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Shattering Memories in the Mountains

The winner of the 2018 Veterans Coming Home essay contest — by Army veteran Mike Greenwood

This sort of internal dialogue played out in my head repeatedly after I left the Army and moved to Queens, New York. The tension I felt nearly every second of the day built up and built up until one day I jumped out of my car in the middle of an intersection and tried to fight two guys that looked like they should be playing for the New York Giants. Seconds after being laughed back into my car by those same guys, I felt ashamed of myself.

I made my wife cry.

She said she was afraid of me.

I was afraid of myself.

I had just become the stereotype the media was telling me I was.

I was a broken veteran and I was to be feared by all…even myself.

When I left the army, I felt like I could conquer the world, and I had plans to do it, too. But after being told I wasn’t qualified for the same entry-level job by three different companies, I felt like I might sink into the cracks in the alley behind my building if I wasn’t careful. Where there was once confidence and resolve now contained nothing but anger. And hopelessness.

“A plane just went off course and slammed into one of the World Trade Towers in NYC.”

When I heard that, I had just woken up. I was 10 minutes late for work and was scared my boss was going to fire me. That is what was going through my head when the world stood still. Once I arrived at work, it didn’t take long for me to realize that something wasn’t right.

“How old are you, are you going to fight?”

“Want to join together?”

For the next year I was haunted by these question as I watched my life fall apart, not from the horrific attacks on our freedom, but from my own attack on myself. I lost just about every friend I had during this time and took on a few friendships that did nothing but drive both of us deeper into the ground. I blew through four jobs and eventually resorted to living in a damp, musty basement that I was afraid to leave during the day because I was sure everyone around me could see the depression and disgust I carried on my face. When I did leave, it was to drink myself stupid.

On the one-year anniversary of those horrible attacks, I was forced to go on a drive with a friend of mine to Niagara Falls. The whole way up there, I didn’t want to go and hoped he would turn around and allow me to retreat back into my basement. As fate would have it, that night would turn out to be a directional change in my life; it’s the night I met my future wife. After meeting her, I knew that the path I was on was going to cause me to lose her, so I enlisted in the U.S. Army as an infantry soldier with the 10th Mountain Division.

In 2003, I deployed went to Afghanistan, where I was assigned to an anti-tank platoon as a driver for the tail vehicle. My job as a driver was to be vigilant and to keep EVERYONE out of our convoy. Not only was I fighting the invisible enemy, I was also fighting the angry civilians that just wanted to drive down their street to get some bread or go back home after a long day’s work. Many of the miles I logged in Operation Enduring Freedom were evasive miles. Because of this, I operated on a constant adrenaline rush. My nerves were always high, and I never stopped fighting off cars, motorcycles, or pedestrians during the entire deployment. After a couple months, it became a game to try to run people off the road behind me. Inside the vehicle, we laughed about it and kept count at times.

In 2005, when I went to Iraq, my unit’s role was different. We were acting similar to beat cops, patrolling the streets waiting for someone to poke us or waiting to hit IEDs. In Iraq I was assigned to a Military Transition Team (MiTT) and was tasked with helping to train the Iraqi Army to one day take over security of their own country. I lived with one eye open at all times; we couldn’t let our guard down for anyone. For all we knew, half the guys we were training during the week were the guys we were fighting on the weekends. After a while it became normal for me to question and judge everyone around me. This wasn’t healthy when I got home, and it negatively impacted my relationships with everyone I came in contact with. Externally I was fine, but in my own head, I was fighting a war against everyone I knew.

“Hi Mike, this is Paul from Huts For Vets. I’ve just reviewed your application, and I’d like to welcome you to our September trip. Your program notebook is in the mail; please familiarize yourself with it. Our weekend will revolve around it.”

My first thought when I hung up the phone with Paul was, “What the hell did I just get myself into?” I didn’t want to read anything in that book he was sending me, and I sure as hell didn’t want to talk about my feelings! All I wanted to do was go hiking in Aspen, Colorado and spend the weekend at the one of the 10th Mountain huts.

As the days ticked by, and I received my readings and flipped through the pages, I realized that this was not that kind of hike. This was the type of hike that weak people went on. People that needed to talk about their problems. People that needed help went on these types of trips.

NOT someone like me!

I didn’t think I needed a “wilderness therapy” trip surrounded by trees and dirt to tell me I was ok. I knew I was. My experience in the military was just that — it was an experience. I didn’t think it had any long-term effect on me!

That was the story I was telling myself up until that trip.

Huts For Vets is a wilderness therapy program that brings veterans up to the 10th Mountain huts to introduce them to nature and to stimulate conversation and self-reflection through the use of hand-selected literary excerpts designed around the Socratic Method of teaching. In addition, we explore the commonly used Japanese practice of Shinrin Yoku (Forest Bathing) to introduce veterans to natural healing in nature as opposed to over-medicating or self-medicating. This practice basically says that given the opportunity and proper mindset, people are likely to experience a form of connection and healing in nature after as little as 7–15 minutes of targeted focus.

John Muir once wrote, “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home. Wilderness is a necessity.”

He was right.

My story changed the instant I stepped out of my car in Aspen. I wasn’t in control; something else was guiding me to that spot and I wasn’t sure what is was. This scared the hell out of me at first. My body was numb with fear. My mind recalled the feeling I had when I stepped off that C-130 on Kandahar Air Field just over 10 years earlier. Visions of the day filled my head every time I blinked eyes, only fading and dissolving into my buzzing head when I finally took my first steps toward a group of veterans. This is how my trip began.

On the third day of the trip, Paul led us up to a spot in a beautiful meadow filled with wildflowers, aspen trees, and a slow-moving creek that is being fed by an aquifer deep under Mt. Yeckel. We read a couple poems and then began the solo portion of our trip. The readings are designed to open our minds and challenge our thoughts into accepting nature in all her flaws and beauty as a place for healing.

Paul then walked each of us over to a different area, out of view of each other. With a head nod he turned and walked away from me, eventually fading back into the meadow. He placed me under a beautifully overgrown aspen tree just on the edge of a grove that had slowly overtaken my side of the meadow. After a few minutes, I got bored and laid down on the moist bed of decaying leaves and pine needles at the base of the tree.

While I gazed into the gray sky and watched the raindrops ricochet off the leaves above me and fall to the ground, my sight focused on the flickering yellow, green, and light orange aspen leaves above me. I felt a calm rush over my body and then suddenly I felt as if I was falling through the sky heading directly toward the earth at a rapid speed. Out of fear, I slammed my hands down on the wet ground around me, and I clawed handfuls of leaves, twigs, and pieces of broken granite into my fists. I squeezed tightly until my hands hurt, then dropped what was in my clutches and did it again. I repeated these two or three times until I closed my eyes in pain and began to cry.

When I opened my eyes, I was no longer falling, I saw memories from my past rushing toward me as if I was at the bottom of a funnel. The memories spun and bounced off the walls as they approached me with different speeds and intensity.

The first to come into focus is me as a four-year-old…

My feet are numb from the cold of the grass, and rainwater is mixing with my tears as they stream down my face from my soaked hair. I don’t know how long I have been standing in the rain, but My He-Man and the Masters of the Universe pajamas aren’t doing anything to warm me. Barefoot, cold, and confused in that wet grass, I squeeze my sister’s hand as hard as a four-year-old can in the middle of the night.

We are shaking with fear as we watch my mother being loaded into an ambulance, bloody and motionless after she was beaten by her boyfriend. We both think she’s dead; we are too young to know the difference.

As this memory fell through the funnel, it swirled slower and slower the closer it got to me until it finally fell and shattered on the ground around me.

My focus turns to a memory from when I was in Iraq…

Rocks, dirt, and a dust cloud engulf our truck while our tires are bouncing down the highway looking for traction to stop. The sun is setting in the distance and is lighting up the sky in a beautiful glowing orange and yellow.

Frozen in fear, the world stops for a few seconds.

I’ve just finished saying the Lord’s Prayer and doing the sign of the cross over my tightly fastened, ammo stacked, musty body armor sixty-seconds earlier.

Now we are in the heat of an IED attack. Our truck was not hit, but the Iraqi Army truck in front of us was. The scene is horrific; men are lying in blood-soaked dirt with a slew of injuries. The soldier I run up to has serious wounds to his head and legs. I begin cutting off his pants where I can and bandage up as many of the holes as possible and help to load him on the medivac truck.

As this memory fell through the funnel, it sped up, scraping and clawing as it made its way down. This memory does not want to fall, but eventually it did and shattered around me just as the first memory had.

A couple more memories repeated that same process: they fall, they shatter, and they soak into the ground around me.

As the next one came into focus, I began to smile…

I am sitting at a dive bar in Watertown, New York. Locked arms with about 10 of my Army buddies, we are bent over in a circle like we are playing rugby, singing “Don’t Stop Believing” at the top of our lungs for the seventh time that night.

As this one fell through the funnel, it seemed to be cleansing as it moved closer to me. This memory was scooping up all the other memories as it made its way to me. When it hit the ground, it didn’t break. It stayed with me and pleaded with me to get up and carry it forwards.

Still under the tree, I stood up with my head held high and my eyes focused forward. For the first time in a long time, I was no longer looking over my shoulder in shame, fear, or anger. I was a changed man! For the first time in a long time, I was focused on what was in front of me and what I could become. I felt ready to live again.

Nature helped me to become a new man.

At that time, I knew that nature was my therapist and the only way to continue my healing was to be active in her. So, I went home and began to search for others to continue my healing with. This led me to Team Red, White and Blue, a national nonprofit organization that seeks to enrich veterans’ lives by challenging them both physically and socially. We also encourage them to pursue personal and professional development as community leaders when their military service ends.

In the years that followed, I became one of the first volunteer leaders in the later named Colorado Springs Chapter. I helped grow the chapter from four members to over 1,200 as a volunteer leader. Today they are just short of 1,800 members. Later I was selected as one of Team RWB’s first Eagle Leader Fellows, and I now serve as a Northwest Regional Program Manager with the organization.

In my role as program manager, I mentor over 150 volunteer leaders in developing and running successful chapters in their communities. I help them plan local, consistent physical activities that engage and challenge veterans and civilians in a natural way. At Team RWB, we recognize that we need strong leaders and strong leadership teams to challenge these veterans when they join. We believe that when you are authentic to yourself and genuine and empathetic in your relationships with others, you can successfully lead. Across the northwest region, our leaders have engaged with well over 5,000 veterans and 3,000 civilians this year alone. And that number is growing daily.

Veterans join Team RWB largely because they share some of the same desires I had when I stood up under that aspen tree. They need to live a purpose driven life and be challenged in the process.

I knew I was a changed man when I stood up under that aspen tree and focused my eyes forward, I just didn’t know how changed I was. Looking back, I can tell you that my passion for pushing people to become better versions of themselves began developing that day. Over the past five years, I have been challenging my fellow veterans to get up and change the view people have about veterans in America. I ask them to take on leadership roles in their community and to live a rich life of purpose and direction. I challenge them to never look down upon themselves like I did when my goals were challenged after I left the Army. I believe that when we sweat together and overcome difficult things as a team, there’s nothing we cannot achieve.

Mike Greenwood is an Army Veteran living in Colorado Springs, CO by way of Webster, NY, with his wife, Demetria, and their daughter, Crisanna. Mike served in the glorious 10th Mountain Division in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and after leaving active duty, Mike served in the storied Fighting 69th out of New York City until late 2008, where he had the privilege of “Walking the Dogs” during the 2007 St. Patrick’s Day parade. Using the Post 9–11 GI-Bill, Mike obtained his BBA from Pace University in late 2011, becoming the first person in his family to graduate from college. Mike enjoys long runs on old forest service roads, where he says he comes up with his best ideas for impacting the world through his work of empowering others to reach their potential. Mike and Demetria brought Crisanna on her first camping this past year and were incredibly encouraged when she would not get out of the tent when it was time to pack up. Her love of nature and being out in it has inspired her parents to look at it differently.

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