His first Outward Bound experience, five years ago, was not specifically designed for veterans, but it helped him look beyond his Vietnam experience. O’Rourke, who received two Purple Hearts in Vietnam, has participated in Outward Bound courses before and is a true believer. But the specter of emotional trauma loomed just beyond most conversations.īy being pushed to their physical and emotional limits in the company of military men who had seen it all before, however, the veterans learned how to confront emotional injuries like post-traumatic stress disorder in a way that traditional group therapy cannot hope to replicate. Physical injuries were common in this group, and they eagerly compared the bands of scar tissue, shiny and too smooth, that crisscrossed their bodies. This program was designed to be a part of their continuing therapy, which for some has lasted as long as five years. These men may have left the war, but it never left them. The five-day veterans’ course, however, sought to be much more. Strangers come together, they are presented with activities that challenge them mentally and physically, and, ideally, their shared experience creates a strong bond among the members. Stripped of life’s routines, they stood under an iron-gray early morning sky and finally allowed the tears to fall for friends who would never see this place.Īll Outward Bound courses - whether for people seeking wilderness experience, for troubled teenagers seeking a new course in life, or for adult professionals taking a moment to reflect on the road they’ve taken - follow a carefully designed arc. But on the fourth day of their five-day journey in mid-July, after more than three hours of tough climbing up steep, moss-covered scree fields and beyond the tree line, these hard military men, ranging in age from 23 to 52, mourned in silence, 13,000 feet above sea level on the summit of Virginia Peak. They were a wary group of strangers, guarded and slow to trust, who had arrived at the Outward Bound Wilderness school in Leadville, Colo., a few days before, wondering how a one-week course in the wilderness could help them heal. Some had seen combat so close they killed with their knives. Others couldn’t gather memories blown away by an explosion. Several knew the pain of bullets tearing through flesh. THE nine men who climbed to the summit of the Colorado mountain were combat veterans who had fought in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.
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