Three years ago, when we lived near the railroad station, I saw one day in the spring a group of homeless people I recognized get off the train carrying duffel bags. Only at the moment did I realize I hadn’t seen them on the streets since the weather had gotten cold. The woman in her thirties or forties with blond hair who talked to herself. The elderly man with a cane that seemed to be made of duct tape. We were gone last year for research, so I haven’t seen them in a long time. I remembered, when it got warm, that I hadn’t seem them in the fall, but that could have easily been because I barely went out. But I wondered if I’d ever see them again.
Sure enough, the old man at least is here. But without his cane.
The homeless people seem like they migrate for the winter and are back with the warmer weather although they may never have been very far away all along. Hopefully the elderly man recovered enough not to need the cane but it is more likely that it broke, got lost or was stolen.