DON

PHOTO BY RANDY BACON

DON’S STORY

I’m from Wichita Kansas. I have been homeless for four years and living in the cold is the hardest part of being homeless. This is my fourth winter, and whew, it's been hard. Summer’s not too bad, but I can’t do the winters no more. The cold gets to you and the city just don't seem to care about the homeless. I hope that changes. t’s going to take a lot of people to stand up against them. Anywhere the homeless can stay, they’re taking it out - taking the woods out so that we cannot camp anymore. I was out there in a camp off and on and it was right in the middle of a flood zone, though. I’ve been flooded out four times this year already. We’ve still got the rainy months coming up!

One of the little things I can enjoy at my camp is there’s plenty of deer. I see about five or six every morning. I’ve got close to three of them. I just lay on my stomach, making no sounds. I ain't seen any bucks out there - I see a lot of does. I come out of my tent one night and there was one standing there not 100 yards away, staring at me.

The problem with the resources around here is there’s really no homeless shelters that take pets. And there is only one only place you can even stay for men. There’s lots of places for females around here. That’s one thing I can say around here - if you go hungry, there’s something wrong. Between this mission, this church and this organization you can get a meal everyday of the week. If you go hungry, there’s something wrong. There’s someplace that feeds every night.

What lessons have I learned? Don’t become homeless. Losing my job led to my homelessness. I lost my apartment - but that’s fixing to change. Regardless of whether I have any money or not, I’ll just have to continue to camp out in the woods above the lake. I am trying hard to get me a job. I was offered a job that starts in a month - I’m going to go see if it's still available. I hope to be working soon.

My dream is to be close to my three-year-old, Thunder. I am gonna move closer to him. I am forty miles away now, but gonna move close so I can hop on my bike and be there within an hour. I can take my extra tent with me, pitch it on the river, spend the weekend with him. It's just the little things you want when you are homeless that I think people who aren't forget about. And, people forget you are a human being.