“I was a whole different species,” Adam said. “I never wanted to settle down before Nicole, but as soon as we met, we were so immediately sure of each other.” After fifteen hundred miles, he decided to get off the trail and begin his life with Nicole. “You are out here to benefit you, to find peace in nature. If it becomes more stressful to stay, then it’s your time to go. I celebrated that I got as far as I did on the trail. The AT showed me how to long-distance hike. It showed me that I can go back out there, again and again, and I will return to the AT in my life.” It was a very hard decision, but the trail had worked its magic on Adam.
The couple planned an epic nine-month trip. They sold their belongings and their vehicles, found homes for their dogs, and headed to New Zealand. “As far as walking goes,” Adam said, “if anyone gifts themselves a long period of time to walk, and allows their mind to let go, they will realize that thinking is not a bad thing. Out here, you are finally able to think. You go into the Marines and throw your hat in the air when you graduate, but when you get out, you are absolutely lost. You don’t know what to do, and if you take the wrong road you’re fucked. You learn out here to accept, not forget what happened in the military.” After all, acceptance is the final stage in the grieving process.
AFTER NICOLE AND ADAM’S AROUND-THE-WORLD TRIP, THE COUPLE MARRIED and settled in Las Vegas, and he started his own guide business. Like Nicole, Nevada had captured Adam’s heart. Since his AT hike, he has a different way of going about things. Instead of pretending his trauma is not there, Adam has learned to accommodate it and cope. He still has his moments and nightmares, but he handles them a lot better. And Nicole helps. “She grounds me,” Adam says. “Without my foundation, I could never stand up.” He isn’t trying to get back to who he was. He doesn’t want to be that type of high-anxiety person anymore. He is much calmer and has that same effect on others.
Adam is working on accepting that his PTSD won’t disappear, but he can manage the symptoms when they show up. “Now I go with the happiest choice,” he says. “I go with the outcome of fun. I decided that I will always choose the path that creates joy. I aim to never get disgruntled. I laugh at flat tires. I can stay optimistic when it gets really shitty. I know it will come out better. I have no regrets in my life. If it wasn’t for all those hardships I experienced, as well as being a Marine and serving my country, I would not be the man I am today.”
On the AT, Adam learned to make conversation with strangers. Having thru-hiked the AT and lived on the trail gives him credibility in the eyes of his tour customers. As a guide, he goes a few steps farther than most. He takes a lot of photos of his clients, and within hours they have a direct link to their photo album. He has guided folks from the Netherlands, Germany, Israel, and Tasmania, all within the first year of his business.
People might get scared out here in the desert on our hikes, but they experience a breakthrough when they leave their comfort zone. I go out of my way to encourage them. I show them how to lock hands and help one another over an obstacle. It is extremely gratifying to help people realize what they are made of. I get that amazing honor by revealing how hiking has benefitted me and is everything in my life. Some of these people have never seen the screen on their phone say ‘no service’ except in an airplane, but it is wilderness out here. Some have never been on a hike before. It isn’t all butterflies and rainbows, but it is hard to get an awkward moment out of me. I won’t let it happen.
ADAM LED ME ON TWO EARLY-MORNING HIKES BEFORE THE SUN CLIMBED high in the desert sky and grew hot. We went to one of his favorite spots, called “Fire Wave.” We saw an amazing array of flowering cacti and watched lizards emerge from rocks and pose for their portraits. Adam offered me his hand when we traversed a ledge and gave me a boost when we took a long step. On the way back to his vehicle, as I watched his calf muscle flex and move his AT tattoo, I was reminded of his start in nature and all he has overcome and accomplished since then. He has learned to notice beauty, he has learned new things that are not related to survival, and how to share them with others—all aspects of peacetime living.
Adam has come a long way, thanks to the healing power of his time on the trail. Leading researcher Simone Kühn of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin explains it this way: “Living in the vicinity of nature has a profound and far-reaching impact on longevity, levels of aggression, cognitive development, and even how kind we are to others.” Adam has some advice for veterans: “Try to go as natural as possible with your healing and remedies. Find something that you truly love to do and do it.” He is more comfortable out in the desert than he is at home within four walls. “Hiking is my outlet. I like the physical part, the exploration of it. Hiking encourages you to be in the moment, to focus.” And the science of being in nature bears this out, as psychologist Lynne Williams explains: “Natural daylight also helps with depression, keeping circadian rhythms appropriate. Exercise reduces stress, produces our body’s natural form of morphine (which helps with physical and emotional pain), and produces serotonin, an important hormone and neurotransmitter for good mental health.” Being in nature cues up relaxed, calm, focused alpha waves in the brain.
“My worst days are when I don’t get outdoors,” Adam says. “Nature is my therapy. It is my fitness, my livelihood. It is everything to me.” After a guided hike, when clients ask how many miles they hiked on the way back to their car, Adam replies with a satisfied grin, “It’s not about the miles, it’s about the smiles.”
CHAPTER 4
TOM GATHMAN
US MARINE CORPS, 2006 – 2010
THE FIRST THING THAT STRIKES you when meeting Marine veteran Tom Gathman is his happy-go-lucky nature. His goofball antics, infectious sense of humor, and frequent laughter are not typical personality traits of a combat veteran. How can this Marine, who served two tours in Iraq, during the most intense time of the war, appear so unscathed? His first deployment was in 2007. On foot patrol at a security post, he was run ragged doing intense, exhausting, grueling work. On his second tour (with his buddy Adam Bautz, profiled in the preceding chapter) Tom performed clandestine operations in a surveillance and target-acquisition platoon. He saw some horrible shit in Iraq and did some things he isn’t proud of, but he appears to have figured out the way to happiness. In a roundabout way, the Marines led Tom to the trail and the life it provides.
In high school Tom was on a path of self-destruction. As young as thirteen, he began running with a bad crowd; in fact he was the ringleader. At eighteen, he took his father’s car to a local university frat party, and after a full day of consuming alcohol, he laid on the gas pedal and ran the car through the state representative’s garage. Subsequently tried as an adult, he was put on probation for “driving under the influence.” While on probation, Tom did not pay his fines and continued to drive despite his suspended license. After three years of this downward spiral, his actions reached a boiling point. At twenty-two, Tom was sentenced to forty-three days in jail.
Sitting in jail, Tom thought about the direction his life had taken. “How did it come to this?” he wondered. Could he change? He had a good family, but his parents could not help him; he had pushed them away. He was in a revolving-door system. “I needed to get out of it now!” Tom approached his probation officer and the judge, asking, “Can I do this another way, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel? Can I join the Marines?” To his surprise, they agreed: “If you prove that you will give your ass to the military, and graduate, we’ll squash your record. You’ll be a free man.” As Tom tells it, “I needed to do something I could be proud of; something to give me discipline and a good life. My parents tried everything on me. The same things that worked for my siblings did not work for me. They were very loving parents. They always wanted the best for me. I don’t know how they did it. I put my mother through a depression. She had three good apples and one bad one.” Six months after his release, Tom was on a bus