A bright orange coat, long hair and a motorcycle helmet caught my eye. On our recent trip to Portland, Oregon and Lacey, Washington, I slipped away from family activities on a couple of occasions and went looking for photographic opportunities. One drizzly morning in Portland I drove around the Northeast area near the airport. On a side street I encountered a man with a safety orange coat, wearing a motorcycle helmet. He was doing some landscaping in front of what may have been a residence or what might have been a junkyard. I pulled the car over, grabbed my camera, and stepped out of the car.
He told me his name was "Pirate" and added that his real name was Brian. He'd recently been kicked out of a trailer where he was staying and the trailer was hauled off. He told me that they later came and told him that he couldn't live in the "tree house," a raised wooden structure that hovered over the fence by the street. "They want me to be homeless," he explained to me.
Brian said he was a landscaper and that he was trying to make the area presentable. He filled me in on a bit of his personal history, mentioning that he had lived in the Caribbean for a number of years and that he was a "pot head." I told Brian that God loves us all as I prepared to leave. He smiled, shook my hand and said "bless you" to me as I left.