but there was nothing like being out in the wilderness by myself. I had some experience with it, having gone on a few camping trips with some friends in college. And of course, there had a few nights of roughing it in some less than desirable locales while I had served in the army. Compared to the rugged Afghanistan landscape, the Alaskan wilderness was a piece of cake.
I wasn’t exactly sure what it was about solitude that so appealed to me. I was certain that I did my best thinking while alone; in fact, I’m pretty sure that’s how it works with most people. I always heard about people going somewhere isolated to get in touch with themselves. I’d always found the idea cheesy but, deep down, thought there might be something to it. Figuring it was worth a shot, I thought I might as well see what sort of inner insights I could come to while alone in the Alaskan woods.
A couple of years ago, I read that some famous poet had gone into the forest and simply sat down, unmoving for twelve hours, taking it all in. While I didn’t quite plan on going to such extremes, I did find the task admirable.
Within an hour of starting my trek, I found it both cool and eerie that there were so many hiking trails in these woods. Many of them skirted with the edges of several cliffs that looked out into the sea. Other wove deep into the heart of the forest where they meandered into several other trails. While I hadn’t taken the time to count each and every one of the map, I would bet that here were more than forty in all.
It took a while, but I finally cleared my mind. I wasn’t thinking about agents or opening nights or cute actresses. I also wasn’t thinking about the lure and lights that Hollywood had snared me with when that first movie studio had come calling two months after my first television interview about my so-called heroics in Afghanistan.
I guess to someone on the outside looking in, what I did probably did seem heroic. But I had a hard time thinking of it that way. If it truly had been heroic, I would have done more, even give my life, so that at least one of my team could have escaped that hell on earth.
Flashbacks still haunted me about that day—about that hellish forty minutes of my life—over and over again. Aubrey knew a little bit about it, but I hadn’t gone into great detail. All she knew was what she had seen on the news; she had seen the same story that the rest of the American public had seen.
The gist of it, according to the pretty little American network news spin, went like this: a covert Army operation was set in motion to rescue a dozen children from a school that partially collapsed due to the ongoing war in the region. In getting to the area where the school was located, a roadside bomb had obliterated one of the three trucks carrying the soldiers, knocking the original twenty-one troops down to a scant twelve. Those men swept into the school to rescue the children. All twenty-four school children had been rescued but, in the process, all but one of the American soldiers had died.
That lone soldier had been Devlin Stone, me, an unremarkable young man from Maine that barely made it out of high school with no intent of going to college. To me, the story seemed unremarkable up to that point. How many other soldiers had died simply doing their jobs? It was when I went back into the smoldering rubble to sweep for survivors from my team that made the headlines.
That was the detail the media had harped on. It hadn’t been the twenty-four kids being rescued—the heroism, they claim was when I went back into the line of fire (catching a bullet in my shoulder and one below my collar bone as a result) to look for survivors. I found one of my teammates almost completely covered in debris but he was so badly wounded that he died before receiving proper medical attention.
The haze of that mission swept through my head like a strong wind in the desert. So much
I wasn’t exactly sure what it was about solitude that so appealed to me. I was certain that I did my best thinking while alone; in fact, I’m pretty sure that’s how it works with most people. I always heard about people going somewhere isolated to get in touch with themselves. I’d always found the idea cheesy but, deep down, thought there might be something to it. Figuring it was worth a shot, I thought I might as well see what sort of inner insights I could come to while alone in the Alaskan woods.
A couple of years ago, I read that some famous poet had gone into the forest and simply sat down, unmoving for twelve hours, taking it all in. While I didn’t quite plan on going to such extremes, I did find the task admirable.
Within an hour of starting my trek, I found it both cool and eerie that there were so many hiking trails in these woods. Many of them skirted with the edges of several cliffs that looked out into the sea. Other wove deep into the heart of the forest where they meandered into several other trails. While I hadn’t taken the time to count each and every one of the map, I would bet that here were more than forty in all.
It took a while, but I finally cleared my mind. I wasn’t thinking about agents or opening nights or cute actresses. I also wasn’t thinking about the lure and lights that Hollywood had snared me with when that first movie studio had come calling two months after my first television interview about my so-called heroics in Afghanistan.
I guess to someone on the outside looking in, what I did probably did seem heroic. But I had a hard time thinking of it that way. If it truly had been heroic, I would have done more, even give my life, so that at least one of my team could have escaped that hell on earth.
Flashbacks still haunted me about that day—about that hellish forty minutes of my life—over and over again. Aubrey knew a little bit about it, but I hadn’t gone into great detail. All she knew was what she had seen on the news; she had seen the same story that the rest of the American public had seen.
The gist of it, according to the pretty little American network news spin, went like this: a covert Army operation was set in motion to rescue a dozen children from a school that partially collapsed due to the ongoing war in the region. In getting to the area where the school was located, a roadside bomb had obliterated one of the three trucks carrying the soldiers, knocking the original twenty-one troops down to a scant twelve. Those men swept into the school to rescue the children. All twenty-four school children had been rescued but, in the process, all but one of the American soldiers had died.
That lone soldier had been Devlin Stone, me, an unremarkable young man from Maine that barely made it out of high school with no intent of going to college. To me, the story seemed unremarkable up to that point. How many other soldiers had died simply doing their jobs? It was when I went back into the smoldering rubble to sweep for survivors from my team that made the headlines.
That was the detail the media had harped on. It hadn’t been the twenty-four kids being rescued—the heroism, they claim was when I went back into the line of fire (catching a bullet in my shoulder and one below my collar bone as a result) to look for survivors. I found one of my teammates almost completely covered in debris but he was so badly wounded that he died before receiving proper medical attention.
The haze of that mission swept through my head like a strong wind in the desert. So much
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