Veterans find some peace where the river runs deep

[unhappycamper]

Veterans find some peace where the river runs deep
By Brian MacQuarrie
Globe Staff / August 1, 2010

UPTON, Maine — Under a canopy of towering pines, the fly-fishermen snap their arms forward, over and over, with balletic finesse. The men, who bear scars you can see and scars you can’t, focus solely on their lines, as the rhythm of the river runs through them.

Here on the banks of the Rapid River, deep in the woods of far western Maine, these veterans have found refuge from the wars that still haunt them.

“It’s the flow,’’ Army veteran John Rogers, a paraplegic since 2004, said of the river’s medicine. “It’s the sound. Continual, eternal . . . soothing.’’

They have come for the quiet repetition of fly-fishing, and also for each other, new comrades still struggling after service in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. During a week at Forest Lodge here, they sleep in bunks, swap stories around a campfire, and learn fishing techniques from volunteer guides, almost all of whom are also veterans.

They arrive as strangers and leave as friends.

[hobbit709]

1. k&r

[canoeist52]

2. Many other great programs like this...

"Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing, INC. (PHWFF) was founded in 2005 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC), with the help of local Trout Unlimited (TU) and Federation of Fly Fishers (FFF) volunteers.

Our mission: Assist in the physical and emotional rehabilitation of disabled active duty military personnel and veterans through fly fishing and fly tying education and outings.

PHWFF provides basic fly fishing, fly casting, and fly tying instruction for wounded personnel, ranging from beginners to those with prior fly fishing experience, who are adapting their skills to their new abilities. While initially focused on military personnel in the Washington, DC area, PHWFF has expanded and is offering its services to active military personnel and veterans in military and Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals across the nation. Currently, over 70 such programs have been established in the U.S. and Canada.

http://www.military-money-matters.com/project-healing-waters-fly-fishing.html

[PufPuf23]

3. Kudos for your posts unhappycamper

I grew up in a flyfishing culture; my grandparents and parents post-WWII had a fishing/hunting lodge from 1921 to 1958 and I life in age within a 10 minute walk of the River.

I am Vietnam age and went to boarding schools of polar opposite 1966 to 1970 in SF area, then my senior year on a Reservation School followed by two degrees from Cal intermixed with Federal employment. The only thing I ever bought from EBay was Hoover flyfishing in the riffle named for my grandparent's resort (before he was POTUS and before the county road was built on the south side of the River).

I was in the streets of Berkeley and SF against Vietnam and had a choice of registering rural or Contra Costa county (great record for non-religious COs). Essentially, everyone in my rural true home was drafted and I am still great friends (of 40 years to nearly 60) with disabled and in some cases many year outlaw Viet vets. I had a draft number > 300 in the closing years of the Vietnam war and I registered in Contra-Costa.

I am anti-war. Military is being a patsy or ego based upon cruilty or death. I differ military from Law Enforcement. Consistently honest and publically supported LE would keep violence from politics. The problem is that LE goes through corruption scandals local and cyclically. There are too many people and too much hate and misunderstanding on the Earth, alsas often by design.