Sarah Haas, Nederland. Wade Henderson was born in a truck outside of Boulder Community Hospital on February 7, 1982. At the time, his parents were living up in Ward and didn’t quite make the trip to the hospital in time, which might have been the first time Wade heard the phrase, “good enough,” which would later become like a mantra during his years in the construction business, before he turned handyman and could let his inner perfectionist shine.

He would live in Ward for just a few years, followed by a short stint in Golden, before relocating to Florida with just his mom, a teacher and an old school hippie. They would land in Port Charlotte, one-time home of Woolly Mammoth, later of the Calusa “shell people,” and now frequently ranked as one of the best places in the US to retire. But to Wade it was where he would spend his impressionable years, learning to skateboard in the Gulf-side sunshine.

Soon enough his mother would retire, and Wade would follow her back to Colorado to help her fix up her place in Ward, where she now lives as a snowbird, flying South to Mexico every winter with the sun. Wade, though, lives up in the hills full time, having bought what could be called a fixer upper of a house in Pinecliff. Luckily for Wade, the lot is South facing so the holes in the walls aren’t as bad as they could be during this, his first winter in his new abode. Also, luckily for Wade, he has grown up to be a handyman extraordinaire who has spent a lifetime amassing skills in carpentry, home repair, electrical and more.

By day, Wade makes his living as a handyman. The kind who does whatever needs doing: fixing gutters, adding on a room, installing a radiant heat floor and finishing it with tile. Most of the time, he knows what he’s doing, and when he doesn’t, he studies hard to make sure he does it just right, calling friends, watching YouTube videos, reading manuals. In the internet age a handyman is never left with an unsolvable problem. No matter what, he prides himself on being top-notch. By night, Wade is also a handyman, but of a different sort, coming home to a house where ceilings need replacing, walls need moving, toilets need installing. Good thing he likes to work. Good thing he’s good at his job.

He shows the pictures of his home eagerly, especially the before photos. A two-story house dug into the hill, the house was built in 1929 as a three-season cabin. The floors are covered with asbestos tile, the walls with varying designs of wall paper too retro to scrap so, despite renovations, Wade and his girlfriend Erica will spend their days surrounded by pictures of vintage airplanes paused mid-flight.

Aside from the bathroom, there is no real rush to get the work done, with spring just around the corner Wade feels like he’s got nothing but time to do the work. And, at least for now, they seem content enough to poop in buckets for, as Erica says, “it makes for good compost if you do it right.” With the book Possum Living acting as a sort of bible, the couple is interested in living a back-to-the-land sort of life, even if living at 8,000 feet makes it a little bit harder to grow vegetables than it would be in, say, Florida, where Erica is from too.

“You will fail a lot,” I tell her, “but soak up wisdom from other mountain gardeners. Eventually you will succeed. And, rest assured, the kale will always grow,” and with that, at least, she looks pleased, pivoting to talk about the almighty power of kale and women, Wade nodding along, one among a table of feminists.

For Wade, being raised by a good-old-fashioned Ward hippie seems to have instilled in him a punk rock code of ethics, moral imperatives boiling down to an anti-authoritarian love of humanity in all its many shades. If it were up to me to name his new handyman business, I would take one of the names of his two punk bands and call it a day: “Black Dot Handyman,” or “Great American House Fire Construction Services,” which might need a little explaining from time to time, but they do have a certain appeal. Slap on a silhouette of Wade head banging, but replace the guitar for a chainsaw, and you’ve got yourself a logo, too.

Wade is 37 years-old and shows no signs of slowing down, but something about his calm demeanor makes me think he’s turned that corner in life where “settling down” no longer sounds like a dirty word. With Erica and three good dogs by his side, I have a feeling the trips down the canyon to play late-night Denver gigs will be happening with less frequency as he turns his attention to the glorious simplicities of mountain life. Who needs a bar full of loud music when you can blast the radio with your girl while you hand-dig terraces into a mountain side made of clay and rock?

Mountain Folk Tales is a weekly column about locals living along the Peak-to-Peak. To suggest someone for a profile please email Sarah at mountainfolktales@gmail.com.

(Originally published in the March 21, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)