Renewed by Wilderness
Disabled vets hit the river in wild Idaho
Karen Bossick
Jackie Smith gasped as a wall of white water reared up in front of her. “Paddle hard! Paddle hard!” she could hear her husband Anthony yelling from behind. Smith screamed as she tried to dig her kayak paddle into water only to feel it slicing through nothing more than air. She felt as if she were hanging in the air, as she was lifted off the kayak seat.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of her husband paddling furiously, the hook where his right hand used to be muscling his paddle into the waves. A wave crashed over them and suddenly their inflatable kayak squirted through into calmer water.
Anthony laughed—a big laugh from deep in his belly. As he laughed, Jackie began laughing too. Then she realized that they hadn’t laughed like this in more than two years—not since the day a missile hit Anthony in his right hip as he was patrolling in Iraq.
“He was injured in April 2004, and it seems like we’ve been in and out of the hospital ever since,” said Jackie. “The explosion took his arm and his kidney and destroyed part of his hearing and eyesight. And, just when we thought we were over it, the bacteria came back and they had to remove half his femur bone. That’s why this trip has been so wonderful. It’s made us forget all that.”
As severely disabled veterans like Smith, a retired major, try to rebuild their lives, many are finding help in environs far removed from the sterile halls of hospitals and rehabilitation centers. They’re finding it in the shadows of Ponderosa pines that tower over wild and scenic rivers like the Salmon, which churns more than 200 miles through one of America’s largest wilderness areas.
They’re finding it beneath gray granite cliffs that tower 5,000 feet into cloudless blue skies. They’re finding it in places that are home to bighorn sheep that scamper across sheer rock ledges as effortlessly as antelope bound through fields in Nebraska. And they’re finding it in areas where the only signs of other humans are a few abandoned miners’ cabins.
“Out in the world we’re always on a cell phone, but on the river there was no access to cell phones,” said Jackie. “It made a difference. For once, we didn’t think about what was going on in Iraq. We didn’t think about what was going on in Afghanistan.
“It was really freeing. We found time to enjoy each other. And I saw my husband’s depression lift; he didn’t have to worry about what he looked like or about what the people who saw him were thinking. He had a ball.”
The Smiths made the long trip from their Arkansas home to the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness at the invitation of Sun Valley Adaptive Sports. Originally started to teach disabled people to ski, the organization began working with severely injured veterans soon after the Iraq War broke out, offering them adaptive ski lessons, rock climbing, paragliding outings, and four- to six-day raft trips in the wilderness.
“As of August 1, more than 9,000 men and women have been injured in Iraq and Afghanistan—many of them with spinal cord injuries or amputated limbs. They need to learn how to reestablish their old life and build a new life, and getting out here in the wilderness can help them do that,” said the organization’s executive director, Tom Iselin. “We include the spouses because they play a gargantuan role in their spouses’ recovery and they go through just as much trauma as the service-injured servicemen.”
Erik Schultz, who was on the trip, can relate. He has become a big proponent of getting people into the wilderness ever since he suffered a spinal cord injury several years ago. He’s even been to Washington, D.C., to lobby on behalf of a bill that would protect 300,000 acres of rugged mountain peaks and wildlife habitat in the Boulder and White Cloud Mountains near Sun Valley, in part because it authorizes $150,000 to build two wheelchair-accessible trails. “Being able to roll down a trail on your own is truly empowering,” he said. “When you get out there and overcome obstacles you encounter hiking in the wilderness or rafting a river, it makes obstacles back in regular life seem smaller. These vets came out here still raw because of what they’ve been dealing with. But then I saw them begin to let go as they experienced this soothing environment. And they had a really good time.”
David Uchic, a spokesperson for the Paralyzed Veterans of America, echoed Schultz’s sentiments. “It can be terribly empowering to get vets out in the wilds where there are no curb cuts—where it’s basically you and nature and you have to learn to respect it and adapt to it,” he said. “The beauty of being outdoors can really be a plus as well, particularly with infantrymen who no doubt enjoyed the wilderness before they went into combat.”
This particular raft trip included Andy Soule, a 25-year-old paratrooper from Houston who lost both legs two months into his tour in Afghanistan after an explosion hit the Hummer in which he was riding. Soule’s prosthetic legs broke the night before he was to leave on the river trip. He went anyway, using his muscular arms to scoot around on the white sandy beaches along the Salmon River and to propel himself into the boats. “I’ve never been river rafting before and running through a pristine wilderness—it was just great. Waking up to the smell of bacon and eggs, eating salmon and trout out in the wilds, trying my hand at fly-fishing…it felt so good to get away from the city,” he said.
His comrades, Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Damion Jacobs and his wife Shannon, tried paddling a two-person inflatable kayak on the Salmon. They were not as lucky as the Smiths, though, flipping only minutes after they got into the kayak when they smacked into a rock in Devil’s Teeth Rapid.
Thrown into the cold water, they came up sputtering water they had swallowed. Upon rescue, they laughed and tried it again. “This river has a lot of holes. Deep holes. But they told us that as long as we kept paddling on both sides, we’d stay afloat,” said Shannon.
Jacobs lost his right leg in Iraq six months ago when he got out of his vehicle to investigate a white burlap bag sitting in the middle of the road. An unseen assailant activated a bomb in the bag by remote control as Jacobs approached. “It feels good to get out and really test myself,” he said. “I was uncertain whether I could continue doing some of the things I did before, like rock climbing. This week—getting out away from the hospital and out into the wilds—gave me the confidence that, yes, I can do it, and more. It got me out of my comfort zone and challenged me to do things I never thought I’d ever do.”
Karen Bossick lives in Sun Valley, Idaho, and writes for the Wood River Journal, the Sun Valley Magazine, the Idaho Statesman, and other publications. She has volunteered with several adaptive sports programs, teaching adaptive skiing and other sports.
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