Walking on the Grand Avenue bridge in near daylight, hands stuffed in my jacket pocket, wind over the Chippewa River biting into me, I spy an array of clothes in a see-through plastic bag.  I don’t stop as I walk by, glancing, identifying them as men’s clothing—white shirts stuffed in with one arm raised over a brown work boot, raggedy jeans and a whole lot of socks bunched like fists with argyle knuckles.

I keep walking, and sure enough, at the end of the bridge the usual picnic table is

occupied by two men dressed half in pajamas and torn clothing, beards because they’re easier than shaving when you don’t have a bathroom available, holding mugs of what might be coffee made from river water.  They’ve climbed up from the bank where they’ve slept last night, still not too cold to do that. 

“Hey,” one man says.  “Morning,” I reply.  His white beard announces that he’s been river camping a long time.  I almost tell them about the bag of clothes, but I reason that they’ll find them soon enough, when they go on their typical walk-about that happens when the town is waking up and nothing yet is open for them, not the library or the post office or the community table.  The walk-about warms them up and helps them kill time.  I’m on my own walk-about, trying to get to an exercise class, and the rest of my journey to the Y is acknowledging the differences between theirs and mine.

Karen Loeb is Eau Claire’s new Writer in Residence. For more by and about Karen, go here.