Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World

by John Vaillant

When I ran into Jake in Vancouver a year or so later, he was drunk, and there were scars on his handsome face. The money had come and gone—down his throat and up his nose; for a while he’d had a lot of new friends. His hands looked different, too: it was the knuckles; Jake was big, and he wasn’t a back-down kind of guy. He was in a program, but it had been hit and miss; his longest drug-free stretch had only been a month. He was still strong and able—he was powerlifting now—and when he fell he would catch himself, but he kept falling. I asked him what happened. It was the hours, the schedule, he said, the ten days off after twenty-eight on, and when he came home, all his friends were at work, nine-to-fiveing like ordinary people. He was often lonely, and not sure how to come down after pulling all those tens and twelves with overtime on top. And then there was the money—so much of it, and so easily spent.