From the trailer office, Chongo emerged one morning on crutches, which he used to propel himself across the courtyard.

“This place is kind of where you can go and the cops don’t mess with you,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot about the true homeless lifestyle here. This is the jail fodder. It used to be you could go out and stay at these places I stayed at, but as time went on, they made laws against that. You couldn’t just go out and rock-climb and not consume.”

In the dining room, volunteers were spooning out meals designed to provide the full caloric content for an entire day, nacho pie with meat, beans and olives, sliced bread with thick slabs of butter, salad, oranges, Fig Newtons and Gatorade.

Picking at his meal, Chongo spoke of his time climbing rocks at Yosemite.

“I provided a great deal of inspiration to a lot of people to pursue a narcissistic activity, and I wonder if I’ve done good,” he said. Though camping in the park had been a kind of homelessness, he said, “I didn’t understand what it meant. I didn’t realize I was automatically a member of this community.”

Later, as the shelter locked its gates, Chongo hauled his pack through the procession trudging toward the riverbeds, night shelters and overpasses. He passed a man strapped with an ankle monitor, another marcher in the homeless parade.

“I love to sleep outdoors,” Chongo said. “Fresh air is best.”

At an abandoned parking lot by the Alkali Flats train station, he dropped his knapsack and his crutches and climbed onto a cable drooping between two 4-foot-high poles, momentarily converting this small piece of the urban landscape into a slack-line. He took a tentative step, found his balance and then danced ahead with no partner as the wire tautened behind his weight.