Public Lands Protection: An Iraq Veteran’s Mental Congressional Hearing

Prologue – 11 June 2017:  I am writing this essay while sitting in a containerized housing unit in Baghdad, Iraq, after spending the morning reading about how our eastern wilderness areas were protected.  This book was sent to me by a fellow board member in the Southeastern Chapter, and is titled “The Battle for Alabama’s Wilderness:  Saving the Great Gymnasiums of Nature” by John N. Randolph.

Progressing through the book, I am continually amazed at the fortitude and tenacity of the public land champions in that era – regular folks like us, who were able to realize and protect eastern wilderness areas using long form typewritten letters, locally organized meetings, and long trips from Alabama to Washington, DC.   Then I wondered if it would even be possible to do this today in our ultra-polarized society.    As I pondered these thoughts, I also considered my own self-interests:   Why I am an advocate for public lands? What do they mean to me?  What would I say in a senate or congressional hearing?

So I decided to prepare an opening statement for my fictional congressional hearing on public lands.

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Good day Senator.  Thank you for the opportunity to speak with the committee today regarding our public lands, and why protecting and enhancing them is so important to us as a Nation, to me personally, and to the hundreds of thousands of combat veterans among us.

I would like to briefly introduce myself.  I am a husband to a wife hailing from Virginia, a father to two daughters born in Alabama, and I was raised in South Mississippi.  I am an engineer by trade, trained in agriculture and environmental engineering.  I am a Soldier, having served as an enlisted man and officer in the United States Army Reserve for over 26 years – including two tours of duty in Iraq.

My family is firmly entrenched in the eastern states, which sometimes raises the question and comment:  “why is an ‘easterner’ concerned about public lands in the west?”  Closely followed by:  “This is not your issue.”   Senator, I am here today to do away with that myth, and say with a loud voice that public lands protection is an issue for all Americans.

There are very clear environmental and economic benefits our public lands provide to local towns, counties and states; however I will not spend time on those items in these prepared remarks.  Today, I want to talk about the personal benefits of public lands across the US:  east, south, and west.

When I returned from Iraq in August of 2007 after spending a year there during the Surge Campaign, all I wanted was quiet.  A place with no generators, no jets, no explosions, no talking.  Just me, my thoughts, and the eternal ringing in in my ears.  I found that peace in the small streams and waterways of south and north Mississippi.  In a kayak armed with an ultralight fly rod, I underwent therapy by bluegill.

Me, my yak and UL flyrod = peace.

Those publicly accessible waters provided me hours and days of quiet time to normalize my thoughts, focus my priories, and reintegrate into life.  I look back on this time as setting the conditions for the happiness I now enjoy in all facets of my life – personal and professional.

I had largely given up hunting in adulthood, as I had no place of my own to hunt.  In my adolescence, the knock on public lands in the east were that they are crowded, generally not managed, and hard to access.  In 2011, a new TV show with a gentleman about my age started.  This guy was working hard in the hills of our wild western lands, and was focused on a food-centric utilization and respect for the whole animal and environment it lived.  I, and I suspect the legions of Steven Rinella’s followers now, had the exact same thoughts within that eureka moment…”time to try out this public land hunting again”.

So I did, and discovered that North Alabama is a great place if you are a public lands hunter.  Lots of opportunity, and thousands of acres of lands, well managed and with the chance to get into that quiet space, if you are willing to work for it.  As I studied our public lands, they became like a drug, and I had to learn and travel and see more.  This is when I discovered the many threats to our public lands, and joined the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers.

Getting Started in the Hermosa Creek Wilderness

In 2016 my friend Todd and I hiked miles into the Hermosa Creek Wilderness area in Colorado on our first western elk hunt.  I was less than three months from leaving for Iraq again, but I wanted – needed -to make this trip in order to experience the quiet one last time, as I knew the next year would not provide any.  We spent a week in the wilderness and, with our mental banks filled and physical banks empty, we returned home in late September from this first magical exploration of our western public lands.

This was the last quite space I knew I would see for a long, long time.

Senator, you already know our public lands are the envy of the world.  No other country has the beauty and bounty freely available to every citizen that we do.  I sit here today, a veteran of two Iraq campaigns, and will tell you that our public lands also have both healing and prescriptive mental health values.  I have used them, and others have as well, to clear the mental fog after returning from war and to help provide mental and spiritual resiliency while preparing to deploy.

One of the greatest things you have as a Soldier deployed in a foreign land is the ability to mentally escape, if just for a bit.  Throughout my most recent tour in Iraq, I returned to my waterways and public forests of the southeast, and to the majesty of great western landscapes often in my mind, but this time is a bit different.  Now my thoughts are focused on the future, of introducing my daughters to our great public lands, and the beauty they behold.

Senator, I ask that you always consider in your votes not just the environmental and economic values of our public lands, but also the intrinsic values they provide.  We will likely never know the number of veterans that have used our public lands and waterways to  improve their mental health, but to know that this resource exists and could save or improve even one veteran’s life – isn’t that enough to protect?

Thank you.

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Epilogue -18 February 2018:  In September 2017 I arrived back home in north Alabama, having completed my second – and likely last – trip to Iraq.  The catharsis provided by the public lands and waters of Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi this fall were exactly what I needed upon return; and I spent plenty of time enjoying them with my family over multiple trips.  As winter turns to spring, I hope to see you in Boise at the Rendezvous, to share our stories from the previous year and work together to protect this great resource – our wild public lands.

Together again.

Jeff Jones is the Chair of the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Southeast Chapter, and life member of the BHA.  He lives in Huntsville, AL with his wife and two daughters.  He is an environmental engineer by trade, and a United States Army Reserve engineer officer.