Thread by @pinewalker_

I saw some talk about homelessness and freedom and thought I'd chip in with some longer thoughts. I spent a week voluntarily homeless in an abandoned military base in Maine, in mid December, last year. It was one of the happiest times of my life.

🧵

For some background, I'm an old /k/ommando and have always been big into urbex, but armed urbex is called "stalking". I'm one of the OGs in that realm. It's a good exercise for anyone wanting to test their gear and capabilities. Also an excellent way to catch felonies!

In short, I lost my job. I was working on a ship and wasn't keeping an apartment, just to save money. I was flown back from South America on my own dime. Took a train and bummed a ride from a captain I knew and got my truck back.

I had to wait about a month for the ship to get back so I could retrieve the rest of my personal articles. My plan was to move in with my mother - my father had passed just a few months before and she had sold the old house and bought one near my sister.

Dark times for me.

I'd been offered quarters by the same captain who gave me a ride, he is a good man and an old friend, but I was restless in a way I can't put into words. I had to do something, anything. After staying in his guest house a week, I thanked him and drove north.

I bought a sleeping bag. This was my most important piece of equipment. There was snow on the ground, and momma nature doesn't fuck around with cold. You shouldn't either. I went to a milsurp brick-and-mortar and bought a Browning McKinley -30° Sleeping Bag.

Why that specific one? Because all the reviews on Amazon were from vagrants talking about how it saved their lives. Big, roomy, extremely warm. You can change clothing inside it without getting cold. VERY important.

I also knew exactly where I was going. I'd been there before, twice. Once solo and once with frens.

I knew that this particular abandoned military base was perfect. It was right on the coast, but on a bay, not open ocean. It is a dark place in many ways, I believe it is haunted but less so than most others I know. Most of it is badly contaminated, but not all!

At the inner compound there was a rabbit skeleton in a puddle of putrefaction so old it was effectively soil. The place is overrun with foxes, and yet when that rabbit died not even the crows touched it. It was only a foot inside the building.

Definitely haunted.

I settled in unnervingly quickly. A cinder block building where the doors had ceased existing was my new home, such as it was. A few trips back and forth for gear. I set up a 30 year old LL Bean cot, bag on top. Set up my portable grill.

Hung the Coleman lantern off a toilet brush that I stuck in a hole in the wall. I used my cooler to keep my food from freezing, I could put a hot coal inside and remove the ashes the next morning and it'd stay refrigerated enough to preserve my food without freezing.

And then I lost track of time. I had cell reception, it was my one link back to the world. Aside from that, I slipped into this trance of simply existing as a free man.

Every morning I'd check the road in for tracks, make sure nobody was going to bust me or fuck with my truck. That truck was inheritance from my father, and it became my lifeline.

I'd charge my phone off it, sometimes sit inside and run it for an hour to make sure the battery was good, get warm again. A pocket of civilization.

It's no coincidence that it's the homeless without vehicles that are the worst off, the addicts, the scum, the utterly broken.

Let me cite from one of my favorite individuals, the North Pond Hermit, about this life. "Solitude did increase my perception. But here’s the tricky thing—when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity."

gq.com/story/the-last…

"With no audience, no one to perform for, I was just there. There was no need to define myself; I became irrelevant. The moon was the minute hand, the seasons the hour hand. I didn’t even have a name. I never felt lonely. To put it romantically: I was completely free."

This is what I tasted. I knew the "time", I had a watch, and a phone and a rifle and a truck, but that sense of freedom was sweeter to me than the grass-fed burgers I'd treat myself to when it was raining and I couldn't risk moving much.

Time stopped mattering.

BAP has spoken of mastery of space, we all understand this. "It is the very nature of domestic life" etc, and there is nothing domestic to how I lived then. I was the king of a little known place in the world, I mastered it, and my castle was a maintenance shed from the cold war.

Foxes getting uppity? Prove to them that YOU are the loudest, most annoying asshole in the woods. This is my space, I am the master of this domain, and I have the strength and ability to enforce it.

But yeah, time stopped. I didn't even measure it by the sun anymore. It was actually by meals, because that was the biggest effort I had to exert. Get the grill running, get the stove running, top off fuel, break out the cookware, work on a meal, make sure nothing froze.

Sometimes I'd stretch my meal out to an hour or so because I could. Toss your tray on the grill if the food gets cold. Enjoy the moment. Watch the sky. It's always there for you. Of course, doing the dishes afterwards was a pain in the ass. Frozen soap is difficult.

Somehow I never got lonely. In my normal life, that's a default emotional state for me, I'm kinda clingy and sad in general. But it just disappeared - it was me, God, the stars, snow falling from the sky, and a handful of foxes and rabbits locked in an eternal cycle of blood.

My last day there, a friend visited. He's a special type, the brand of autism that makes one absolutely fearless and also makes women leave the room just from presence alone. I wish I could tell you about his exploits but I don't want to dox him.

I was dumb and every gun I had was an intermediate cartridge at smallest. He's more seasoned and had a .22 pistol, while walking to the beach we spotted and killed a rabbit. One of the best meals I've ever had.

Mastery of space, mastery of nature.

There's not much more point to this thread, I just wanted some frogs to have an eye on what it's like when you're homeless but also capable and not a dirty junkie.

The freedom you romanticize absolutely is there, but it's hard to grab onto.

It's even harder to let go of.

I still miss it. I spend all my PTO on camping trips, or exploring more abandoned shit. I'm bullying my boss into letting me work remotely - I can charge my laptop off the truck easy enough.

Momma nature isn't forgiving but she's not unkind either. And those sunrises...

It's worth emphasizing that this was all voluntary. I had multiple places to stay. The actual reason I stopped was literally just that it was too cold to bathe and my hair was getting really nasty.

But that freedom. That's a drug that'll get its claws into you.

In short, don't go hobomode. It's awful struggling against nature itself and testing your capabilities, and it's flat out addictive because everything just makes so much more sense living closer to how you were designed to. Just live in the fucking pod, goy.

fin.

PS: If you have any questions, send em. I was both more meandering and less technical than I envisioned.

@Xoomer_x_nihilo enjoy. @Aristos_Revenge may also enjoy babby's first thread.

And many thanks to @LittoralPine for encouragement and prayers in a strange time for me.