Dispatch #2. May 2022.

We live in an age of instant everything. Instant soup. Instant coffee. Fast foods. High speed Internet. We want everything instantly. I fear we are becoming an impatient culture. We are forgetting those days when it took a long time to get to California by horse and wagon. It took a long time to cut down the trees to build your Log house. It took a long time to plant a garden and wait for the harvest. It took a long time for a letter to reach a loved one, and for you to get an answer. We live in an age where we want to just push a button, and get what we want, see who we want, talk to whom we want, or make another instant friend on Facebook.

We carry a campfire with us in a backpack, disguised as a tiny camping stove with an attachable bottle of fuel. We heat water and add it to a pouch of dried food and have an instant meal! All we have to do is add water! We’ve come a long way, or have we?

I left Homer Alaska, and traveled here to freedom ranch close to Wise River Montana. It took me almost 24 hours. Three flights. Two long layovers. And then a 2 Hour Dr. it was a brutal redeye flight. I had jet leg and my neck hurt from the three hours of sleep I got between Anchorage and Denver. So to make myself feel better I did what I always do. I thought about my father’s journey from Switzerland to Homer Alaska. First by steamship, then hitchhiking across the United States to Seattle. Then another steamship to Seward Alaska. And then walking a couple of hundred miles to Homer, crossing wilderness, swamps, mountains and glaciers. I felt instantly better as I always do.

I came down here to this beautiful serene natural setting beside the gently flowing big hole river, to sing and tell stories to some fellow veterans. These veterans were brought here by an organization called Project Healinh Waters Fly Fishing. Here at freedom ranch, surrounded by fellow veterans who share similar traumatic experiences, and floating down the peaceful river while fly fishing, magic happens, healing happens, camaraderie and deep connections happen. It is humbling to witness this, to be part of this. No therapists. No medicine prescribed. Just nature. Just healing water. Just caring Veterans who smile and nod and validate as you tell your story. They don’t need advice. They don’t need sympathy. They just need that nodding head and knowing smile, saying, “I hear you, I’ve been there, I know what you’re going through, I know what you’ve been through, I admire your courage, I got your back.“

Tears flow. The healing waters flow. And as veterans, collectively and individually, we take another step towards the light, towards higher Ground.

At the end of my first evening of performing for these veterans, I talked for a few minutes about how I always feel connected so quickly to fellow veterans. It is similar to meeting a fellow recovering alcoholic. You instantly know you are among family, you are among your fellow tribesmen. Sort of like meeting a long lost friend you haven’t seen in a while. All the memories of all the things you have done together come flooding back in just an instant. You look at each other and you recognize each other. There is a strong bond of commonality and understanding. The difference and the details don’t matter. He might have been a cocaine addict, I was an alcoholic. He was in the infantry in Iraq, I was in the artillery in Vietnam. He was wounded I wasn’t. He did three tours I only did one. He was not in a combat zone when he was seriously injured during training, another guy was seriously injured in combat. The details really don’t matter. We share a much larger commonality, of what we’ve been through, and what we are now doing in an attempt to get to a better place, in an attempt to find purpose and meaning and joy in life, in an attempt to no longer be an angry or depressed victim, believing we have no choices. That is our bond that is our commonality.

I went on to say that meeting fellow veterans is like meeting instant friends.

Jack, sitting just to my right, looked out the window at the big hole river flowing slowly by, full of healing water, bank to bank. He pointed at the river, and with his booming deep bass voice, he said, “yep instant friends, all you gotta do is add water.”

I love it! I’ll take it! Instant friends. Years in the making.