This is a trip report from the Wilderness Guides Council gathering in CO and a Kendeda Foundation gathering in Montana from VR Executive Director CJ Ryan Mielcarek.
Nearing the Tiny Church in Emigrant, Montana on a clear October day I heard Charlie Crocket say on YouTube the words “anybody can pray for rain, but you better start digging a well.” Then he proceeded to sign Midnight Run while I caught the sign saying Welcome Weary Travelers.
What makes a man think that he can forget about what used to be
Be happy with the way life is, not think about what once was his
Whiskey drunk and under the gun
I'm taking me a midnight run
I'm taking me a midnight run
I'm making another one
A thousand miles or more I'll drive to where I lived when I thought I was alive
They'll never know I was ever around
Just my shadow on the ground
I turn east to face the sun
After making me a midnight run
I tell you all 'cause you need to know
They don't call for me to go
I hear that voice coming 'cross the miles
I got no choice but to be gone a while
I say get in you better lock and load
Don't let the wind block the road
I'll be gone but when it's done
I'm all alone on my midnight run
I'm taking me a midnight run
I'm making another one
A thousand miles or more I'll drive to where I lived when I thought I was alive
They'll never know I was ever around
Just my shadow on the ground
I turn east to face the sun
After making me a midnight run
Something about all that made me pull over and go in when I’d have rather kept on to Yellowstone after a couple thousand miles and few days on the road.
To be honest had it been any intentional garden or four upright walls welcoming weary travelers I feel I’d a stopped for a spell to cross a threshold into some open sky with no timekeeper on standby, including the one in my head.
A few days before Birdy Bear and I loaded up in the Silverado from Olympia, WA with a mission to make it to the Wilderness Guides Council gathering in Deer Hill, CO. We came to tap in to the national network of tender-hearted wilderness weirdos that have been beating the drum for over 40 years in their own way signing the song that the only way out of this mess is by journeying into our internal wilderness in the community of the wilderness. I pulled over with limited reception to hold an online incorporation council with the initiates from our last ceremony somewhere near MOAB. With that complete, I had to drop Birdy off with a sitter in Cortez. And that dear dog sitter Jacek happened to also have spent five years as VA Homeless Veteran social worker in San Francisco. No accidents I thought, and gave him a sweater for his efforts for our community.
I arrived late night to Deer Hill Expeditions to some ridiculous moonlit hospitality from WGC Netkeeper Christi Strickland then climbed in the back of my truck in the struggle to get to sleep. I awoke with icicles on my nose in the shadow of the back shoulder of ancestral lands Mesa Verde.
I jumped right in still twisted around my own axle from that driving into reconnection, service work, deep conversations, and intentional councils that stretched our hearts and our patience into the unfolding story of how to be fully human in a community of unity and difference. I listened and learned about the struggles and glory of so many radical humans of all generations each doing their courageous work finding the peace of their true nature and guiding others to do the same. Queer, trans, straight, non-binary, elder, middler, and wise youth of many perfect shades of humanity opened my eyes and heart with their stories. After some conflict exploration on CAREfully setting a container that honors belonging and inclusion for all, we eventually locked arms as beings of nature each on our human trip, with much to explore and integrate in ourselves, as organizations, and as a council moving forward, intentions set for WGC in the PNW in four seasons.
I was humbled to share just a little about me but more importantly the Veteran Rites story.
A story of unity and difference, how every Service Member, Veteran, Partner, Provider, or Survivor that courageously answers the call becomes our teacher on how to be a better human and protector of space to ourselves, each other, and the land.
A story of their stories, their terror, loss, isolation, trauma, prayer, and resilience. An unimaginable landscape of battle wounds patched up on cliff’s edge, of grief, desperation, isolation adorned by imperfectly whole humans with an unpredictable contradiction of intersectionality, ancestral roots, creativity, spirituality, betrayals, shadows, presences, identities, gender expressions, skin tone, dark humor, tenderness, politics, personality structures and individual experiences that could win the Joseph Campbell Human of the Universe Mythology Award. Every single one of them.
A story for all times, of Veterans and Civilians fumbling shoulder to shoulder to practice soaking in each other’s grief and lived experience with a one-two punch of intentional community and solitude in nature.
A story for all people, if we deploy our resources with urgency to remove barriers for ALL people to access their true nature as nature, we may just be able to sing this humanity song at it’s highest octave.
OK. I didn’t say all that but I meant to. So here’s the redo and on to Montana.
Wilderness Rite of Passage Guides Semba (Army), Sher (Navy), and Jessica (USCG).
After giving our beloved Larry, Susan, Trebbee, and Kinde a hug and proceeded to drop off a couple of badass woman elders a ride to the airport, including our Board Member Sara Harris, I picked up Birdy and deployed up the highway with kinds of food and amount of sleep I’d rather not mention. I stopped in Utah, regretting I didn’t get a chance to catch up with a few of our VR Community in Colorado, including my old Seabee battle buddy Justin. I was thinking this as I put the nozzle and set it to pump till full. I heard that big click and looked at that how much I’d spent. Exactly $74.00. Our unit was Naval Mobile Construction Batallion 74 out of Gulfport, MS. I also stumbled up a Black Rifle Coffee Company brick and mortar. Can’t make this stuff up.
When crossing into Montana the Gods and Goddesses were in good moods. Man what country.
Birdy and I arrived at 4:50pm for a 5:30pm event in Bozeman for the Kendeda Foundation that generously supported us and a ridiculously powerful network of grassroots organizations in making Montana, and the world a better place. From Land Conservation to Veterans to Indigenous Healing and Renewal, I just felt lucky to be in a room with such do-gooding all stars and learned so much about the spirit and the people of Montana. I ran into Heather from Project Sanctuary, an incredible organization for military veterans and families. She was gracious enough to make sure I at least didn’t look like I didn’t know anyone there.
Diane Blank opened her speech with the Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry. It was perfect. I was able to tell her and Tim at Kendeda before they close the doors on their foundation that they definitely funded the Peace of Wild Things at Veteran Rites. The whole deal just gave me hope for humanity and reminded me that we are all playing our parts in preserving, protecting, and healing this spinning rock. Also, that I could sill wear a blazer. Having hit my adult deadlines in CO and MT…
I turn east to face the sun
After making me a midnight run
And there we were again, at this little out of nowhere church for weary travelers so I can pass through Yellowstone on the way back to Washington. Something about this sign spoke to me. Something about stopping and slowing down after an incredible VR Ceremonial Season with not much time to integrate. So I did my thanks for all these blessings hoping no one else came in because that would be super awkward in a shoebox church. The stroll though Yellowstone was like a walk in What Dreams May Come.
Having been connected to groups like Yellowstone Forever from going to the dinner the night before I somehow felt initiated into a community closer to this land. Yes there were Bison and all sorts of 2 and 4 legged beings, but it was the quiet moments in the super accessible rolling hills and healing waters. I think I cried out whatever needed to be released from the last year of holding stories, and took some glamour shots of Birdy amidst those waters and the Tetons.
It is beauty that wells up the chest most of all. It’s why I think we do the healing in the wilderness. It’s also the place where all of the committee in my head starts the film reel of shoulda and coulda of life, and where I heard the winds of the Tetons say the midnight running is an old story. So instead of pushing on through the night, I stopped in Jackson, said goodbye to some old friends from that old story, said a little prayer at the Veterans Memorial, and headed down the Snake River.
There’s something about the snake and the shedding of skin and old stories. Of the windy and unpredictable path of life. And this was the river to truly mark my 45th birthday from a few days before, of six years of being broken open on the land in ceremony to embark on a very strange and inexplicable journey to bring others to do the same.
There felt some sort of completion here to a man on a midnight run which eventually led to the clean rivers of fatherhood and sobriety. So I got a good scream in and shouted thanks to all the beings of that land and in my life that have had my back, including you reading this. And then it clicked, this is The Roaring of the Sacred River, for me at least. Still wet from My River Runs Through it, I hopped on a hybrid Mirroring for Empowerment Practice with some initiates who held the first telling of this big story.
At VR we believe a story in nature has to be witnessed. And there I was, with the privilege of good people around me willing to witness and be witnessed without trying to fix anything about me or my story. Wild, real, and raw I shared and was held. A perfect reminder that no one gets out this ceremony of life alive and as Mark Nepo suggests, “Life is just tough enough that we need each other.”
Then I heard the news about conflict in Israel and Palestine.
Some fifteen hours of driving remained ahead of me crossing some of the most isolated lands of Idaho as all everyone in my own internal system had their say reflecting on the crisis. I finally crossed the Columbia and made it back home. A week later I am still rocked in what it all means, what it all meant, and what is mine to do as a human, a leader, and as a Veteran.
I keep hearing, “follow the drum beat and get to the grief.”
I keep seeing the image of a constellation that a few of us worked on at a workshop earlier this year where we journeyed into the root of veteran suicide.
At this workshop, there were felts put down as representatives for the disruptive veteran and the insecure civilian. What emerged in the abyss between them was a felt representing the well of ungrieved grief that can only be addressed by soaking in each other’s pain and the deep witnessing of each other’s story. I took this as saying that any action, system, structure, and culture that does not allow for all of the hands accountable for the results of war to viscerally feel the grief of war is just kicking the can down the road with a band aid made from the fabrics of fear, indifference, and division.
The scars from service are half the story, it’s the community we come back to that writes the rest. If we had a form in our culture and veteran service system where we normalized grieving together as a community more of our people would not become casualties of war.
Why this insight matters right now.
It just seems that what we are learning as Veterans transforming the conflicting wilderness within our souls towards wholeness, balance, and peace is something the world might need in times of war and peace.
Something that innocent children will always need.
One council at a time, can we practice standing down our internal armored divisions to hold the ungrieved grief and unheard stories of THE OTHER?
I believe we can get big enough to hold the edges of that container.
It think it will be slow medicine.
It would definitely take generations.
But all I can do is quit praying for rain, and start digging my well from this spot.
With a prayer that this shovel will contribute lasting peace to someone, somewhere, sometime.
