Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

Portland is full of hidden communities. Camps that crop up on the sides of freeways, under bridges and along bike paths, each its own social ecosystem.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

Photographer Beth Nakamura and I explored one of these camps -- 'Tweaker Island' --

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Tweaker Island, the name given to a peninsula sticking out into the Columbia Slough by its inhabitants, was a world defined by contradictions. The beauty of cranes swooping over toxic water. A community of people taking care of each other with love, many of who were consumed by addiction that had destroyed ties to their families in the outside world.

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Nakamura and I returned to Tweaker Island several times. We saw a man named Mitchell, the defacto leader of the camp, care for his friend David in the cold winter, when the edges of the slough iced over

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We went back

and ran into Misty and a woman who asked us to call her 'Susan,' who had been moved to motels, coming to check on their friends.

So, when Keith Feher, communications coordinator for Union Gospel Mission, reached out in August of this year to say that Misty and David were both in long-term recovery programs, we jumped at the chance to see them again and revisit the peninsula.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

We met David, who we now know is David Smith, at the Union Gospel Mission in Old Town.

David, 61, has been with the program for seven months and when he approached us, my initial reaction was, oh, they made a mistake. This isn't David.

The man we met on the peninsula was old and gaunt, his beard long, hair slicked back, cuts on his arm. When we returned to the peninsula in the winter, he was unable to leave his tent.

Now, he's gained weight and lost the beard -- a requirement for men early in their time at Union Gospel Mission.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

Now, instead of a campsite protected by blackberry bushes and hidden fences, David spends his days at the Union Gospel Mission. He sleeps on a bottom bunk instead of on the ground inside a tent.

There is a similarity, however. Both places were decorated with American flags.

David came to Portland with the Navy in 1979.

"I just stayed," he said, from across the table in a conference room, several floors above the cafeteria where people in need are fed and offered services.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

David had a drinking problem, he told us, and when his marriage broke up, his wife would no longer let him see his daughter.

"It just went downhill from there," he said.

He hasn't seen his daughter in twenty years.

"Over 15 years I was probably homeless 10 of them," he estimated.

For the last 3-1/2 years, before entering the Union Gospel Mission's LifeChange program, David used meth.

Now, David is doing the hard work of staying clean, with the hope of someday reconnecting with his daughter.

"I want to tell her I am sorry for not being a good dad," he said, "and ask if she'll forgive me and go from there."

He understands that she might not forgive him.

"If she doesn't, at least I know I tried," he said.

"It'll hurt," he added. "I won't quit trying."

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Part of David's work, beyond individual and group therapy at the mission, is going out and delivering food to homeless people living in camps throughout Portland, including his friend from Tweaker Island, Mitchell.

"There were some tears shed," David said, of their reunion.

Before leaving, we showed David this picture from the summer we met him. He looked at it for a long time, visibly moved. When we asked him what he's thinking, he said, quietly, "Poor guy."

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

We met Misty, who is Misty Smith, no relation to David, at the women's facility in a former retirement home in Beaverton.

The first time we met Misty, was in the summer. She was in a tent with a man she told us later was her boyfriend. By her own admission, Misty was using methamphetamines at the time.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

We met her again in March, after the flooding. Both times she was friendly, part of the community. After the flooding, she had come back to check on her friends.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

Misty, now 39, has been in the program for around 10 months. And she appears to be thriving. She said she has reconnected with her two daughters, one of whom was about to become a mother herself. She is also rebuilding her relationship with her father.

Bill Russell, the director of the Union Gospel Mission, joined us in a sitting room and listened while Misty recounted her story of meeting formerly homeless outreach volunteers from the mission, getting incarcerated, finally deciding to join the program, reconnecting with God.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

When talk turned to Tweaker Island though, Misty remembered the connections she had with people.

"I love everybody that was down there," she said.

Bill supports this, remembering the positive things from a life of addiction. He should know. He's been in recovery from alcoholism since 1979.

"Any kind of recovery that deletes the past creates a vacuum," Bill said.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

As both David and Misty continue through the program -- the men's lasts 30 months and the women's 28 -- both are focused on their work right now, and not so much on the future.

"I'm just cut open right now," Misty said, calling her current point in the process "the fillet stage."

"I don't go for the big steps," she added. "I do the baby steps."

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

After we met with Misty and David, we decided to go back to the peninsula, which they thought may have been empty.

Mitchell wasn't there, the community we knew was gone and the island was quiet, but there were still several occupied tents.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

In the early fall, the peninsula was inexplicably covered in wandering grape vines. Nearly empty, it felt like we'd stepped through a portal into a dark fairytale. White cranes and great blue herons dove into the water, which has been a dumping area for sewage and industrial waste since white settlements began in the area.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

The environmental group Columbia Riverkeeper discovered that in 2012 a sucker fish from the slough contained 27,000 percent more PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) than what Environmental Protection Agency says "is safe to eat without health concerns," according to an OPB report.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

Paths between huge blackberry bushes criss-cross the island, leading to empty bare spots, like the one where Mitchell and David's camp used to be.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

In a neat tent, with a rat trap and a rose in a glass vase, we met a woman Kathleen.

She's 57 and newly homeless, living outside for the first time after a landlord kicked her and her husband out of their house.

She spoke with us while she waited for her husband to return from court, hopeful that they would find a new place and win a claim against the landlord of the old one.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

"I don't like it at all," she said, of sleeping in the tent on the peninsula.

"I get scared," she added. "It gets so dark."

Kathleen has arthritis in her hands and the cold damp air enflames that and old injuries.

"I have a hard time getting up in the morning," she said. "I make due."

She has three adult children, she said. She hasn't told them she is homeless.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

On the left, a makeshift memorial near the entrance to Tweaker Island. On the right, David Smith's bible at Union Gospel Mission.

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-- Lizzy Acker

503-221-8052

lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker

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