Walking Toward Peace: Veterans Healing on America's Trails

by Cindy Ross

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.

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Hiking the trail gave Earl his life back, and in turn he devoted his life to the trail. In 1965, feeling “restless and at loose ends,” Earl successfully hiked the entire Appalachian Trail a second time. And at the age of seventy-nine, on the fiftieth anniversary of his first thru-hike, he hiked it a third time.

“As far as walking goes,” Adam said, “if anyone gifts themselves a long period of time to walk, and allows their mind to let go, they will realize that thinking is not a bad thing. Out here, you are finally able to think.

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“I realized, anyone can hike the whole AT if you just refuse to quit. I also didn’t feel like I was finishing the AT. I felt like I was starting the rest of my life.”

As soon as Mario returned home, Becca saw a change in him. She said, “He argued less with the kids, and didn’t shout as much. He was mellow. He was able to regain the joy and happiness he had before his twenty years of military service. Mario discovered that “he may not be as completely broken as the VA says he is.”

When some people hit this solitary, reflective stage on a thru-hike, they often quit. They don’t like how they see themselves. But it was something you have to get through.

“Returning home is the most difficult part of long-distance hiking. You have grown outside the puzzle and your piece no longer fits.”

When a sharp screech pierced the quiet night in Maine’s 100 Mile Wilderness, Shady threw himself over the person next to him in the shelter to protect him with his body. He thought that an improvised explosive device (IED) was going off, and he was going to save as many of us from it as he could. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think about what would happen to him; he just did what he could to protect us. None of us had any doubt that Shady was willing to sacrifice himself to protect us. It did not matter that what he was actually protecting us from was an alarm clock going off in his pack.

“On McAfee Knob,” Travis said, “the pain from Zach’s death reverberated through everyone present, and it became clear how much I meant to others. I realized that I was worth saving too. I had a responsibility to not just exist, but to really live and be healthy, too.”

A clear-cut symptom of PTSD is feeling out of control, with the inability to achieve goals. Gifting himself the time to walk a long-distance trail allowed him the space and time to examine these things about himself, however uncomfortable, even painful.

War is not normal but being in the woods and hiking the trail felt normal, it felt good, and it wasn’t a masking agent like drugs or alcohol.

Studies show that spending time in forests and in green natural areas actually leads to a happier, more fulfilled life. These magical places significantly lower your body’s concentration of cortisol, as well as your pulse, your blood pressure, your sympathetic nerve activity (the flight-or-fight response) while increasing your parasympathetic nerve activity (rest and digest response).

“Most folks who hike are great people. In fact, hiking has restored my faith in humanity and helped me with trust issues,” a struggle many veterans share.

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“When I released that sky lantern tonight,” one veteran said, “I felt a real release inside of me, a lifting up, a letting go of my past life.” Another said, “I was reminded today that there is a whole other life out here for me—sober and healthy.”