Aptitude, ability, accessibility

Life was looking up when Bill Bowen was 25. He’d just landed a job as a logger, and as a lifelong hunter, nothing beat getting paid to be outside in the woods every day. But less than a week later, his world took a drastic turn. A tree fell on him, and the years being confined to a wheelchair stretched out hopelessly before him.

“When I first got hurt, I didn’t know if I would ever be able to get myself back in the woods again,” Bowen said.

His first attempt was by all accounts an experiment. Bowen asked his parents to drop him off in the woods near their home in Rockwood, Tenn. Alone in a standard-issue manual wheelchair, Bowen muscled his way through the forest, determined to be outside again on his own terms.

“I had to learn all over how to get back into hunting,” Bowen said. Now, hunting plays an even greater role in his life than it had before.

“You can go to the woods and sit and look and think about things, things that sitting at the house you just won’t think about. You’re out there, it’s quiet, you’re watching the woods wake up,” Bowen said. “It’s the peace you get out of it and the think time.”

It’s been 17 years since Bowen’s accident. These days, he hunts from a four-wheel drive power wheelchair, a technological testament to the growing demand among people with injuries to be outdoors. Bowen works with the Wheelin’ Sportsmen program of the National Wild Turkey Federation, motivating others to hunt again or take up hunting despite disabilities and injuries that landed them in a wheelchair.

“Whatever you want to do there is a way out there for you to do it. You may have to do it a little different and it may take a little longer, and yeah you are going to get mad. But I don’t know of an able-bodied person in the world that doesn’t get mad when something doesn’t go their way,” Bowen said.

Bowen helps organize group hunts all over the country with Wheelin’ Sportsmen. Some participants are like him—lifelong hunters determined to reclaim their passion—while others have never held a gun and just want to take pictures.

 “It does give them a sort of freedom back instead of just having to sit at the house all the time. We get them out in the woods and just let them have a ball,” Bowen said.

Mountains bring renewal

The healing power of the mountains has been part of the human psyche for centuries—not just for the psychological benefits, but for actual physical improvements. A prolonged mountain vacation was the standard prescription from doctors in the 1800 and early 1900s for their wealthy patients afflicted with everything from tuberculosis to depression.

It motivated Dave Linn, a triathlete with cerebral palsy, to move to the Smoky Mountains outside Franklin, N.C.

“I noticed my muscles were much more relaxed and less fatigued than in Florida,” Linn said.

Alex Bell, a flyfishing guide in Sylva, N.C., has witnessed the healing effect of fly-fishing for a client from Atlanta with vasculitis, who suffers from debilitating vertigo.

“It is almost like aqua therapy. Being in the moving water enhances his balance and his leg strength,” Bell said.

The therapeutic benefits aren’t exactly a surprise to Bell.

“I joke that as a high school principal that was my chief therapy—to go out on the river and spend the evening with a fly rod in my hand,” Bell said, a reference to his former life before becoming a professional fishing guide.

Bell is now certified in adaptive fly-fishing techniques after spending a moving weekend on the river with a group of wounded Iraq war veterans.

“One of the guys said, ‘This may not seem like much to you, but after spending a day in the water in this cool mountain air, last night was the first night I had slept seven consecutive hours in years,’” Bell recalled.

Meanwhile, fly-fishing is helping Rhonda Burleson cope with post-traumatic stress disorder following a tour in Iraq.

Burleson, 47, who lives in a rural community outside Asheville, N.C., was a member of the 210th and 211th National Guard units from Western North Carolina—some of the first troops deployed to Iraq in early 2002. By the summer, she found herself on a medivac air transport out of the war zone with PTSD. Burleson was unable to find her way back into society. She cashed in what little savings she had and bought a small piece of land at the end of a gravel road with no neighbors in sight, put a camping trailer on it, and entered a life of seclusion.

“I don’t like to talk to people. I don’t like strangers to talk to me,” Burleson said.

Burleson suffers from severe hypervigilance, always on edge and suspicious of anyone she encounters. In those early years of the war, the implications of PTSD for returning soldiers was much less understood than it is now.

A few months ago, Burleson connected with a group called Project Healing Waters that helps soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with injuries and PTSD discover the benefits of fly-fishing. Burleson grew up fishing with her father, more out of necessity than recreation.

“When I was little we were really poor, and we ate trout almost every night,” Burleson said.

Rekindling that connection with nature and the outdoors has given Burleson an outlet to do something she enjoys.

“I have always been the most happy that I can be when I am doing something outside in the woods,” Burleson said.

Project Healing Waters also has helped her trust other people in a way she thought she no longer could. Out on the river, “I felt really safe and secure.”

It helped that her volunteer guide, a member of the North Carolina Fly-Fishing Team, has been incredibly patient.

“I am not that great with my hands, and he told me probably about 15 or 20 times how to cast and pull the line,” Burleson said. “I thought I would get in a big tangle from the start. It was a lot easier than I thought, but I had expert instruction, too.”

A major break-thru came when the guide took Burleson’s hands—something that under any other circumstance would be unnerving for her—and walked her through the motions.

“That’s probably been the best part of it, meeting some really nice volunteers. They make such an effort to cater to your individual disability,” Burleson said.

After her last fly-fishing excursion in Cherokee, N.C., Burleson came home one day to find a package on her front porch. Inside, was a fly-rod and reel, a walking stick to help with stability in the water and a hat with the Project Healing Waters logo—along with a Christmas Card from John Bass, the five-state coordinator of the program who himself is in a wheelchair. She was so excited she spread it all out on her porch and took a picture of it. She looks at it every day, a reminder of something she can look forward to doing again. In her long-term recovery, “It is going to be a big part,” she said.

Re-entering society can be difficult for injured soldiers from Iraq or Afghanistan, but Sam Lloyd, an adaptive ski instructor at Cataloochee Ski Area in Maggie Valley, N.C., has seen first hand the benefits outdoor recreation can have.

“When they go over there they are young and healthy and they come back minus a leg and their life is over—or so they think,” said Lloyd. “They realize life isn’t over, it is just a little bit different. Next thing you know they are back in the mainstream. They realize, ‘If I can ski, I can do anything I want.’”

Cataloochee Ski Area is the only ski area in North Carolina that has an adaptive ski instructor on staff, offering lessons and sessions every day of the week during the winter season. The program launched four years ago and has steadily grown in popularity. Lloyd anticipates serving 100 skiers this year.

Motivations vary. Some come with their families and youth groups, others simply want to try something new.

“I don’t know why anyone would want to slide down a mountain in the freezing cold, but they want to do it,” Lloyd joked. “This is a desire to do something they thought they couldn’t do. People might think they can’t ski, if they can’t even stand up, but they can.”

Lloyd said the experience is liberating and empowering.

“We get people who say, ‘I don’t think I can do this’ and we say, ‘Well, let’s try it,’” Lloyd said. “They find out after one lesson, ‘Hey, I can do it this.’ It is a mindset. In some cases it changes their whole life.”

The story is a familiar one for David Kiley, who hit a tree in a skiing accident at the age of 19 and ended up partially paralyzed from the waist down.

“At first I was the world’s worst rehab patient. I thought my life was going to go in the toilet,” Kiley said.

Today, there’s little that Kiley doesn’t do. Water ski, dove hunt, mountain climb, kayak, bass fish, hand cycle. “I own one of everything,” Kiley said of his sprawling collection of adaptive sports gear.

Despite the accident, Kiley didn’t swear off the slopes. He became a competitive downhill skier, spending four years on the U.S. Paralympics National Ski Team, using a seated mono-ski.

Kiley lives in Charlotte, N.C., and frequents the ski slopes of North Carolina mountains, particularly Beech Mountain. While double black diamonds are more his style—skiing he has to go out West for—Appalachian’s slopes fit the bill when it comes to going downhill fast.

“Because I am an adrenaline junkie, it certainly answers that for me, but it is empowering to be able to take your own gear, take it out of your truck, hook your ski up and then bam—get out there and do just whatever everybody else does,” Kiley said.

Much better than everybody else, in fact.

“There is a very small percentage of stand-up skiers who can beat me down the hill,” Kiley said.

Opening a door

Unlike those driven to get back outdoors following an injury, most who are born with a disability never realize what’s out there. For Edee Vaughan, who was born with spina bifida, simply going on a walk is a challenge, let alone outdoor adventure sports.

“My parents encouraged me to do those things, and I couldn’t do it,” said Vaughan, who lives in Knoxville and works at the University of Tennessee. “I thought this is what it is. I am not going to be able to do those things. They aren’t going to be in my realm of possibility.”

But recently, she got her first taste of water skiing on Fort Loudoun Lake near her home.

“It was incredible. I felt like doors had been opened for me,” Vaughan said. “It was the first time I felt like I could excel at something physical.”

Next came snow skiing, and now Vaughan is training for a half marathon. She won’t be running it, but will be clocking the entire 13-miles with a human-powered apparatus known as the hand cycle.

“As I have learned about adaptive sports, being physically active has gotten a lot more important to me,” Vaughan said.

On the other side of the Smokies, kids born with a missing limb are being immersed in high adventure every summer at the Amputee Adventure Camp. With the Nantahala Outdoor Center as their base, they paddle down rapids, strap on water skis, and test out mountain biking.

They even tackle a ropes course, both a physical and mental feat as they scale rope ladders, a maze of cables and high wires despite missing an arm, a leg or even two.

“It is amazing. Just thinking about it makes me cry,” said Lisa Carpenter, whose daughter Kaleigh has attended the camp for several years.

Kaleigh is missing her lower left arm but has always been athletic. She is a star tennis player, and volleyball player, too. But getting out of Atlanta and coming to the mountains every summer has exposed her daughter to a whole new world.

“She is a total outdoors person now,” Carpenter said of her daughter. “If you gave her a choice of going downtown to the Hyatt and or sleeping in a tent, she would pick the tent.”

Kaleigh has joined the outdoor adventure trekking club at high school and been on church mission trips from Kenya to the Dominican Republic.

The Amputee Adventure Camp is free, funded entirely by donations to reach economically disadvantaged kids. Stephen Hart, an outdoors guide and river runner with Nantahala Outdoor Center, looks forward to the arrival of the amputee camp every summer. They’re not much different than any other group: some are gung-ho, but some are apprehensive as they face down a rapid or stare up at the high ropes course. For many, it’s their first time really being outdoors.

“So many will say ‘I can’t believe I have actually paddled down a river’,” Hart said. “I think the outdoors in general encourages them to see they don’t have a limitation other than what they place on themselves. It opens up their minds to all the physical things they can do.”

After spending years shepherding the amputee campers over land and water, Hart has a knack for relating openly to the kids even when navigating what could be uncomfortable moments for those untrained in adaptive recreation.

“I ask them ‘Hey man, I noticed you are missing a lower leg. How do you want to sit in the boat?’ We don’t treat them like they are fragile or are going to break, which is how a lot of people treat them,” Hart said.

Hart has become a go-to guide at NOC for groups with disabilities, including an annual pilgrimage by spinal rehab patients from Atlanta. A trip to NOC is by far the favorite yearly outing for mentally and physically disabled artists based in Burnsville, N.C., who live in a group home proudly called the Shortbus Studio.

“For weeks and months afterward they can’t stop talking about it,” Hart said. “There is a different bonding experience. It’s the same reason that corporate leaders come here for retreats. You are breathing the clear air, you don’t have the distractions of the city, you don’t have your cell phone—it is so much more powerful and just stays with people longer.”

Food for the soul

The outdoors is engrained in the human psyche, perhaps encoded in our very DNA, as a place of comfort.

“I think that if you were to ask individuals to close their eyes and imagine a place of nurturing and healing, and you ask them to draw that place, would they draw a hospital or clinic, or would they draw a beach or a waterfall?” asked John Willson, the executive director of a high adventure camp for kids with learning disabilities in Waynesville, N.C., called SOAR.

At SOAR, conquering the challenges of outdoor adventure serves as a metaphor for success in life. The majority of the 500 students who participated in SOAR last summer have ADHD but were able to re-engineer how they move through the world after the high-adventure experience.

“You put a kid on a rock, and guess what they are not going to have trouble doing?” Willson said. “You are stacking the deck in favor of creating focus.”

Rock climbing is an integral component of SOAR, helping kids learn to trust their partners and be relied on by others, as well as communicate calmly under stress.

“If the rope gets too much slack in it, do you start yelling and screaming at your belayer? Or do you just say what you need, which is ‘up rope?” Willson said.

For Kathy Ralston, who lives in Whittier, N.C., the therapeutic benefits of the outdoors influenced her family’s decision to move to the mountains a year ago—and in particular to buy a house along a stream. Her 10-year-old son with autism craves the moving water.

“Running water is therapeutic for all of us, but it has always been something he is drawn to. It really is a calming mechanism for him,” Ralston said.

So Ralston jumped at the chance to participate in a fly-fishing outing for children with autism through nearby Western Carolina University.

“He wanted to fly-fish since we moved here because, of course, it is such a big part of the culture here,” Ralston said.

Recreational therapy students teamed up with the fly-fishing guide Bell to get kids with autism out on the water with a fly rod in their hand. They learned how to tie on a fly, how to cast and how to reel in a fish. The benefits were enumerable: patience, focus on a task, and fine-motor skills among them.

 “All the boys when they caught the fish were excited to hold it. They felt rewarded and kind of a completion to the task,” Ralston said. “It is like for any other child and individual—being able to participate in recreational activates is terribly important.”

That’s the basic premise behind a new recreational therapy firm called Blue Ridge Treks in Asheville, N.C., helping children with emotional issues conquer life through hiking and camping.

“Our environment is always changing and so are the outdoors,” said Alex Hersey, owner of Blue Ridge Treks. “For people to be able to learn skills like navigating with topographic maps and start a fire with a bow drill so they can survive no matter what their environment is—that parallels our real life, to be able to respond in a positive way to the things you don’t have control over.”

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Tri, tri again

When Dave Linn appeared on the shore of Lake Chatuge, scoping out the start line in a pair of water-rated biker shorts, the organizer of the Great Smoky Mountains Summer Sizzler Triathlon that day got a little nervous. The first few minutes of a triathlon can be harrying, a churning mass of flailing limbs as dozens of competitive swimmers surge into the water and jockey for positions.

Yet here was Linn, an Iron Man of the first order judging by his perfectly sculpted biceps and quads on his right side, a testament to the hours of weight lifting and gym time he logs every week. But his left side, the side affected by cerebral palsy since birth, is half the size.

“The race organizer was really shocked to see me. He didn’t know how to handle me. I told him to just throw me in the group,” said Linn, who live in Franklin, N.C.

“If he drowns, he drowns,” Linn remembers his coach piping in.

Of course, both Linn and his coach knew that wouldn’t happen. They had been training on this very lake for three months, ever since Linn saw a flyer for the triathlon and got a wild notion to try it. Linn had never biked or swum before, but friends from the gym volunteered to help him train.

Linn isn’t easily daunted, thanks to his parents encouraging him to develop a thick skin from an early age.

“They just pushed me out there and expected me to fly,” Linn said. “They encouraged me to go out and play football with my brother and his friends or play baseball with the neighborhood kids. If I fell down, they told me to get back up.”

To this day, Linn hates being babied for his disability. It’s one reason a triathlon appealed to him—it was a personal challenge between just him and the mountains, one he could tackle on his own terms.

“I knew no one could baby me when I am out there on the swim or the bike. I controlled the atmosphere,” Linn said.

Linn first had to overcome a fear of lakes where the water is too murky to see the bottom and the shore is too far away to provide much solace if one gets fatigued.

“I was terrified of lakes,” Linn said. “It took me a long time to become one with the lake.”

Linn honed a special stroke, using a leg whip rather than a standard kick, to compensate for the stronger pull on his right side. He also uses a special bike clip for his left leg. There was another upside to the training. Instead of a treadmill and TV, Linn was swimming beneath mountain ranges and biking past waterfalls.

“It gave me a chance to enjoy the beauty of the mountains,” Linn said, something locals can too easily forget.

Linn’s amazing drive, inspirational charisma and dogged training ethos landed him the job as fitness director for the Old Edwards Inn in Highlands, a mountain resort.

As for that first triathlon?

“I came in dead last,” Linn said.

Ten years later, Linn has a whopping 72 triathlons under his belt, including the 2009 national championship among physically challenged athletes in the USA Paratriathlon.