on the veteran as he told his story.
The Marine spoke of exploding bombs, scraping up Iraqi guts with a shovel, and picking up hands and legs after a suicide bomber drove a dump truck into the soldier’s post. He witnessed his best buddies dying. He had been on a dozen different meds to try to cope. “When I came home from the war,” he said, “I was still constantly on guard, hypervigilant. I never sat with my back to an entrance or exit. Nightmares jarred me awake in the middle of the night to check and recheck windows and doors whenever I heard a sound.” He never slept well and had a hard time finding peace. If snippets of calm did arrive, they didn’t last. “It was all so exhausting. . . . Until I began to walk the Appalachian Trail.”
Like our rainstick, a talking stick is a tool used in many Native American cultures when a council is called. It allows all members to speak their sacred point of view, passed from person to person, and only the person holding the stick is allowed to talk. Every member of the meeting must listen closely to the speaker. The Marine shared his symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can result after a terrifying event, such as combat during war or in civilian life after a natural disaster, a serious accident, a terrorist act, a rape, or other violent personal assault. Symptoms of PTSD may include flashbacks, nightmares, and severe anxiety as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event. Not all veterans suffer from PTSD, and not all are able to talk about their experiences, but in the forest and around the campfire, the group of hiking veterans that we hosted at our Pennsylvania log home felt safe. My husband, Todd Gladfelter, and I might not be members of the military tribe, but we belong to another tightly knit community: long-distance hikers.
The Appalachian Trail is the longest continuously marked footpath in the world, extending from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. When long-distance hikers reach Pennsylvania, the halfway point, they are often at a psychologically low point in their journey. The Tuscarora Sandstone exposed on the ridge of the long, spiny Blue Mountain can trip up even the fittest of hikers. Except for an occasional water gap, the elevation map reads like a cruising trail, and many hikers mistakenly expect to motor through the miles. The heat and humidity soar in July, when thru-hikers typically enter our state, adding to their overall misery. Todd and I knew of this problem intimately. We had each completed the entire 2,180-mile trail and for years managed a hostel along the route near Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Eckville, Pennsylvania, under the Volunteers-in-Parks (VIP) program of the National Park Service. In 2013 word had spread that a group of veterans was thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, attempting to heal from their trauma by hiking. I wrote a few pieces on their inspiring endeavor, which were published in various magazines. Todd and I organized a big dinner and gave them a much-needed break from hiking the trail. In return, we hoped they’d share a story or two around the campfire.
SINCE 2001, MORE THAN 2.7 MILLION VETERANS HAVE BEEN TO WAR ZONES in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to a 2019 report on suicide prevention by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, one in five veterans has been diagnosed with PTSD. Many veterans who suffer with PTSD never seek help and have never been diagnosed. An average of seventeen veterans (the number is twenty if you include active duty and National Guard) die by suicide every day, totaling almost sixty thousand veterans since 2010. That is more than the total number of lives lost in more than eighteen years of combat in the Middle East. Our nation has tragically failed these veterans.
These staggering numbers have forced therapists, caregivers, and researchers to find alternatives to traditional therapies and prescribed medications to treat veterans with PTSD, depression, and anxiety. One of the most innovative approaches is ecotherapy, which uses outdoor activities in nature to improve mental and physical well-being. Hundreds of studies conducted in the past decade or so have convinced even the most skeptical that spending time in nature has the power to heal. Since walking is so accessible, hiking is one of the easiest ways to reap the benefits of nature’s healing. These veterans at our campfire were hoping to find that along the Appalachian Trail.
OVER THE COURSE OF THE EVENING, MORE VETERANS HELD THE RAINSTICK and shared their stories. It wasn’t enough to pack thirty pounds on sore knees and aching muscles; they also hauled war-induced nightmares and memories up the mountains. The trek spurred recollections of years in the service: images of dead comrades, the torment of second-guessing orders, questioning their own survival while others had perished. These thoughts haunted the veterans as they climbed. Mile after mile, though, they began to leave such thoughts behind, to deposit memories on the valley floors and ascend to greater heights of acceptance of their lives and their service. Through hiking, these vets came to terms with much of what they saw, experienced, or may have had to do, just as they accepted nature’s harsh terms of steep climbs, rocks and roots, and stormy weather. Their dark pasts began to recede, much as the mountains they summited faded into the distance. They weren’t walking away from their histories; they were learning to live with them and themselves. You cannot get rid of the past, but you can learn to live with it, grow from it, and work to be free from its emotional turmoil.
As they traveled the Appalachian Trail, these veterans experienced a roller coaster of emotions. They shed tears of joy at the beauty of the world and the fate that allowed them to return home while their best friends perished. There were also tears of regret over death and the horror inflicted on fellow human beings. These emotions—survivor guilt, grief, moral injury, shame over killing fellow humans, fury and desolation that others had killed their best friends—fueled their PTSD. As the miles passed, they were able to move, oh so gradually, toward acceptance and forgiveness as they walked toward peace with each step.
These veterans took hold of my heart and inspired me to form the nonprofit River House PA, so I could help more veterans. River House often works in tandem with recreational therapists at nearby Veterans Administration health facilities—hosting hikes and paddles as well as campfires and cookouts for the veterans while immersing them in healing nature. In the ensuing years, I have met many inspiring veterans out in nature, working hard to heal and succeeding at it. The heroes profiled throughout this book have shown tremendous courage in opening up and sharing their deeply personal journeys. They have exposed their hearts and souls to fellow veterans and their families to show that there can be light at the end of the dark tunnel, and that light is life. These are their stories.
CHAPTER 1
EARL SHAFFER
US ARMY, 1941 – 1946
Four and a half years of army service, more than half of it in combat areas of the Pacific, without furlough or even rest leave, had left me confused and depressed. Perhaps this trip would be the answer . . . [the hike] would be a kill or a cure; it would either make me worse or make me better.
—Earl Shaffer’s journal (1918–2002)
I FINGERED THE SMALL BLACK leather journal in my palm and brought it up to my nose to inhale its scent. More than seventy years old, the journal’s soft cover was worn by the fingerprints of a great man, a hero, and a leader. Earl Shaffer, the first person to hike the entire Appalachian Trail in a continuous stretch, carried this journal on his epic journey in 1948, through snow, rain, and baking sun along a huge mountain range. In the archives of the Smithsonian Institution’s American History Museum in Washington, DC, I searched through Earl’s writings to learn his story as a veteran walking America’s iconic trail, attempting to heal. A fellow Pennsylvanian and an Army veteran of World War II, Earl got on the trail to walk off his war. He is the father of long-distance-hiking culture, my pen pal, and a dear friend who directly influenced me as both a writer
