The ‘Warrior Wild West’

SUTTON — Last weekend’s Moose Creek Fire didn’t stop local veterans and equine-assisted therapists from enjoying the cool, clear weather near the Alaska State Elks Association Camp north of Palmer.

On Saturday, Oct. 15, the Wasilla-based veterans organization Alaska’s Healing Hearts (AHH) hosted its annual “Warrior Western Weekend” event at the lodge with the Anchorage nonprofit Equine Assisted Therapy Alaska (EATA). Activities ranged from horseback and ATV rides to “cowboy action shooting” and indoor kids’ games.

“Our mission focuses on recreational rehabilitation and social reintegration,” said AHH Director James Hastings.

While its mission might seem like a jargon-y mouthful, Healing Hearts is really just about helping servicemen and women transition, he said — whether from deployment overseas or from military to civilian life. No matter what a soldier’s experiences, he or she is welcome to participate in AHH programs.

“You can’t disqualify yourself because you didn’t get wounded in combat,” Hastings said. “Everybody serves, everybody makes a sacrifice.”

AHH is also focused on the family, he said — not just the traditional nuclear family, but the military as family. AHH aims to provide all those who have been affected by military life with fun, wholesome activities — for free — all year round.

“We pretty much just do what they wanna do,” Hastings said.

The most popular outings, he said, seem to be hunting and fishing trips, but sometimes people “just need to have something besides the barracks life,” he said.

“A lot of folks, when they’re stationed in Alaska, they’ll spend four years here and they’ll never get off (base). They’ll go to the Tikahtnu Center (in Anchorage), (but) they don’t go to Seward, they don’t go to Denali.”

Newcomers to AHH need not feel like they have to commit to a full day of activity with a bunch of people they’ve never met, though. The Warrior Western Weekend, for example, is an open, come-and-go event that allows servicemen like Matt Dean to sample what AHH has to offer before diving in.

“It’s really cool to get to see part of Alaska that I don’t get to see that often,” he said, getting ready to go on a group ATV ride. “I wouldn’t go out and do half this stuff alone.”

Dean, originally from Connecticut, has been in the U.S. Navy for about 19 years, he said, and has a few more years to go before retirement. Active duty, retired and otherwise discharged military are all welcome at AHH.

Steve Kaleak, who came to the lodge with his wife and kids last weekend, said he was in the Army and Army National Guard for 9 years and 10 months. He returned home to Barrow, then, and realized how much more isolated he was as a veteran there.

“You just don’t have that connection with any other veterans,” he said, waiting to ride one of EATA’s horses.

When he moved to the Mat-Su Valley, he found making connections was still a struggle. Then he met Hastings.

“I was in need, last year, of some help, and he was the first person who really reached out to help me,” Kaleak said.

AHH appeared to him a sort of “morale booster,” he said, and an organization which he hopes he can contribute to in the future.

Equine or ‘hippotherapy’

Mental health clinician and EATA volunteer Samantha Adams said she sees a lot of veterans in her line of work, and equine or “hippotherapy” can be just as beneficial to experienced riders as to those who have never ridden a horse.

While the trail rides EATA hosted for AHH last weekend were meant to be therapeutic, fun was the main goal she said. EATA’s formal equine therapy consists of a series of classes and lessons tailored more specifically to the client’s needs, whether they are a veteran or a child with autism.

“A lot of it is building self-confidence,” Adams said.

EATA Executive Director Rebecca Widmer noted that it’s not so overt for their clients, though.

“We’re not out there saying, ‘OK, now we’re gonna work on your coping skills,’ no, we’re just out there teaching them a skill, teaching them that they can learn new things,” she said. “Regardless of whatever’s going on with them, they’re capable of doing so much more that they don’t even think about because they’ve kind of had this tunnel vision ... in the military.”

“It really helps kind of open their mind(s),” she said.

EATA also provides adaptive equipment and opportunities for veterans with chronic injuries, who are dealing with new physical realities.

“A lot of veterans that we see have back issues … but it’s nice because horse riding, when you’re doing it properly, you’re really working on those core muscles and … it’s not actually putting a lot of strain on your back,” Adams said.

However, sometimes the connections veterans make with the horses are the most impactful.

Adams recalled one veteran who had been a dog handler in Iraq, whose dog had perished in an explosion. When he was introduced to the EATA horse he’d be working with, he began to weep, she said — the horse had the same name as the dog he had known.

“He got super attached to that horse,” Adams said. “It was really cool.”

For more information about EATA, visit equineassistedtherapyalaska.org/

For more information about Alaska’s Healing Hearts, visit www.alaskashealinghearts.com/

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.