Park environs attract campers
Wanderers hang onto roving lifestyle
By TRAVIS PURSER
Express Staff Writer
"Everybody’s got a story, don’t they?" said
the man known only as Scott. He’s the most recently arrived camper in
the Lion’s Park area wetlands west of Hailey, a squatters’ oasis that
attracts wanderers from all over the country.
Scott rode his $20 bike from Louisiana
to Boise, then to Hailey’s Lion’s Park. As he’s done for several
years, he plans to camp here for the summer while working as a plumber’s
assistant. Express photos by Travis Purser
Scott’s story is this: married after getting his
girlfriend pregnant at age 17, divorced six years later, then became a
steadfast wanderer and odd-jobber. Scott, 44, spent Saturday afternoon
roasting a chicken over an open fire.
To get here, Scott rode a $20 bicycle last week to Hailey
from Boise. To get to Boise, he rode his bike from Louisiana. He was
scheduled to begin work Monday as a plumber’s assistant.
Another camper, Roger Mexico, 37, said he has lived in the
area all winter. His camp consists of an old U.S. Postal Service jeep
painted white, a kerosene heater, a blue and green tent and a big,
muscular, protective dog named Stink. Like Scott, Mexico married and
divorced young. Then he began traveling throughout the western United
States and Canada, and easily slipped into the wandering life.
Then there’s Bill Potter, 74, a World War II veteran
with a bad back, an $800-a-month Social Security check and two cats,
Purrkins and Tom. Potter also slipped into the itinerant life after
divorcing decades ago. He came to Hailey in 1990 to be with his mother,
who was dying from liver cancer. Now, he lives in a trailer made from the
bed of a pick-up truck pulled by an old Lincoln Continental with a
straining suspension. He parks the rig at both Lion’s Park and the
nearby Hailey Armory.
World War II veteran Bill Potter and his
cat Purrkins live at Lion’s Park and other parts of Hailey in a
makeshift camper trailer. "I’m just living it," he said.
"You ever see the stars at night?"
Despite the rough-and-ready nature of their homes, life
for the short- and long-term residents of the reedy wetlands area around
Hailey’s Lion’s Park near the end of Croy Creek Road is easy compared
to elsewhere, they say. No rent, relatively mild weather, proximity to an
array of jobs, an absent landowner and sympathetic sheriff’s deputies
make it possible to just stay and enjoy the beauty of the surrounding
wildlife, or to save some traveling money before moving on.
"This ain’t too bad out here," said Mexico
(not his real name) on a recent day off from the masonry and construction
work he does around the Wood River Valley.
Mexico is lean and bearded with an easygoing manner.
Thursday morning, wearing a tee-shirt, shorts, sneakers and a baseball
cap, he gave two reporters a tour of the wetlands area that he said
sometimes provides up to 20 people at once with a place to live.
It is generally speculated that campers like Scott, Mexico
and Potter have been calling the wetlands home for as long as Hailey has
existed. Today’s campers say they can’t afford the high rents in the
Wood River Valley. And even though camping there is illegal, local law
enforcement officers say preventing it is not a priority.
"If you didn’t have a place to live," said one
sheriff’s deputy Thursday, "where would you go?"
Policing the area is complicated by the fact that the City
of Hailey, the federal government and Boise resident William Simmons own
land there, and the boundaries are not clearly marked between the
properties, which have different rules regarding camping.
Much of the camping appears to occur on private land, but
without a complaint from the owner, deputies can’t ask the campers to
leave, chief deputy sheriff Gene Ramsey said,.
In any case, "I don’t think there’s a safety
issue," said deputy Ron Taylor. "It’s affordable housing. You’ve
got to balance public concerns with reality."
For Mexico, mostly it’s the fact that he’s allowed to
do it that makes him camp where he does. "I don’t know of anywhere
else in the United States you can do this," he said. "The
[deputies] are real nice. They always come down and wave. You’ve got a
pretty good police force here." But he also has an obvious enthusiasm
for fishing for trout in the nearby beaver pond. He counts off with wonder
the moose, otter, fish and birds he’s seen in the area.
Seeing nature also makes Potter’s life better. Fond of
jokes ("I’ll live until the very minute I die," he said his
doctor told him.), Potter spoke through the tattered screen window of his
camper Thursday night. He said he broke his back building aircraft fuel
tanks in southern Calif. after World War II. And though he can walk,
ongoing pain from the injury means he spends hours convalescing in his
camper, listening to books on tape and watching the world outside.
"I’m just here," he said. "I’m just
living it. You ever see the stars at night?"
And, at dawn, "I watch beaver, I watch muskrat,"
said Scott, echoing the common squatters’ naturalism. "I love it
… I get stressed out in the city. I come up here, and people leave me
alone. I’ve been outside for 25 years."
An unofficial squatters’ mayor, who goes by the name
Bird Dog, said he has lived for seven years in the wetlands. His camp
features an American flag, a television with VCR, a refrigerator and a
makeshift electrically heated barrel for bathing.
Bird Dog describes himself as a naturalist and is well
known in the area for spending hours videotaping birds and other wildlife.
He wants to save the area from development by the Blaine
County School District and the City of Hailey. The district’s and city’s
immediate plans, which include building a school bus maintenance facility
and a street department shop, would harm the area, he said.
Bird Dog considers the wetlands an integral and important
part of Hailey.
"Sleeping out here, you not only hear the heartbeat
of the marsh," he said, "you hear the heartbeat of the
town."
One benefit of development would be to clean up the area,
which would include removing garbage and junk left not only by people
passing through, but also by the City of Hailey. Development would also
likely thwart camping, an idea that received mixed reviews among the
campers.
For his part, Mexico doesn’t consider himself a vagrant.
"I’ve got $1,200 income tax," he said. "I kind of figured
that [people] think the worst. I kind of don’t blame them." But he
disliked the idea of preventing the camping. "Now you’re going to
have them spread out over here, spread out over there. At least, now, you
know where they are."
But Potter said "Hey, that’s progress, man."
He had no complaints about the development or the idea that he might not
be able to park his camper in the area.
Mexico and Bird Dog said they both plan to leave the
wetlands soon. After he finishes saving $1,000 in the next few weeks,
Mexico said, he’ll drive his $600 mail jeep to Canada for some summer
fishing. If he returns to the Wood River Valley next year, "I don’t
want to camp." After that, who knows? But eventually he’d like to
settle down to a more rooted life.
Scott, though he has no immediate plans to alter his
wandering life, said "There’s a thousand places to camp. But it
seems like they just keep working you farther and farther out" of
town.
For landowner Simmons, who has been finishing sales
negotiations with the school district and the city, preventing the camping
would be welcome.
"I understand about the problem in that valley with
the rent rates," he said during a telephone call from Boise,
"But somebody ought to come up with a [solution]. This is called
squatting."
Simmons worries about sanitation and worries that campers
could cause grass fires.
Mexico said most campers take showers at local gyms. A
Dumpster in nearby Lion’s Park was overflowing following a recent
neighborhood clean-up day, which made for challenging trash disposal for
some campers.
"Tell them to empty that Dumpster, please" Scott
said. "It just won’t hold no more."
Like Mexico, he was obviously aware of recently heightened
public scrutiny and was a little unsure what to make of it.
"I feel kind of famous," said Mexico after
talking to reporters.
Mountain Express reporter Greg Stahl contributed to this
story.
