprehend. They aren’t un-welcome in shops and services because they may carry and spread a virus; they are unwelcome because they are homeless.
Last week, my regular Thursday morning breakfast club met and ate on the sidewalk outside the café where we’ve been meeting for a dozen years. We’d been visiting by Zoom for the past month but decided it was time to convene in person. A few yards down the sidewalk from us was a homeless man who also is a regular at the café and is served inside for free by the gracious owners. For the first time, we were on the outside with him. Soon, we hope, we’ll be free to come and go as we please. He, on the other hand, will only be allowed where he is allowed out of the kindness of others.
LeAnn and I stopped a couple of times on our Saturday bike ride to sip some water and get the lay of the land, and at one stop our path was crossed by a man with a bandana mask who greeted us and then asked me how I old I was. I told him and he commented on the gray hair poking out from under my bike helmet and said, “You’re much younger than me.” And then he looked at LeAnn and said, “I know better than to ask your age.” And then he laughed big and said, “Have a good day,” and as he walked away he crowed, “Hey, I was born and raised in New York City!” I don’t know if he was homeless or not, but he had that certain street-smart confidence about him that said he’s no stranger to talking to strangers on the street. And his boast about NYC seemed to indicate a pride in self-reliance and an ability to endure and survive.
To endure and survive – may it be so for all of us. But may we also not forget that there are plenty out there who are not so steady and sturdy and who still need our help. Even if they don’t ask for help or even stand silently on a corner with a sign, they still need some help. When we quit meeting on Zoom and are back to zooming across town, may we not ignore the people who are still isolating in plain sight.