Veterans find some peace where the river runs deep

Veterans find some peace where the river runs deep
Far from the battlefield but still in pain, they seek refuge

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.

“The last weeks, I’ve been having a real tough time,’’ said Alan Johnston, an Army veteran from Windsor, Maine, whose body and life were shattered by an Iraqi suicide bomber in 2004. “But coming out here with the vets is the best therapy there is.’’

Johnston, who received a medal from General David Petraeus for saving lives while wounded, has lost portions of his lungs, endured multiple operations, battled depression, and expects to visit doctors about 250 times this year.

“Inside my body,’’ Johnston said, “I’ve felt like I just wanted to break down, and explode, and scream.’’

Instead, Johnston took to the woods with seven other veterans in a program coordinated by the Department of Veterans Affairs and a nationwide nonprofit group called Project Healing Waters.

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Veterans find some peace where the river runs deep