Honoring and celebrating veterans and the healing power of wild places
I come to this work from a very personal place. Wild public lands changed my life, rescuing me from mental health challenges throughout my childhood and teenage years. Wild places sustain me and give me hope; they are my rock. Maybe it's the same for you.
At Standing Trees, we talk a lot about the importance of wild public lands for their intrinsic value, for biodiversity, for the climate, for clean water, and for lessening the impacts of floods and droughts, to name just a handful of the many reasons why wildlands are critically important. One benefit of wildlands that we don't talk about nearly enough is mental health.
Veterans returning from service are all-to-often left to grapple with the enormity of their experiences on their own, or only through traditional counseling and prescription drugs. This simply isn't enough for many veterans who are struggling with PTSD, depression, addiction, disability, or any of a number of challenges that can result from serving in our nation's military. I get it: traditional western medicine didn't work for me, either, and my challenges - though different in nature - seem trivial in comparison to the trauma suffered by combat veterans.
Ten years ago, I had the opportunity to launch a partnership with a veteran of the Iraq War to bring veterans of all ages into Montana's wild country to help soothe the mental wounds of combat. The conversations we had around the fire and the hikes we shared to high mountain peaks and lakes will always stay with me.
Through the same veterans outreach program, I also had the privilege of getting to know the amazing grizzly bear expert, wildland activist, Vietnam War veteran, and author, Doug Peacock (you might know Doug as the model for Hayduke in Edward Abbey's "The Monkey Wrench Gang"). In his book, Walking It Off: A Veteran's Chronicle of War and Wilderness, Doug writes that:
"I first came to [(what Doug calls the 'Grizzly Hilton')] as a wounded warrior...for the danger. I didn't know why, beyond that the grizzly was considered the most dangerous animal in North America. For all the pain and horror, war teaches little. Its peril led only to killing and destruction. After Vietnam, I was looking for a new, healthier kind of ordeal... What was invaluable was the way the bears dominated the psychic landscape. After Vietnam, nothing less would anchor the attention. The grizzly instilled enforced humility; you were living with a creature of great beauty married to mystery who could chew your ass off anytime it chose."
Life brings each of us to the wild for different reasons, but one thing that many of us consistently find in and treasure about wild places is the sense of awe that I think Doug is describing in the preceding passage. Awe exists at the boundary of fear and elation. Perhaps like Doug, and maybe like you, I have found no clearer path to awe than experiences in wild places. From that awe grows reverence and love: love for oneself, and love for the other. In awe we see ourselves in context; as both tiny, insignificant atoms of creation, and enormous agents of change in a world begging for justice-seekers and fighters. Awe is at once belittling in the healthiest possible way, and confidence-inducing without the ego.
Does awe require the powerful presence of a grizzly bear or a close encounter with death? Absolutely not. We can -- and we must -- all find awe in our own lives, wherever we happen to be. On a recent walk from Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood to the Charles River, I wandered through Frederick Law Olmsted's Emerald Necklace, which was my closest "wild" place when I was growing up. Amidst giant oaks on the banks of the Muddy River, the ambulance sirens, honking horns, and clickety-clack of the nearby D-line subway faded away, and I was overcome by the awesome beauty of this shared wild space in the heart of the city. As Olmsted wrote: "Nature is not a luxury, but a necessity. We need the calming influence of green spaces to cleanse our souls and rejuvenate our spirits."
On this Veterans Day, we honor and celebrate those who have served. We also honor and celebrate those wild places -- from urban green spaces to vast wildlands -- that have served as lifeboats for many a returning veteran, and for countless others seeking peace, joy, belonging, and a healthy dose of humility in an increasingly frenetic, disconnected, and convoluted world.