Outdoor Industry Association, “An Untapped Resource: Veterans and the Outdoor Workforce” Jan. 3, 2018
From where former U.S. Navy Seal Ryan Evans stood, he could see and hear other military veterans whooping and hollering as they threw rocks into a puddle at the entrance of Santa Elena canyon. It was in early December in Big Bend National Park, where the Rio Grande snakes it’s way between Texas and Mexico. The 10 vets were in the middle of a two day rafting trip down the Grande.
“We had pulled into camp, day one on the river,” Evans says, explaining the scene, “And very organically, little scouting parties just started forming. A lot of the guys ended up crawling out to this high overlook of the river and just spontaneously started exploring our environment.”
The simplicity of the moment was remarkable not just in that this hodge-podge group of seasoned warriors and military personnel were able to revert to an innocent sense of play, but also because this group had known each other for just over 24 hours.
Read the full story on the Outdoor Industry Association site.
Jill Sanford 