After Living for Two Years in Forest, Bend Man Finds Home

Up until a few months ago,
Mark Jenkins didn’t consider himself lucky. The seventh child born to Floyd and
Willie Lee Jenkins, he was born on the seventh day of the seventh month.

“And I was all of seven
pounds when I was born,” Jenkins told FORJournalism on a rainy afternoon in
early March. “The number seven is mentioned something like 54 times in the ‘Book
of Revelation.’ It’s supposed to have some special meaning, but I’ve never won
nothin’.”

He stood outside his travel
trailer, which was parked in the woods off of China Hat Road, south of Bend.
After being there for two years, he’d become comfortable enough to cook for his
neighbors. He fired up his grill, a package of chicken leg quarters thawing
nearby. He poked at the rock-hard chicken, then shared moments from his
childhood, the struggles he’s faced as a man and a dream that keeps him going.

Mark Jenkins pets his dog, Penny, while thawing some chicken to cook on a grill at his campsite off China Hat Road. Jenkins plans to move into an apartment at Cleveland Commons when the area off China Hat Road is closed by the U.S. Forest Service. Credit: Joe Kline

At age 6, Jenkins said he
began picking beans to earn money for school clothes. By age 10, he’d joined
his uncles as a logger. Though he didn’t graduate high school, and can’t read
much, Jenkins said he was trained to become an arborist.

“I’ve worked hard all my
life,” said Jenkins, who’s now 65.

Jenkins doesn’t consider
himself homeless. He’s got a trailer, a truck, a couple of dogs and a variety
of tools and parts strewn about his camp.

“Home is where my heart’s
at,” he said.

While the semantics of the
word “homeless” don’t add up for Jenkins, the Deschutes National Forest Service
intends to forcibly remove him, along with somewhere between 50 to 200 other
long-term campers in the area, on May 1. Ostensibly, the sweep is meant to keep
people safe from controlled burns and other planned forest management
activities.

While many of the campers
who live in the forest don’t know where they’ll go, Jenkins, who’s been living
there since November 2023, is one of the lucky ones. He’s been invited to move
into an apartment at Cleveland Commons, a first-of-its-kind permanent supportive housing project
in Bend.

“The Devil Came Into My Life”

Though he was born in North
Bend, near Coos Bay, Jenkins spent part of his childhood in Grimsley,
Tennessee, near the Kentucky border.

“My daddy was a moonshine
runner, and my momma was a preacher,” Jenkins said. “My grandaddy was a coal
miner… until the depression hit. It wiped out everything. We lost him for a
while there, but he never left us in a bad way, a bad position.”

Jenkins pointed to a
pattern that emerged in Appalachia around that time, as many men who had no
discernible way to provide for their families disappeared into drink and
wandering. Sundays were always a little weird in the Jenkins household, he
said.

Mark Jenkins pets his dog, Penny, as he talks about how he moved to his campsite off China Hat Road. Credit: Joe Kline

“Momma would preach love
and forgiveness at church in the mornings,” Jenkins said. “Then she’d come home
and cook chicken, biscuits and gravy. My dad would come staggering in. She’d
say grace, then look at him sideways.”

One such Sunday, his dad,
Floyd, staggered in and took a seat next to his son while Willie Lee was saying
grace.

“My daddy grabbed hold of
my hand and said something,” Jenkins said. “He got one syllable out, then he
yelped and squeezed my hand — hard.

“I looked up,” Jenkins
continued, “and he had a fork dangling from his cheek. He never interrupted
grace again after that.”

The feisty Willie Lee died
when Jenkins was a little over 5 years old, leaving a void in the boy’s world.

“That was the day the devil
came into my life,” he said. “My older sister, Ruth Anne Jenkins, raised me
after that. She did her best, but our family fell apart. It was a lot of rough
times after that.”

Picking Up The Pieces

While Ruth Anne cared for
Jenkins, his dad, Floyd, was still alive. Jenkins said that not long after his
mom died, Floyd suffered a severe stroke. Floyd lived another 18 years, during
which time he moved with his kids back to Oregon.

Jenkins said Floyd, an avid
fisherman, caught a 69-pound striped bass while visiting Coos Bay.

“That’s without the guts
and gills,” Jenkins said with a sense of pride. “Anybody who knows anything
about fishing, that’s a hell of a catch. It probably weighed 100 pounds.”

Mark Jenkins stands outside his campsite off China Hat Road. “This ain’t an easy life out here man,” Jenkins said. Credit: Joe Kline

While Jenkins inherited
Floyd’s love of fishing, he’d come to resent his father for passing on his
addiction, and the trouble he’d seen because of it. A study by the American Addiction Centers found that one-third of people experiencing homelessness
are actively battling addiction, and two-thirds have a lifetime history of
substance abuse disorder.

“I didn’t forgive him until
I was 33, and in Narcotics Anonymous (NA),” Jenkins said, poking again at the
chicken, to see if it had thawed. “It wasn’t until I learned how the disease
works, how addiction works, that I could forgive my pops.”

Jenkins began attending NA
before serving 48 months in a California penitentiary on gun charges. Jenkins
said he wasn’t violent. He liked to drink, he liked to smoke a doobie, but the
drugs on today’s market are confusing and scary to old-timers like Jenkins.

“I’ve been around drugs
since… the late ’60s,” he said as the rain let up. “I’ve seen biker dope, which
was straight poison, heroin, all that. But that blue powder — Fentanyl, Skittles,
they call it all kinds of names — is something different.

“People are dropping like
flies,” he added after a pause. “It’s tearing our world apart.”

Keeping A Dream Alive

Like Floyd, “a good
Southern man,” Jenkins wrestles with a battery of health challenges, addiction,
high blood pressure and cholesterol and carpal tunnel syndrome among them. But
he’s still telling stories, cracking jokes, smiling.

“If I’d known I was going
to live this long,” he said, “I would have taken better care of my body.”

Mark Jenkins checks on his dog, Penny, before leaving his campsite off China Hat Road for a medical appointment. Credit: Joe Kline

Back at China Hat, before
the chicken could thaw, Katie DeVito, a member of the Homeless Outreach
Services Team of Deschutes County Behavioral Health, arrived to take Jenkins to
see Mosaic’s mobile health care
providers who were visiting the
area.

DeVito is part of a team
that makes three to four visits to the China Hat and Cabin Butte areas each
week. DeVito helped Jenkins apply for the Cleveland Commons apartment, work
through a screening process and sign the lease. She also connected Jenkins with
Stacey Witte of REACH, who helped find funding for the required security
deposit.

DeVito’s supervisor,
Colleen Thomas, said that her team has been busy over the past month,
connecting with individuals in the community to ensure they’re equipped and
able to cope with upcoming closures and changes in weather.

“Our work with Mr. Jenkins
is much like the support and services we provided to many individuals
throughout Deschutes County,” Thomas told FORJ. “We are fortunate that he has
allowed us to join him on his journey into housing and we will continue to
support him in what he needs during this next chapter of his life.”

Jenkins said that the
Project SHARE van, an outreach program run by Shepherd’s House, often manned by Tim Ellis and volunteer Lynd Wieman,
helped by bringing propane, water, food and other supplies.

“I’m grateful beyond words
for these folks and the services they provide,” said Jenkins, poking again at
the chicken, which was still frozen. “But it’s a little scary for me. It’s a
different way of life out here. Many of us have become ‘socially unacceptable.’
I don’t know what to expect.”

Even with an apartment
lined up, the ex-logger who loves to fish, clam and crab, still has big dreams
that can’t be landlocked.

“I’m a coastal boy, I get a
lot of strength from the ocean,” he said. “Once I get settled, I’m going to
build a houseboat. I’m not sure where I’ll park it. Could be the Columbia
River, could be somewheres along the Pacific Ocean. We’ll have to wait and see.”

With a place to call home
for the foreseeable future, he said he’s grateful that he now has a fighting
chance to follow that dream.

Homelessness: Real Stories, Real Solutions is a journalism lab funded by Central Oregon Health Council under FORJournalism, an Oregon nonprofit dedicated to supporting journalism statewide. Sign up for weekly newsletters to receive updates.

This article appears in The Source Weekly April 3, 2025.