#44: Long Slow Climb.

In spite of my pretensions of unconditional acceptance, I admit I kind of like it when my friends spend the money I give them on something besides opioids. And it does kind of bother me when they lie to me.

Admitting that I may not be as accepting as I sometimes profess to be is humbling enough. Now, after months of emphasizing my friends’ individualities, I’m going to resort to politically incorrect stereotyping. Oh well. Here goes:

I have a friend named Kaanan^¹ who looks like the kind of guy I'd meet sitting in a bar having a beer after a hard day at work. He doesn’t look like the kind of guy who spends his days shyly walking up to people on the street asking for a few bucks. Or like a guy who spends his nights couch surfing, tent surfing, and open-air surfing, with occasional nights at the shelter (which he considers worse.) He doesn’t look like a guy who’s had two serious car accidents—neither his fault; two devastating break-ups —presumably half his fault; and was addicted to heroin, and may still be, which is arguably all his fault. OK, that’s enough stereotyping.

When we first talked, he was down from ±3 bags of heroin a day to ±1 bag a day. He says that for the last two months he’s been on methadone. Other people say that’s b-s. Of course, one thing I’ve learned is that there’s always someone on the street who’ll say that someone else is using. But never themselves, of course.

There are stories within all those stories in Kaanan’s past which may find their way into other posts. But these highlights (or low lights, I suppose) of his life are enough to set the stage for our trip into New Hampshire a couple of weeks ago that could potentially be a game changer for him. I’d say it’s 50-50. Those are extremely good odds for any of my friends doing anything they say they really want to do.

Before Kaanan’s life went south, he was a “climbing arborist” which means he used ropes, harnesses, and special boots to climb as much as 100 feet up or more into trees to limb them or cut them down from the top when there was no safe way to fell them. Some companies use those big cranes to get chain-saw toting wood warriors up there, but what fun is that?

One of Kaanan’s favorite things to do is limb near power lines. Which, to me, seems easily as dangerous as some of the things he’s done at ground level.

Kaanan used to work for a big tree company but lost his job at some point due to drugs, depression, and those personal crises; and it’s been a slow process for him to get his life back together.

Leave addiction aside for a moment. Anyone who walks by someone on the street and thinks they should get a job hasn’t experienced a major depressive episode. A little high anxiety would provide additional insight. Been there. Done that. Also, many people on the street are dealing with what they call co-morbid diagnoses—i.e., addiction and one or more mood disorders.

Getting back to work isn’t easy when you’ve been living in survival mode. Especially if you want to get back to something you were really good at that actually paid a living wage. Especially if you need to provide your own equipment.

One person I know needed a laptop. Another person needed auto mechanic tools; another steel-toed shoes. Kaanan needed about ±$1,000 worth of tree-climbing equipment. Fortunately, he had it…at his brother’s, whom he hadn’t seen for a year or more and with whom he was on somewhat tentative terms.

At one point I offered to drive him, but he didn’t follow up. Then one day I suggested it again. And he was ready. We made a couple of plans to meet up, but I had to miss one and he missed the other. (I’d helped him get a phone but he was out of minutes). Finally, we managed to connect and headed east.

When we got to the house, Kaanan knocked but, fortunately I think, his brother and family weren’t home. So, he started exploring the garage and attic and small barn where he found enough stuff to equip my friend Kenny’s chaotic tent site. But no climbing equipment.

At some point I joined him: “Did you look there? Did you look there?” We were about to leave when, in true cinematic fashion we started using my cell phone flashlight to look deep into random crevices and closets. Suddenly, there it all was. In a place we thought we had looked. Ropes, anchor systems, carabiners, lanyards, fliplines, pulleys and a whole lot of other things I wouldn’t have been able to name if I hadn’t just looked them up on the web.

But the most amazing thing was watching Kaanan liberate each item from the riot of garage-barn equipment. It was literally like a kid on Christmas morning finding presents under the tree. I maybe had seen him smile wryly before. This was the first time I’d ever seen him grin.

As we left, I noticed a chain saw on the ground and asked if he needed that, too. He said no, because it wasn’t his, which convinced me the other things were.

We drove back and I held on to the stuff until he found a safe place to store it. When he came to get it, he put it all on—a performance which is like watching someone climb into a firefighting suit. Once everything was buckled up, he looked down the street for a tree or telephone pole to climb. Fortunately, he realized it wasn’t the time and Main Street was definitely not the place.

A few days later, though, he told me he had gone out and climbed a tree. Some tree. Somewhere. And he hadn’t lost a step (a grip?). Now all he needed was work.

I knew that, with his past, it’d be hard to get one of those big tree companies to hire him. But he told me there were always homeowners looking for people to do that kind of work.

When I saw him the other day, he was a little bummed out because he hadn’t found any jobs yet.

Getting back on your feet can be a long slow climb.

1. He said I could use his real name (and picture).