The therapeutic value of river rafting and camping for veterans

The Farmington River was right down the hill from the family house in Connecticut when I was a child. I read Mark Twain’s stories of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer on the Mississippi River and dreamed of a day I might take a raft down a river.

Last month I did just that, answering a piece of longing that has haunted me for 60 years. Riding a river with a group of people had an impact on me far more penetrating than any experience I have known for many years. When we set up our tents each night, surrounded by the sound of the rushing river, took them back down again in the morning midst the chirping of birds, loaded the rafts for the next section of the trip, we had to keep such a focus on the process, we had little room in our minds to worry about yesterday, tomorrow or anyone not present.

I am a disabled veteran from the Vietnam era. I have never felt I had the capacity to set up such a trip on my own. When I heard of a trip set up by Karen House, through Nonviolence Works and New Wave Rafting, offered to veterans for no charge. I knew I had to do it.

A scant three-day trip out in nature, with no cars, no phones, no payments due, I felt my psyche got reset, like shutting down a computer when something isn’t working right.

Tum it back on and all is better. In the days since we landed, I have begun and completed several projects thought about for months or years and begun work on a lifelong yearning to write for publication with this article. My sense of self and accomplishment has grown considerably.

Adventure therapy for veterans has been growing in popularity over the last five to seven years after returning troops displayed a need for change. Many troops from the Vietnam era died over there or soon after coming home.

More recent conflicts have produced seriously injured, psychologically traumatized vets with needs beyond medical treatments. Reports say 22 veterans a day have been committing suicide. Adaptive sports for amputees and paralyzed individuals are gaining favor to rehabilitate their spirits.

NVW combined camping and rafting with counseling. It has been shown to be effective for veterans wounded in combat who are learning to have a good life. They want to have meaningful lives with hope for their futures.

Karen House’s history includes 10 years work with active duty military plus two years with Special Forces. She is clinical director at Nonviolence Works, a clinical agency in Taos that provides mental health counseling and social work services to individuals and families in the schools and the community.

The agency started in 2002, offering youth mentoring to help answer a need that was recognized after the Mustang murders in Taos. Over the years the agency shifted to clinical mental health and counseling.

Currently, they work with veterans. They are taking some of the caseload from the loss of Tri-County Community Health Services.

New Wave Rafting Company out of Embudo has been guiding commercial trips on the Río Grande and Chama River since the 1970s. House has been a river guide with New Wave for 20 years.

The August trip for veterans, down a quiet section of the Chama River was the first trip she organized in connection with Battle Back Center, a program of NVW. Battle Back has plans for a community for veterans, a long-term residence for vets who have not psychologically made their way all the way home yet.

House has a passion for working with veterans. She has a master’s degree in counseling psychology, specializing in wilderness adventure, which is considered therapeutically helpful for vets. She says, “It is rare to come off a river unchanged. Often more progress is made in three days on a river than in weekly sessions in town.”

Rafting is accessible; she has had blind people, triple-amputees, and half-paralyzed passengers on Cataract Canyon trips. The next trip is for women veterans and will be 86 miles through Cataract Canyon of the Colorado River. I feel emotionally stronger since I took the Chama River trip. That made me think I could do this, too. I intend be on that next trip.

Contact Nonviolence Works at (575) 758-4297 and New Wave Rafting in Embudo at 1-800-984-1444.