I followed Anchorage Police Lt. Dave Parker into the woods along a path dotted with sodden piles of toilet paper. We took a left at a decomposing mattress and came to a stop at a crooked blue and white tent.

"Good morning!" Parker called merrily. "APD!"

The people inside stirred and groaned, unzipped the door and passed him their IDs. Pretty soon six of them stumbled out, bleary-eyed, bed-headed and dirty, smelling of stale beer. I squinted through the trees out to the street. We were 100 yards from my house.

For four years now, I've been renting on the frayed edge of South Addition near Valley of the Moon Park, next door to a network of homeless camps. Chester Creek Trail runs by my house like a lost souls' superhighway, traveled year-round by worn-out wanderers, many of them former rural villagers living rootless in the city's urban greenbelts, their ambitions dimmed by alcohol.

Weeks go by quietly and I forget about the tents hidden in the trees. I barely notice the homeless when they pass on the trail with the bike commuters and skiers and mommy jogging groups. Until one of them staggers out of the woods bleeding or passes out in my yard or jiggles my door handle in the middle of the night and I have to call 911. Several times police have pulled a body out of those woods. One man hanged himself from a tree. A woman froze to death in a tent. Police are still investigating what happened to a man whose body was found in the woods by Sullivan Arena on Thursday.

A few days before my trip with Parker, I was in the park throwing a tennis ball for my dog when I looked around and noticed everyone else was drunk and rough-looking. A few men sitting in grass sipped from paper bags; a woman slumped on a bench. For a moment, I felt like I was trespassing in someone else's park with my dog and my yuppie tennis-ball thrower.

I wondered: Should I be afraid? Should I call police? That seemed like overkill. Why was I worried? Was I being prejudiced? If they were a bunch of frisbee golfers with beers, would I feel the same? Should I be offering help? They weren't in good shape, but they didn't need an ambulance. I kept throwing the ball and tried to ignore them. But that didn't really feel right either.

I've looked at the problem of homelessness through a reporter's lens. I know that a good percentage of people on the streets have issues with alcohol, and that there's a system set up to help people get sober, to keep them fed and out of the cold. I know there are reasons the system doesn't work for some people. Addiction's a hard thing to conquer. And maybe some don't want to. Maybe they are mentally ill or traumatized or head-injured. Maybe they need a safe place to live before they can get sober, not the other way around. What I didn't know was what I was supposed to do with all of it in my front yard.

It was last year around this time that I was cleaning out my cupboards and I piled a bag full of canned soup and half-eaten bags of chips and took it to the dugout in the park where some people tend to sleep. The next morning, as I was getting into my car, I saw a woman standing there holding my bag, chewing. We stared at each other for a moment, me in my office clothes, her in an old sweatshirt, dirty hair trailing down her back. We were a world apart, with nothing between us but a bike trail.

I wondered later if that was the wrong thing to do. If putting out food was only keeping her from going to Bean's Cafe, where she could get other services that might eventually get her off the street. But then on the other hand, was it really ethical to have extra food and live among hungry people and not share it?

I called Parker, who suggested we take a trip into the woods to investigate who was actually living there. In general, I shouldn't be afraid, just cautious, he said. Most of the people squatting in the woods aren't going to hurt me. But a few might, he said, in particular the higher percentage of sex offenders living off the grid, especially when alcohol is involved. I didn't find that comforting.

When I finally peered into the tent, I didn't see anyone dangerous. A woman unrolled herself from an old comforter. She had small bones and thick black hair streaked with grey. I introduced myself.

"L-A-U-R-A. M-A-Y. W-I-G-F-A-L-L," she spelled her name back for me. Year of birth: 1960. She was from Noorvik, she said. I asked her why she came to Anchorage.

"Because I met people like you," she said, grinning warmly, like we were old friends.

Later that day I stopped at nearby Central Lutheran Church to see Lisa Smith, a pastor who has been dealing with homeless in the neighborhood.

The church doesn't give out food or money, but as long as people aren't intoxicated, they may use the restroom and drink from the water fountain, she told me. Street people trail through the lobby all day. On occasion they scare someone or pass out. Once a woman came there after being raped. Some parishioners would prefer the church lock its doors, she said, but the church won't turn its back on them. There's tension there, but it's not bad to have tension, she said.

"I think it's a good exercise to see that there is homelessness," she said. "This is real life, people. We don't all look pretty."

Sometimes it's just important to bear witness, she said, to notice that fact that people are suffering and it's unjust. It can be uncomfortable, but that's the first step to making change.

I thought about that on my way home. The problem was bigger than me. I couldn't feed everyone in the park. I couldn't save them from their addiction. But I could be cautious instead of afraid. And I could make an effort to notice them, to see them and remember that the world is unfair and that I should put my efforts toward changing that.

It was a warm spring night. Three guys lined the bench in the dugout, passing around a plastic jug of Monarch Vodka, their dirty coats like some kind of motley uniform for a team that was never going to play. I gave them a little wave. They nodded back, squinting into the sun.

I want to hear your thoughts about living close to the homeless, email me or use the form on the right.