William T. Vollmann at Harper’s Magazine:
Awakening to the snowy sunny morning of Tuesday, March 7, 2023, I took due pleasure in looking out through my white curtains at white sun glare that appeared almost warm from within. Why not stroll outdoors? Should I take a chill, this warm room would receive me again—and, after all, certain dark brown puddles in the vacant lots along Second Street implied that spring might impend, never mind that unpleasantly cold breeze on the river, or the refusal of First Street’s prizeworthy icicle crop to even begin dripping. You see, I like to believe in spring almost as does a Christian in heaven. Why fret about unborn summer problems? The wind might numb my face, but my hands felt warm enough in their leather work gloves. In brief, I was a doughty tourist here in Reno, Nevada, on whose downtown I had fixed with the design of finding three homeless men—for in the United States, cities often rot from the center out. Since Reno’s incorporation dates to 1903, her downtown, I reasoned, ought by now to hold a skid row, or at least a few vagrants. Right away I won a jackpot of sorts: between Second and Third at Bell ran a long slushy alley with glary mountains of snow at its eastern end, while several blocks to the west a man in a blue parka, from whose wheeled conveyance hung at least fifteen black garbage bags, kept inspecting and adjusting his setup under the surveillance of a row of sparrows on a power line. I surveilled him, too.
more here.