The Ghost of a New Orleans Tent City

6 September 2006 12:30:52

Today, I happened to be using Google Maps and decided to take a satellite look at where I stayed while I was in New Orleans helping with the rebuild effort this past March. I quickly located the city park that was home to our tent city and recognized the outlines in the grass of hundreds of people walking the same paths between the trees and now vanished tents. It was quite an eerie experience to see exactly where the huge circus tent I helped to erect used to stand by only the outline of the foot paths around it. I could point out so many specific locations it is amazing.

In the picture to the right, if you look at the area around the parking lot you can see the trampled grass which is whiter than the surrounding grass. That’s the outline of our feet walking the camp. You can see where we all parked our cars—the almost vertical, brown path running along the left side of the photo, parallel to the street and line of trees on that side. We showered in the stadium locker room showers which are just outside the top of the photo under the stadium seating. Our mess hall (another large tent) was right in the middle of the parking lot.

What a way to have memories preserved—by the ghost outlines of your own past.