Veterans from Vietnam and the current conflicts in the Middle East, their faces grizzled with wisdom and experience from time served in the U.S. Armed Forces, make their way into the small conference room at the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison, Wis.
They drift around the space exchanging fishing stories and banter about their daily goings on. Fly-tying vises are handed out. The veterans weave fur and feathers around hooks, creating flies that mimic buggy critters. Bright green and chartreuse furs along with pearl white fibers and silver threads shine like Christmas tinsel, and make up the designs created on this early October night.
Jovial laughter echoing from the room and words of, “Come in, come in. We are just getting started,” meet a few late arrivals as they hustle in to find a seat behind the tools set out for them.
This welcoming atmosphere at Madison Veterans on the Fly, a Trout Unlimited Veterans Service Partnership event, serves as a place of comfort and shared community to its participants once a week during the colder months. When weather permits, veterans will join the volunteers on trips around the Driftless area, chasing trout with fly rods in hand.
“When I was coming out of Nam, I was carrying my stress with me,” said Mike Burda, a Vietnam era Navy veteran and Wisconsin’s VSP lead. “Fly fishing became everything to me, it saved my life. Now these kids are coming back from serving multiple tours overseas and they are dealing with PTS (Post Traumatic Stress), they’re dealing with these traumatic events and I want to help them.”
Burda hopes that the programs offered in Wisconsin can help other veterans and their family members with the support of Trout Unlimited. TU is a national non-profit organization that works to preserve North America’s coldwater fisheries and their watersheds.
Since 2011, TU has supported the nations veterans with fly fishing activities through the Veterans Service Partnership program.
“This program brings veterans together and allows them to share time together,” said Greg Vodak, a Marine Corps. veteran. “In the military you have a lot of shared time together. You share a lot of experiences. When you separate from the military you don’t always have those and VSP offers that to us.”
Wisconsin has several VSP programs throughout various TU chapters that operate as smaller parts of their state council in Madison. Along with fly tying nights, these chapters often host trips to trout streams and rivers that hold smallmouth bass, pike and musky.
Mike Johnson, a Madison volunteer, said that these trips are offered to any veteran and their family members free of charge, and equipment is supplied as well.
“In the spring and summer, we take guys out on the streams each week to chase fish,” said Johnson. “It’s really cool to get these guys out on the water and see many of them catching their first fish on a fly rod.”
The 2019 Trout Unlimited Annual Financial Report shows that the program hosted more than 700 events nationally and served more than 4,000 veterans and their family members across the country just last year, said Dave Kumlien, the national coordinator for the TU VSP.
According to On the Brain, a Harvard Medical School journal, more than 38 million people across the US participate in fly fishing each year. Many are seeking a means to relax and relieve stress with the sounds of flowing water and the pull of a line.
“Fly fishing channels their focus,” said Burda. “It’s that peaceful spot. Fly fishing, it’s poetry in motion. It’s Zen and it lets them get away from that chaos they have internally. It’s not the fish they’re after. It’s that spot away from it all.”
In July, the Wisconsin VSP program expanded its local chapter activities and partnered together to send 10 veterans to Hayward on what they hope becomes an annual fishing trip with the Hayward Fly Fishing Company. Through their partnership, local chapters raised enough money to have the veterans stay at a lodge in Trego, Wis. and also supplied food for two days.
Larry Mann, the owner of the Hayward Fly Fishing Company, donated boats and guides for the veterans to fish with during their trip.
“I tell these guys, we’re just going for a boat ride. If a fish gets in the way, so be it, oh well. Just let the river work on you,” said Mann.
Sean O’Neill is an Army veteran and was invited from the Milwaukee Veterans on the Fly group on the trip.
“This trip was huge for me,” said O’Neill. “To be with these guys and to share this experience, there is nothing like it. It was really something special.”
Burda said he hopes that with the exposure brought to the Veteran Service Partnership program, they are able to fund future trips not only in Hayward but with other guide services across the state. He said that it will take donations raised from Trout Unlimited members and others at various events and meetings that he and other volunteers plan to attend in the next few months.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” Heraclitus
Author’s note
The words of a Greek philosopher resonate with me each time I step into the water to chase fish. I have washed away sin. I have bathed away remorse. And I have cleansed myself to become a better person in the waters that I fish.
Fly fishing is the meditative moment that I find to focus on myself and myself alone.
It was John Gierach who wrote, “There are people in my life who sometimes worry about me when I go off into the fields and streams, not realizing that the country is a calm, gracious, forgiving place and that the real dangers are found in the civilization you have to pass through to get there.”
Sometimes I need to escape the moment. And I may need to step into a new river to come out as a different person. When I go off into the fields and streams it is not to leave. It is but a time to breathe and to become anew.
As a 12-year Coast Guard veteran, I carry a different past than some. I have walked a different path in life and now I look for those moments to go off into the fields and streams to reflect.
I have stared into the face of death and I have watched its dark shadows carry others beyond our realm of life. I have felt its cold embrace and shivered from its fear. I have clung to the hands of those facing the peril of death and looked into their eyes as they seek rescue.
Those memories haunt me, but they are also a part of who I am today.
Often, I seek my own safe harbor through the meditation of fly fishing, and it is often the opportunities shared at the vise or afield that I find through the Trout Unlimited Veterans Service Partnership programs personally strengthening me. I am thankful for the program that gave me the chance to escape into the changing river to emerge reborn, washed of those memories.