Fishing in a quiet river
iThe 58-year old organization Trout Unlimited (TU) has found that its Veterans Service Partnership (VSP) has far-reaching impacts on its mission and beyond.
Participants become involved initially through fly fishing activities, VSP Partnership Coordinator Dave Kumlien notes, but “ultimately we want to bring them into our TU community for a lifetime of service.” Each participant receives a complimentary membership to TU and is automatically assigned to a TU chapter — and some veterans are now working with TU on its youth initiatives, stream rehab and other projects.
Kumlien’s interest in helping develop a TU program was an outgrowth of his volunteer work with several therapeutic fly fishing programs for veterans with disabilities. He estimates that he has now mentored and instructed more than 1,000 veterans, disabled veterans and their families through the VSP, emphasizing however that this is not just a program for individuals with disabilities. “Our position is that anyone who serves is worthy of our service and recognition. We also recognize the sacrifice that all families and active duty military have made as well.” Still, he cannot deny that for veterans with a disability the experience can be transformational, and TU’s website cites “miracles, large and small, on a regular and increasing basis.”
In an emotional thank you to the organization, one veteran’s wife bore witness to the power of the program to “help our service members find a peaceful distraction from what they may be dealing with.”
She and her husband, a nine-year Army veteran who served three combat tours with the 82nd Airborne, participated in a couple’s fishing trip to Slough Creek in Yellowstone National Park and experienced their own miracle. “I watched him casting in the water,” she wrote. “I watched him bubble with pride when he caught his first cutthroat trout. I watched stress roll off his body and something was very different, but so very familiar. I saw my husband as he was… before his life had been affected by his time in combat.
“I understood the serenity, the focus, and the silent satisfaction that he found in fishing…and I witnessed there what a quiet river and a fishing rod could do for your soul.”
This couple’s experience underscores the value in such programs nationwide, and TU’s reach is wide, as about half of its 400-plus chapters have VSPs. Currently Kumlien is working to set up a partnership with the Bureau of Land Management to run some veterans’ fly fishing events on their lands and says Trout Unlimited “would welcome opportunities if land trusts have some ideas for how to bring veterans onto the land for fishing experiences.”
Kelly Saxton is a freelance writer and editor who formerly worked for Paralyzed Veterans of America.