Veterans find some peace where the river runs deep

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.

As dusk fell on the first evening, sunlight glinting off tree limbs and the water, Johnston straddled an all-terrain vehicle and negotiated a twisting, boulder-strewn path to a downriver site called Sweet Ledge.

“I got one!’’ Johnston, 50, shouted after wading into the river near a rock-girdled island of pine trees.

“Way to go,’’ answered his guide, Dick Walthers, 67, an Army veteran.

As Walthers watched Johnston, he spoke softly of his affection for the outdoors and fellow service members.

“I get so much satisfaction from fly-fishing myself, and these guys have been under so much stress,’’ Walthers said. “The river sort of cleanses you.’’

The next morning, as fog cloaked the forest, Johnston rose at 4 o’clock to gather his gear. After a hearty breakfast, the veterans dispersed to different fishing holes on one of New England’s premier streams for native brook trout.

They returned to the camp for lunch, fished in the afternoon, returned for dinner, and made for the river again at dusk. At home, the demons rarely disappear; here, they are gradually drowned out by silence.

For Robert Lee, 66, badly wounded in a Vietnam mortar attack, his sporadic sleep is regularly interrupted by vivid nightmares of long-ago battles.

“I can see faces, I can see their eyes, I can see their mouths,’’ Lee said. “I know I killed them, and then all of a sudden, I will see kids, and they will ask me, ‘Why did you kill my father?’ ’’

On the Rapid River, he and others found another simple gift — empathy.

“When I came back from Vietnam, no one wanted to talk to us,’’ said Lee, of Oakland, Maine. “But I can talk to these guys, and they have the same problems I have. The same hurt.’’

Terisa Olson, a recreation therapist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center near Augusta, has brought veterans to Forest Lodge for years, invited by camp owner Aldro French, a garrulous and affable Vietnam veteran.

The veterans who enter the program are selected by temperament and their physical ability to fish on the river and adapt to the camp. But often, Olson said, the hardest step is persuading her clients to step outside their comfort zone, if only for a week.

“You don’t just lose a limb, or get your head rattled, and say, ‘I want to get out. I want to be with a group,’ ’’ Olson said. “When they take that step out of their door at home, it’s huge. Here, they’re sleeping in a different bed, in a sleeping bag, and they’re not sure exactly when their lunch will be.’’

Rogers was a difficult sell, Olson recalled. In the first few years after his injury, which occurred off the battlefield, Rogers retreated to the closeted security of his home. He began to drink too much. And he was angry.

Although Rogers has shunned self-destructive behavior in recent years, he still had not ventured to the outdoors with a group. “It wasn’t easy,’’ said Olson, who counsels Rogers at the VA. “I kept saying, ‘Trust me. Give it a shot.’ ’’

Rogers, a registered Maine guide from Brunswick, Maine, reluctantly agreed. “I ain’t done a thing with anybody,’’ he said. “She basically shamed me into it.’’

Early on the first morning, Rogers briskly pushed his wheelchair toward a dock, eager to begin fishing among a knot of rapids. In his haste to reach the water, Rogers lost control of the wheelchair, tipped backward, and lay unable to right himself on the floor of a towering forest.

As startled companions rushed forward to help, Rogers responded calmly with a quip. “I guess we’ve upset the apple cart,’’ he said with a smile.

In seconds, Rogers was lifted out of his wheelchair and into a driftboat. He then cast his flies, over and over, as the sun rose.

“It’s a beautiful morning,’’ Rogers exclaimed.

Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at macquarrie@globe.com.

Veterans find some peace where the river runs deep

Far from the battlefield but still in pain, they seek refuge