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He hunted roadside bombs in Iraq. Now he hunts adventure to combat PTSD.
Editor’s note: This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter.Over the last quarter-century, especially since the war on terrorism began, the United States has produced a quiet army of combat veterans. Many carry injuries you can see: shrapnel wounds, limps, missing appendages. Others carry scars you cannot: the flinch at fireworks, a 3 a.m. stare at the ceiling, the sudden urge to check the locks three times before bed.“Combat” is a slippery word. One man stands 200 meters from the blast and tells the story at the bar. Another stands 20 meters away, pulls his friend’s helmet from the wreckage and never speaks of it again. Same explosion, different wars inside their heads. I know, because I hunted roadside bombs in Iraq as a mobilized reservist. That earned me a Combat Action Badge, an Army Commendation Medal and a Meritorious Unit citation.It also earned me a mind that short-circuited in Afghanistan from being rocketed and seeing a 747 slam down Bagram’s runway in a ball of fire. Nineteen months of combat exposure, then 14 years of holding my body together. The military teaches combat arms how to apply violence to accomplish the mission. They don’t teach us how to process the wreckage afterwards.My knees, back and shoulders never filed a disability claim, but my brain did. While my body held up to the rigors of service, my mind broke under the strains of combat.From 2016 to 2025, I attended nine veteran retreats. This is not a retreat brochure, though I’ll describe some of them here. This is a field report from the inside of one veteran’s head, written for the veteran who still wonders if their next breath is worth the effort, and for the civilian who wants to understand why some of us keep signing up for another week in the woods with strangers who smell like gun oil and hope.The first: Sea kayakingMy first retreat was sea kayaking in 2016. I don’t remember how I found the program. I only remember my wife packing my bag with the same careful hands that waved goodbye to the man who left in 2004 and never quite came home the same.Ten of us launched from Harkers Island into the Outer Banks. None of us could paddle worth a damn. By day three, we moved like a pod, cutting eelgrass and laughing at dolphins riding our wakes like we were worth following.On the last night, we camped on a barrier island. Wild horses, possibly left by Spanish shipwrecks centuries ago, galloped through the surf at dawn.When the van pulled away for the airport, I buried my face in a ball cap so no one would see my tears. I came home with salt-crusted gear and a new hobby — kayaking. More importantly, I came home with a question I had not asked in years: “What else can I still learn?” The answer was a bachelor of arts in English, 3.7 GPA, earned on night shifts and day classes. I also came home knowing there was a path back to my family’s trust, and the monster they now lived with might still be worth saving. However, I was not managing my malady but ignoring it, believing that my new goal would change everything. It didn’t. By 2019, PTSD had eaten my career. A supervisor who hated veterans watched me come apart. COVID walked in and finished the job. The final straw was the VA stamping me as “unemployable.” Stagnation, isolation and a complete loss of self-worth — I thought this was my fate now. It was like standing in a hallway full of doors all simultaneously shutting and locking, a booming slam and click. I felt my opportunities vanish. I had no idea how I was supposed to take care of my family, much less myself. In my despair, I had forgotten the hope I’d previously found. My .45 started looking like the easiest door left again. Hiking and climbingFortunately, my wife located an application for an Outward Bound retreat in my browser history and filled it out herself. Same deal: 10 veterans, two instructors, no cell phones. This time, the classroom was granite and rope, with a group pushing harder than they thought they could go.I learned I wasn’t the only one who still tasted cordite 10 years after the last blast or was still waking up covered in a cold sweat. Surrounded by fellow warriors, I felt safe. They felt safe. We knew we had all seen “it”: ambushes, mortars, rockets and IEDs; the close “whizzz” of a missed shot; washing our brothers’ blood from our clothes and trucks. We knew we had each other’s backs and owned the terrifying memories with the medals to match.I learned self-forgiveness wasn’t surrender, and that it was the only way to stop punishing myself and the people whom I hadn’t yet pushed away.I came home with a new hobby — climbing — and a spreadsheet from a brother that listed every veteran retreat in America. I went application-crazy. My wife smiled for the first time in years and bought bigger suitcases.Another retreat gave me three days in a 10th Mountain Division hut above Aspen, Colorado. Vietnam vets had guided the program; who better? The genius move was having a therapist hike in with us, which finally lowered the drawbridge on my anxiety and let imprisoned memories out. We read Thoreau, Aldo Leopold and others around the fire.For the first time in years, I was unguarded. No one flinched. That’s when it hit me: Not only was I forgivable, I had seen terrible things people shouldn’t see. I couldn’t process those memories and that wasn’t my fault. I felt validated. I then realized I had allowed PTSD to turn me into a remote-control IED, the thing I feared most, blowing up suddenly, shredding the people closest to me without warning. I walked out of those mountains knowing the detonator wasn’t in my enemy’s hand anymore — it was in mine.Tools, feats and brotherhoodIn Texas, the invitation was combat vets only. My first all-trigger-pullers retreat. Yoga at dawn, equine therapy at noon, group circle at dusk.What they served up wasn’t inspiration; it was tools. Devices, methods and exposure to ways of living I hadn’t known existed. I sat across from men whose shared experiences mirrored my own and found the forgiveness I didn’t know I still needed.Shrapnel left in spines. Bullet wounds. Burn wards. It mattered.The brotherhood was immediate and absolute. I learned to be present. The warrior-turned-yogi gave me the single most useful explanation I’ve ever heard about it:“It’s being in the now, without reservation, and most importantly, without judgment.It’s refusing to live where your memories insist you belong.It’s breathing this breath, right here, and being grateful for whatever life you have left.”For the first time, I understood presence wasn’t some hippie buzzword. It was the only place the war couldn’t follow me. Stay in the now, or the past will keep detonating the present. That standard operating procedure has saved my life more times than body armor ever did.One place after another, one set of amazing people and veterans at each. I was not just feeling better, I was surrounding myself with better people. In Alaska, I was again honored to be with a four-man team of warriors. We buzzed around on ATVs and sluiced for gold. Rain canceled the salmon fishing, but Denali still punched through the clouds like a promise. There was no cost of admission, simply a nod and a handshake; no therapy, no modality required. That fall, I rappelled 210 feet down the Gunsight Notch of Seneca Rocks in West Virginia, boots skimming lichen, heart in my throat, grinning like a kid who just discovered gravity can be negotiated with.Recreation in amazing places forced my brain to stop seeing the things that hurt it. Instead of looking back at trauma, I was looking forward to the next adventure and more healing. I was staying present.A few years went by while I digested what I had learned; I climbed, I kayaked. I lost my big brother suddenly; it devastated me. Several men I had served with also passed. Things felt bleak again, but I was still working with all the tools I had gained. I navigated through a rough patch because my paddle was strong, my rope was solid and most importantly, my team was powerful. Another opportunity reached out. My wife kept smiling, and my kids liked me again.This retreat handed me skis, lessons and gave me a new lease on life. I carved my first turns and overcame fear. We ate like kings, did yoga together and had discussions on “being enough.” I shared my story with strangers without tears for the first time and surprised myself.An application to discoveryI was very nearly a statistic. The numbers were all stacked against me, but I found a way to stay in the fight. The first step to getting better wasn’t medication, it was an application. If we never sign up, we never go.Undoubtedly, many opportunities are available out there. Not all are the same. Some organizations’ focus seems to be on federal dollars, not altruism. There’s no holy grail for PTSD; no one-size-fits-all modality, and no ritual that makes it all better. But there is something offered at these events that is truly special: resilience to stay in the fight, be present, end isolation and stagnation, and find self-forgiveness, self-worth, and a renewed sense of purpose.I am finally the father and husband I was supposed to be before war and PTSD, and that’s a gift from strangers and donors who will never know how much it made a difference.If you are a civilian, know that your tax dollars and donations buy more than medals — they buy wild horses at dawn and a man who can look his wife in the eye again. I still flinch at fireworks. I still check the locks. But I also own a kayak, a climbing rope and a pair of skis that fit like forgiveness. If you are a veteran staring at the ceiling at 0300, know that eight strangers in kayaks taught me the world is still wide and worth seeing. Casey Elliott was born and raised in Minnesota. He has a bachelor’s degree in English with a writing emphasis from Winona State University. Between retreats, he helps other veterans get their benefits, plays with his two dogs (River and Inara), kayaks, climbs and skis. He has been married for 25 years to a truly wonderful person and they have two kids.This War Horse Reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mollie Turnbull. Kim Vo wrote the headline.This article first appeared on The War Horse and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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