Homeless ‘desert people’ would rather live in wilderness than deal with urban jungle.

In their own strange way, Crab and Turtle are kind of cute.

He’s Crab. She’s Turtle. They just celebrated their ninth wedding anniversary. Back in another life, before things went sour, they were sign painters in Wisconsin. They’re religious, they both suffer from epilepsy and they’re militant vegetarians.

That’s all anybody knows about them, except that they insist on dressing alike--an idiosyncrasy that makes it tough for charity workers to scrounge clothing for the couple to wear. Today, they’re sporting matching red T-shirts with pictures of couch potatoes slumped in front of television sets. “Don’t bother me, it’s game time,” the shirts read.

It’s kind of an ironic fashion statement because Crab and Turtle don’t have a couch, TV, phone, electricity, beds or running water. Home for them is a little makeshift bunker, camouflaged with palm fronds and a paloverde tree at a bend in a dry gully not far off the Lost Dutchman Highway.

Crab and Turtle are what are known in these parts as “desert people,” a small but growing subset of homeless who prefer the Spartan freedoms of the wide open spaces to the crowded, crime-ridden shelters, parks and food pantries in big cities.

Unlike their urban counterparts, the desert homeless seem virtually invisible and are largely ignored by social service agencies. But experts say that scattered deep in the brush and cactus near the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix are hundreds of people living permanently in tents, huts or the hulks of abandoned cars and buses.

Some are alcoholics. Others are mentally ill. Still others are unskilled, uneducated or just plain down on their luck. And many are bona fide recluses. “We cannot stand to be around meat-eaters,” Turtle said. “They smell of death.”

Bill Hedrick, the organizer of Desert Ministries, a small band of volunteers who ferry donated supplies to the camps, said many of the destitute are willing to endure the hardships of the desert just to preserve a bit of dignity for themselves.

“In a lot of ways it’s healthy,” explained Hedrick, by trade a communications engineer. “You have privacy and a little sense of self-achievement because you can make it on your own. You have a camper or a tent and there aren’t a lot of rules about what you can do. You can smoke when you want, eat when you want and drink when you want if that’s what you want to do.”

The life suits Bill just fine. He’s shy, quiet, painfully skinny and looks a good two decades older than the 49 he claims to be. He lives alone, somewhere off a dirt road in a hut made of blue and white tarps tied to a few sticks and bushes. As desert homes go, this one’s cozy. There’s a couch, a chair, even a reading light powered by a car battery.

Lately, Bill has been sick. He’s been having dizzy spells and passing out. It’s 4 miles to the nearest clinic and nearly 40 miles to the more sophisticated care available in Phoenix. Desert Ministries volunteers sometimes drive him to the doctor, but he has no way of getting help in an emergency.

Still, he wouldn’t consider relocating. “They got too dadgummed many people in Phoenix,” he explained. “I don’t like towns.”

Maryanne agrees. Once a self-proclaimed professional student and flower child, she quit schooling and job hunting altogether two years ago when her car broke down and she lacked the cash to get it fixed. Now, she lives in the car, parked somewhere in the desert, and hikes several miles in to Apache Junction on weekends to a local mental health center.

She and a friend tried living in a shelter in Phoenix once, but were scared off by the alcoholics and the fights. “We barely got out with our lives,” said Maryanne, 40, whose skin is cracked and leathery from exposure to the sun. “Out here it’s much nicer and you can barely tell the difference between the homeless and the cowboys.”

Jack, 62, a licensed electrician, quit his job and left his native Oregon three years ago because he couldn’t take cold weather any more. He had enough money saved to get to Arizona, but ran out once he arrived. Since then, he claimed, he’s been caught in a classic Catch-22, rejected for several jobs as a electrician because he can’t afford to get a permanent address.

“It takes money to live in town,” he said. “I never had enough to rent an apartment.”

He lives in a small tent near a stand of saguaros and cholla and uses a bicycle to ride several miles into town to collect food stamps, supplies and library books. His latest selections: “Hollywood Babylon,” and “The MGM Story.”

Jack has no electricity or lamps, so he can only read until the sun goes down. Sam and Bud, two other homeless men, live in old trucks parked about 50 feet away, so Jack has some neighbors to socialize with at night if he wishes. But the three of them rarely get together.

“We don’t even like seeing each other,” Jack declared. “It’s like anything else. You get tired of seeing the same old people.”