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CHAPTER 2

STEVE CLENDENNING

US MARINE CORPS, 1992 – 2013

If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don’t bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth can destroy you.

—Gospel of Thomas, 70

WITH RAINSTICK IN HAND, STEVE Clendenning slumped low in his chair by the campfire. He had just shared some effects his wartime memories had on his body and his soul. Taking a break before continuing, he rocked gently as if to shake his words free. Surrounded by the Pennsylvania woods and a few other hikers, Steve stroked his blond beard over and over with his left hand. His southern drawl broke as he shared his story of war in Iraq.

“We were doing a road sweep in Fallujah,” Steve began, “covering the street with a mine detector. It was pitch black out and we were wearing night goggles. That particular road was a mess with mines. It even got the nickname, IED Alley.” The first team leader and the engineer spotted a hole in the road where an IED had blown up the night before. The hole had not been filled in, so the team climbed in to check it out. “All of a sudden it blew,” he recalled. When Steve turned on the Humvee’s white lights, he saw flesh and blood at his feet. A Marine ran toward him with a devastating report: “Staff Sergeant, I found him and it’s just his torso.” Steve approached and said a prayer to God for the deceased. “I walked another one hundred meters down the road and found his leg and more pieces. We scraped up his remains and put his body parts in the back of the truck. He was my buddy.”

Raising his lowered eyes from the flickering fire, Steve stared outward before picking up the thread. “The next morning my truck got blown to shit by an IED,” he said. “After we opened fire and chased down the insurgents, we went to the hospital. I had traumatic brain injury and my hearing was severely damaged. I never felt normal again.”

He asked himself, “How can you walk up to your friend and find him like that and not have it profoundly impact you for the rest of your life? How could you come back from that?” With his blue eyes shaded by a brimmed camouflage hat, his boyish face revealed the answer: you don’t. Like World War II veteran Earl Shaffer had before him, Steve was walking off his war as he hiked the length of the Appalachian Trail, to rid the demons from his head, to heal from his PTSD. This was a different kind of mission.

NEXT TO STEVE THAT EVENING AROUND THE CAMPFIRE SAT HIS WIFE, RUBY Clendenning, a striking long-haired woman of Mexican descent. Her arm embraced her husband’s shoulders. A Marine herself, Ruby also suffered from PTSD, a result of sexual assault in the military. Although the cause of the trauma was different, Ruby understood her husband’s pain.

“Back then, I could not go into public places,” Steve said. “I was on too many medications and behaved like a zombie. I was in a complete funk, would not shower, or eat.” On the one-year anniversary of the exploding-IED injury and losing his friend, Steve tried to take his own life. “I got drunk out of my mind. I moved the car out of the garage, opened up the ladder to the attic door, and fashioned an extension cord into a noose which I hung from the rafters.” He doesn’t know how he did it—he had never tied a noose before. He stood on the ladder with his phone in his hand, texting everyone he loved. “I could not stand the images in my brain anymore, or the nightmares, and I wanted them to go away.” At the exact right moment, Ruby walked into the garage and found Steve. She had woken in the middle of the night, rolled over in bed, and noticed he was gone. She had searched the house for him, fortunately finding him in time..

Steve was put into a psychiatrist’s care. He spent four years at the Marine Corps Wounded Warrior Battalion located at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. After retiring from the military, he’s been going to doctors, attending weekly counseling, and having brain scans. He gained weight and had a hard time finding peace. Then he learned about the Appalachian Trail, Earl Shaffer’s therapeutic hike in 1948, and the path’s potential for healing trauma. He loaded up a backpack and headed for the southern end of the AT in Georgia.

STEVE SET OUT WITH A GROUP OF HIKERS AND, AS THE DAYS AND MILES ticked by, the journey indeed brought him a sense of peace. The hike was not without major challenges, however. There was a norovirus outbreak in Virginia, and along the trail Steve became so sick that he was hospitalized and had to have his appendix removed. After a five-day hospital stay and another eight days of recovery at home, Steve resumed his hike. During those two weeks off the trail to recuperate, he began to fall apart mentally and felt his PTSD returning in full force. “All I had to do was open up the oven door when the stove was on, and I was right back in Iraq,” Steve remembered. “That oppressive heat flooding out reminded me of exiting the air-conditioned Humvee and the Iraqi heat slamming me.” His response to the open oven door is an example of what is known as “body memory,” when a sensory experience triggers a traumatic memory.

Steve missed his fellow hikers, the trail, and the peace that the journey had brought him. Off-trail, his nightmares returned as well as his anger. One time when Steve and Ruby were shopping at the local Walmart for trail food and supplies, his rage got the best of him. In the first-aid aisle, a teenager in a hoodie zoomed by in a motorized wheelchair, almost clipping Steve and Ruby. Steve stopped him and said, “What are you doing? Those are for people who need them.”

The boy said he’d hurt his ankle and sped away. A minute later, a girl flew by. “Get off that and leave it right here,” Steve called after the kid, but she ignored him. Then Steve saw the pair walking in the next aisle. Incensed, he yelled, “Hey! You’re walking just fine now. Your ankle must not be hurt anymore.”

“Uh, yeah, it feels a little better,” the teenager said. But Steve was not having it. “You’re full of shit,” he said. It was the girl’s response that really escalated things for Steve. “Oh you must be real badass that you’re picking on little kids,” she said.

“He don’t look like no little kid to me,” said Steve, as he moved a little closer.

Ruby anticipated trouble and ran off to get the manager. When he arrived on the scene, Steve let him have it. “You’d better get these kids out of here, or I’m gonna put blood all over the front of your building. You don’t know who you’re dealing with here! You have no idea what shit I have been through!” The manager promptly escorted the kids out of the store, but in a few minutes the boy returned and took a photo of Steve with his cell phone. Steve threw everything he was holding onto the floor and went after the boy. Ruby tried to grab him and hold him back, but couldn’t. The manager chased Steve outside.

In the parking lot, Steve finally calmed down. “It could have been real bad,” Ruby said. “If Steve would have put his hands on those kids, he would have gotten himself in trouble. When something trips his temper, he can’t control it.”

Steve explained his behavior this way: “Anger is what comes out when all the other emotions from the war build up. It’s survivor’s guilt. Why am I here and why didn’t those other guys make it?” Anger is sadness coming out sideways. Explosive anger is a reaction cultivated in the military to survive in combat. But this approach doesn’t work in normal society.

STEVE DID NOT WANT TO BE ANGRY ANYMORE, AND HE FOUND THAT ECOTHERAPY provided a path to letting go. As clinical psychologist Lynne Williams explains: “Being in nature, whether a walk in a leafy park, a paddle on a lake, or a longer hiking trip, all help shift the brain to the relaxed, calm, focused electrical brainwave pattern. Our brains run on electricity, with various wave patterns being involved in various experiences and activities. Learning to switch to the relaxed alpha pattern (through nature, creativity, interacting with pets, water sounds, classical music, to name some activities) helps rewire the emotionally dysregulated PTSD brain into a calmer, focused one capable of new learning and new experiences.”

Ruby encouraged Steve’s hiking the Appalachian Trail. She told him he should not quit regardless of how many times he was in the hospital, sick, or injured. He had to go back and finish what he started, although his absence was hard on Ruby. “It’s a sacrifice for us left behind too. I’m not home making fuckin’ cupcakes.” She worked full-time as a Marine at Camp Lejeune’s Department of Defense while also running the household and emotionally supporting her husband on the trail (they spoke frequently by phone). She visited Steve twice on the trail as he traveled northward. Every time she saw him, she initially thought: I have my old Steve back. “But then he would say or do something, and I’d know he wasn’t a hundred percent.”

Ruby didn’t question the sacrifice. “Steve is my best friend. I don’t ever question the money he spent or the time he has been away. I can’t put a dollar price on getting my husband back. I just want the Steve back that I married. And if I can’t, I want him as good as I can get.” A few months later, with a thousand more miles on the soles of his boots, Steve reached Mount Katahdin in Maine, the end of the Appalachian Trail. The long journey had provided indeed, helping Steve walk his way out of anger, toward a place of peace.

I was a big tough Marine a few years back. I killed a lot of people. I “hunted humans.” The military takes some things away from you, in order to enable you to kill your fellow man and keep yourself alive. But once you return to normal life, those are the same things that you need in order to function. I’ve always been a sensitive guy, and after I became wounded and gathered up what remained of my best friend in Iraq, I became even more sensitive and then I broke. I cry when I’m moved. I scream like a little kid when I get scared or surprised. I have a lot of Marine friends who are still acting tough and playing the hard, mean act, and drinking heavily. For me, I’m on the long road back to myself, and the Appalachian Trail helped me find my way.

Don’t be mistaken, I may not have walked every mile and every blaze, but what I did this summer will forever live with me as the most adventurous, most breathtaking, and by far the most emotional thing I’ve ever done. I’ve been happy and I’ve laughed so hard I peed myself. I’ve been sad and I’ve cried some pretty emotional tears. I’ve been so mad over war memories that I could have uprooted trees. I’ve been miserable from frozen shoes and water bottles, but was amazed that in single-digit temps I still managed to sweat like I was on patrol with 120 pounds of gear in 120-degree temps. I’ve lost an organ on this trail, and I still came back to see what else the trail had to offer. I’ve been lonely at times and been full of every emotion you can think of in the last six months, and not just anger! I’ve made friends on the trail that will forever remain my family for as long as God chooses to leave me here.

My walk sure didn’t cure things in six months, but it gave me even more appreciation for life—kind of like what I felt when I realized I was still alive after being hit in Fallujah. I may never be the same person I was before Iraq, but Mother Nature sure did give me a place to “take it easy” and smell the roses.

Way back in 1992, I went to Marine Corps boot camp and was told I stood ten feet tall and was bulletproof and could outrun a roadrunner. I lost that feeling a few years ago, but I can now say that feeling has returned. I can climb any mountain, ford any stream, build a fire with wet wood, and eat things that could make a billy goat puke. I feel as if I’m still on Mount Katahdin looking down saying, “Wow! Look what I did!” Feels pretty amazing. And just like earning the title and honor of being a United States Marine, you can’t take that away from me . . . ever. The trail provides.

The summer of 2013 will forever be the greatest and most grueling time of my life. I might have hurt all day long from hiking up a mountain, but when I got to a lookout and could see forever and reflect on what God has created and the people in my life that I have lost—I realized that I really needed this hike. I’m going to live my life for those that couldn’t.