Walking Toward Peace. Cindy RossЧитать онлайн книгу.
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Design and layout: Jen Grable
Cover photograph: iStock/Yarygin
Illustrations: Bryce Ross Gladfelter, www.brycegladfelter.com
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ISBN (paperback): 978-1-68051-303-5
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-68051-304-2
To the memory of Zachary Adamson and to all the veterans who so courageously opened their hearts and shared their incredibly personal stories of healing.
CONTENTS
Chapter 17. RIVER HOUSE PA VETERANS
Author’s Note: The Path to Healing and Post-Traumatic Growth
Programs that Take Veterans into Nature
All stories have a curious, even dangerous power. They are manifestations of truth—yours and mine. And truth is all at once the most wonderful yet terrifying thing in the world, which makes it nearly impossible to handle. It is such a great responsibility that it’s best not to tell a story at all unless you know you can do it right. You must be very careful, or without knowing it, you can change the world.
—Vera Nazarian, Dreams of the Compass Rose
PROLOGUE
THE SOFT SOUND OF FALLING rain filled the evening air, pulling our attention to the tattooed man who turned the rainstick. When the hollow cactus tube was flipped, tiny pebbles trickled down the thorns inside, making a rainlike sound, an indication to the group gathered around the campfire that the person then holding the stick had the floor. When the pebbles’ sound ceased, all ears and eyes were 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