I Had a Dream
To Restore Our Connection With The Earth
One Man’s Healing Journey On The Appalachian Trail And His Quest For A Sustainable Future
Sandstorm Brewing
Through the window into the darkened starry sky, he saw them: thick, pointed-tipped bullets whizzing by their two choppers like shooting stars.
March 19, 2003, First Day of the Iraq War
About 100 miles off the Northeast border of Iraq, two long green military helicopters pitched against a fiery red and orange sunset, started their engines.
In just minutes, the 1st Force Recon Marines would board. Their mission was clear: secure Safwan Hill, a sand-dusted mountainous outpost in Iraq that overlooked the border of Kuwait, surrounded by miles of nothing but barren desert. Then, the entire division of Marines would stream into Baghdad.
The pack of Marines rippled with grins and pumped fists to the sky. They were young, mostly, fraught with high spirits amplified by cheers as they strode out the base’s corridor lined with supporters.
“Give ‘em hell!” the crowd yelled.
For a brief time, they would remain this way, at least in Hanes’ memory. Some would become unrecognizable after the war.
“Get some devil dogs!”
“Oorah!”
The cheers dissipated into the chaos as the Marines flooded out of the base into the muggy desert air towards the choppers, sand spitting beneath the whirring blades.
Team 2’s radio operator, 26-year-old Mike Hanes secured the men’s crypto fills in their radios before signaling them off towards the accelerating choppers, towards the irrevocable force that propelled them aboard.
They hoisted themselves one by one, feeling the weight of their jackets loaded with ammo and weapons. The choppers hovered above the ground as Hanes swung himself inside and continued to refill the radios. The whirring drowned out the last of their words, but there was nothing left to say. He steadied himself against the seats, securing the final radio, then sat down and buckled in. The base from his window melted from sight, now a nominal distant structure, fading into the horizon’s visible heat waves. The choppers elevated higher and then spurred off into the night.
Just 20 minutes later, Hanes saw the faint glow of red blinking lights through the curvature of rolling slopes amid an expansive desert. Safwan Hill.
Suddenly wind rattled against Hanes’ chopper, shaking it into abrupt sideways motions.
“Sandstorm brewing!” a voice from the cockpit shouted.
Then through the window into the darkened starry sky he saw them: thick, pointed metal bullets whizzing by their two choppers like shooting stars. Their chopper shifted the men in their seats, and when Hanes looked up again he saw the communication tower on top of Safwan glaring just feet before them. Before he could prepare for impact from a bullet, or a collision into the tower, their chopper cranked a hard left and detoured into a swift drop.
And Hanes, just like all the others who saw Iraq for the first time, asked himself the very same questions, “Is this the beginning? Or the end?”
…
Into The Night
He could hear the shadows of the city come alive, the voices all around him, whispering.
Just before night fell over the city, the lights turned off in the San Diego State University computer lab as 29-year-old Mike Hanes trickled out behind the last of the students. Only he had nowhere to go.
He walked for about an hour and a half until he could see the towering emerald and forest green eucalyptus and oak trees outlining Balboa Park. The peak of the California Tower, a gothic dome of colorful tiles, shimmered in the night sky before him.
He could feel the others, who also had nowhere to go watching him from the shadows. He gripped his hands around his recon backpack, now loaded with textbooks, and walked steadily into the park, scanning the trees for the thickest brush. He used to sleep in his car, but parking it in undisclosed locations proved a nuisance. Through trial and error, he found this area the safest. The homeless people were territorial closer to the city.
“I see you, Jim! I see you!” a homeless man near the city had hollered one evening in a scratchy voice just feet behind him.
Startled at first, he thought the man was talking to him. He jerked his head up just under the tree where he lay to glimpse at the silhouette of a willowy figure with long, stringy hair draped like curtains around his face, stumbling in the opposite direction. The man had raised his fist haphazardly towards the sky, and Hanes could hear the city’s shadows come alive, voices all around him, whispering, snickering. He had then silently withdrawn his eyes from the scene and made a mental note that night to steer clear of the area.
He didn’t mind the walking. It seems that’s all he did during his eight years in the Marine Corps. He moved on swiftly over a narrow bridge, his feet thudding against the oak boards amidst the silence of the night, until he approached a large fig tree. He rushed down to the tree, its roots coiled like a web of spilled claws that plunged deep into the earth, dropped his backpack, and curled in the curve of the brush. Class started early in the morning, and he set his alarm on his watch for 6 a.m., just enough time for a gym shower beforehand.
It was this moment that came next each evening that was always the hardest. His daughter’s child support payments were sent every month. That’s what mattered most. Not that he didn’t have a home now. He could sleep outside, temporarily with all the others. But he couldn’t turn off the repeated time-lapse of war that had marinated in his mind since he had come back just one year ago. When the memories churned, sometimes thinking of nothing helped, sometimes not. Sometimes, trying to shift into another memory helped, sometimes not. This time, he thought of hiking with his brother on the Appalachian hills behind his home in Georgia. He thought about the crisp spring air, the blue mountains, the birds chirping. His eyes fell heavy.
And then he saw him. The man with no face, twisting, turning in the air in slow motion. The splash. The pool filling with blood. The screaming. He had to swim faster! The blood was swarming upon him, seeping towards all corners of the pool. The shrieking. The mass of swimmers dispersing from the pool all at once, screaming.
“Line up on the wall!”
“Don’t look behind you!”
Swimming faster and faster. Muffled screams between the slapping water against his skull.
“Don’t look back behind you!”
…
It's All Over Now
“All we know is that there was a body found in the debris.”
February 2020
“Hey brother, I got somethin’ for ya’ before you leave.”
Hanes' brother Matt draped his body over the porch railing as he signaled to Hanes with an impish grin, then walked over to him and reached into his pocket.
Hanes shut his car hutch and turned around. Within 30 minutes, he would be driving down 1-16 towards the West Coast.
The morning light filtered through the tall Georgia maple trees, and except for the sounds of birds, it seemed the world had stopped just for them. They rarely had a moment alone anymore, just the two of them.
Hanes walked next to Matt and stopped to peer at the object in his brother’s open palm.
His brother’s voice softened. “I want you to keep this.”
Matt dropped the rock into his palm.
"A Fairy Cross,” Hanes said, admiring the smooth miniature rock in the shape of a soft-edged cross. He turned it over, examining it. Fairy Cross stones were his brother’s favorites out of all the minerals and gemstones in his collection, and he remembered what his brother had told him about them. They were known as a Christian protective charm deemed by some as magical and believed that carrying one of these rare stones ensured divine guidance, safety, and even good luck.
He glanced up at his brother watching him, and he didn’t know it then, but this was the moment he would replay almost every day soon afterward. It was at that moment, that he felt the bond brothers feel once their differences have finally passed, once childhood has finally passed, where any residual derisive banter or rivalry is replaced with a quiet loyalty. And behind that impish grin, he saw his brother anew. He first saw glimpses of this new Matt after the war. He had felt so broken and angry, and Matt had been there for him, with grounded reassurance. Patient, non-judgmental. He’d realized then that Matt was no longer just his little brother, even after all of those years he’d played the role of not just an older brother to his only sibling, but also, at times, a father. Matt was a father now, and above all, a man. It was time that Hanes treated him like one.
“Here,” Hanes said, grabbing his phone. “Let’s get a picture.” Hanes squeezed his brother’s shoulder and drew him in. It was the last photo he would ever have of them together.
…
The coroner would later report that his brother’s death had been instantaneous. Matt had died by electrocution during a Lichtenberg wood-burning project. He was never too safety conscious, and it didn’t surprise Hanes that it wasn’t grounded properly and he didn’t wear gloves. The wood had been damp and, “It just got him.”
And so, as Hanes stood there in his suit and tie beside his mother and his brother’s two-year-old daughter, who resembled every bit a part of Matt, blonde hair, buzzing around lightheartedly, energetic, full of life, it seemed in that moment, and then as he helped lower Matt’s urn into the ground, that his life was a series of sudden exits.
But a funeral does little to seal the exit of a loved one. It only signifies it. Perhaps that’s why Matt lingered in the space between unfinished memories in Hanes’ mind, along with the half-finished hydroponic garden at their mother’s house in Georgia. And the unbooked family trips, those summers they’d spend sitting out on his mother’s front porch in the evening, much older, gray hair, laughing. Who would he swap childhood stories with now? This new Matt, this mature, now wise Matt. It was all over now.
He wanted his brother back. His brother, the one who always pulled over to the side of the road when a car needed a tire fixture, no matter if he had to be somewhere on time.
His brother, the kind of guy known by friends, family, and the locals, “who would give you the shirt off his back.”
His brother, who sat down at the table at every meal, squinted his eyes earnestly and held his hands out buoyantly before leading the family in prayer. Whether guests were religious or not, he'd dive in.
“Dear Lord, watch over us, but especially mom, give her extra angels,” he’d often say in between snickers before the table erupted into laughter past the amens.
His brother, who would always rush to open the door for the locals downtown. “How ya doin’ sir?” and smile with a polite nod, “You’re welcome ma'am.”
His brother, who was known as the local handyman in town, especially for the elderly. “Matt,” they’d all wave and call to him. Matt, the guy who fixed your plumbing, put up your drywall and fixed your roof. The guy who always had some kind of mechanic project going on.
He thought about his brother’s garden that he had planted in front of the house - unfinished.
And his brother’s daughter. “The spittin’ image of your father!” people would marvel when they saw her, wringing with that same energized pull her father had.
His brother, who was never hesitant, not even before doing backflips off cliffs into the water. It was all over now.
Never again was there a morning that Hanes woke up from then on where he felt the way he did before Matt’s passing.
And so, three months later, Hanes packed a bag with minimal essentials, stepped out into the warm Georgia spring air, and began walking up the Appalachian trail, not stopping until sunset.
…
Lost In A Dream
The three Marines stood side-by-side facing the vehicle, arms raised in defeat, waiting what they all knew was execution.
May 2018, Great Smoky Mountains
It was nearly 4 a.m. when the screams began. The chilling rain poured heavily outside the shelter high in the Smoky Mountains, crammed with hikers, as it pelted the roof ambiently throughout the night. They were all so close, burrowed inside their sleeping bags, that they could feel each other’s breath. But Hanes was somewhere else.
...
Heavy sweat dripped from Hanes’ face as the Kuwait desert sun beamed on him. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. It was then that he caught sight of the pocket, and he remembered. He had glanced at the cyanide pills only once. They were small and white and could have been mistaken for any other vitamin, except for the skull and crossbones at the end of them. It wasn’t something he wanted to think about, but they were there, strapped to his left wrist pocket as they patrolled the desert.
They had been walking for what felt like days now. When they finally crawled behind a sand dune to hide, it was mere hours before the men were upon them.
Hanes had groped helplessly for his gun, but the men were forceful and quick; a mass of dark shadows hollering in Arabic. The other two Marines on his team were gone, pinned on the other side of the truck now, their throaty screams ringing in his ears. The men yanked Hanes and shoved him alongside the other Marines. The three Marines stood side-by-side facing the vehicle, arms raised in defeat, awaiting what they all knew was execution.
As the men’s leader paced silently behind the Marines with his AK-47, suddenly, he reared back and jammed the muzzle of his weapon in the middle of Hanes’ back. The sharp, violating stab sent a cold paralyzing tingling sensation from the bottom of his legs to the top of his head, and he screamed.
...
“Dude, are you okay? What’s the matter?”
Hanes sat up. His head was sweaty despite the cool, damp air. The other hikers also sat up, and squinted in the darkness, peering at Hanes. The man next to him touched Hanes and Hanes flinched.
“Sorry,” Hanes muttered. “Bad dream.” He scanned his surroundings and tried to exhale, but his breathing was shallow. Then in one quick movement, he sprung up, rolled up his sleeping back, stuffed his belongings in his backpack, slipped into his hiking shoes, clipped on his headlamp, and walked briskly out of the shelter into the blackness of pouring rain.
The nightmare had felt so real. The dark eyes of the man who had muzzled him in the back penetrated his mind. How did he create that? His military freefall skydiving accident during training fractured the spot where the man in his dream stabbed him. He could still feel the tingling sensation in his back.
He walked steadily, swiftly, until he was nearly sprinting, farther and farther from the shelter.
…
It was one of these moments alone, far from the steps of the other hikers when the accident happened.
As dawn protruded into a pastel horizon, Hanes walked on, thinking of Matt and the times they had hiked the trail together. The Appalachian trail’s entrance was close to Matt’s home, and he couldn’t think about the trail without thinking about Matt. He recalled the last hike, how Matt’s leg emitted a clicking noise as it always did.
“Some bone down there is off,” Matt would always say, laughing casually, and with each step he took, his legs clicked. Hanes wondered how he’d trek over 2,000 miles with Matt clicking beside him, and he laughed out loud at the thought.
“Matt, you’d never make a good Recon Marine,” Hanes had told his brother teasingly. “You gotta be quiet out there.” And they both laughed as the click-click of Matt’s steps trailed alongside him.
The longer that Matt was gone, it seemed the more the veil from the other side eroded, and he often felt his presence beside him on the trail. Everything reminded him of Matt. As he collected edible greens, roots, and flowers along the trail to blend into his evening beef stew, he thought about the plants he and Matt planned to insert in their mom’s hydroponic garden that they had worked so hard on. Once they finished the greenhouse, they planned to insert basil, chard, kale, and lettuce into the hydroponic holes where water would flow through the long tubes. Matt had worked diligently with Hanes in the greenhouse late in the afternoon as they would discuss other gardening projects, strawberry towers, square foot gardens, and tower gardens, brimming with ideas. They talked and bulshitted late into the evening until their mother called them in for dinner. He thought about that greenhouse that lay empty now, mud puddles collecting near its walls.
The rain had stopped on the trail, and Hanes walked the wetted path until he arrived at a small clearing where the sun rays haloed the tall trees, and long beacons of light shimmered in the still water. He was tired from awakening in the night and sat down on a nearby log. He could see through the clear water, the tall trees above him, and hear the birds tweeting, calling out to each other.
After some time, he took off his shoes and waded into the calf-high pool of rainwater in front of him. It felt good to be touching the earth with bare feet.
He glanced down at the toenail on his right foot and laughed. It never had really grown back right after he had kicked that door handle many years ago, the way a nail never straightens after you hammer it in sideways. He had meant to kick his brother during a childhood squabble. But he had missed Matt entirely, only to hit something sharp and stumbled to his knees, writhing in pain. He remembers how Matt’s mischievous grin vanished, replaced with horror at the sight of Hanes’ bloody, exposed toe without a toenail, but as the day progressed, the half-smirk on his brother’s face slowly formed again, a faint look of resigned achievement. After all, Matt hadn’t lifted a finger for Hanes to fall over. And so, every time Hanes visited his brother following the incident, the gentle reminder of his backfiring defeat reemerged.
“Hey,” his brother would sit up as if suddenly inspired. He would turn to Hanes next to him on his mother’s couch. Hanes would always pause, and before he could reply, Matt’s face would break into a grin, and he’d ask sincerely, “How’s that toe doing?”
“Always giving me shit, aren’t you?” Hanes said out loud, still staring at his toe beneath the pool of water.
The foliage reflected in the water, and, for the first time in days, he saw his reflection beneath it, a flickering outline of a man with eyes of pathos, ever-growing hair on his head and face, once brownish-blonde, now flecked with tints of red, perhaps from the morning light, or perhaps, it had always been there.
It was nice to escape from the world, he thought, and that mangled image of himself that had started to surface just after the war. What he was escaping from or heading towards was not always clear; he only knew that the others didn’t notice. He always had a way of making people feel at ease, attracting many friends of both genders everywhere he went. And they fed off his jovial energy. He emitted a kind of transparency that they trusted and china-blue eyes that always seemed to smile even when the rest of his face was not. The hikers were no different, and they quickly befriended Hanes, hiking the trail together, and sharing fireside stories late into the night at hostels.
But soon enough, he’d be alone again.
It was one of these moments alone, far from the steps of the other hikers when the accident happened. He had been strolling along the trail as usual, filling his hemp bag with foraged edibles until some thousand miles between his first step and a concave of loose rocks, he fell. His body launched backward, his head thunking repeatedly down a quarry of steps. If he hadn’t shifted his body past the barreling rock that barely grazed his skull by an inch or so, he might have laid there unconscious for hours or days until another passerby discovered him. His body slammed in finality on top of a large rock, enough peril to land him in a New Hampshire hospital.
Hiking was not advisable, the doctors said. Sprained wrists, a throbbing head, and fractured ribs - a guy was crazy to step out like that. And yet, one week later Hanes barreled on through the White Mountains, up peaks so high he touched the clouds, through grassy, open fields until he dipped into valleys of Vermont, spilling with fresh fall orange, red and yellow-tinted leaves that spilled and swirled around him like a painting in progress. He climbed through the forests of Massachusetts, besides the bitter cold rushing rivers of Connecticut, 1,500 miles to New York. The pain in his chest would subside, he told himself.
…
One afternoon when the arch of his foot fired with pain, he stopped upon the mountainside and took off his shoe, and rubbed his foot.
His gaze lingered upon the mountains on the blue-hazed horizon, peeking behind the shrubby trees layered under a blanket of fog. In the distance, he could hear the voice of hikers, but for the first time, he did not feel like acknowledging them. He waited until they were gone, then walked farther off the trail, unleashed his pack, and sat down on a rock. All he could hear now was the soft gurgling of a waterfall in the distance. He didn’t know how long he sat there rubbing his foot until the thoughts reeled again.
“There was a body found in the debris.”
He reached inside the outer pocket of his pack and pulled out the fairy cross rock. How is it that just months before, he and Matt had vowed to spend more time together traveling and hiking, then suddenly he was gone? Why was he seemingly walking to nowhere in pain alone anyway? Was he crazy? And was his brother's death really an accident, or did someone have it out for him? It just didn’t make any sense.
He didn’t have any set plans immediately after the hike, and sadness swept over him at the thought of returning to his family’s homes in Georgia only to see everyone in his family except for Matt. What must that be like for his mom every day? What would it be like for his mom, grandmother, and Matt’s daughter as they sat around the kitchen table with Matt’s empty chair? He thought about how Matt would hold their hands tightly and lead grace. What would it be like now?
Hanes lurched forward, sprung to his feet, and in an intense range, screamed, “Nooooo!” The word carried through the mountains, the echo lingering so long it sounded like he had yelled it three times.
“Nooooo!” he yelled again.
He stumbled toward a heavy rock, crouched down, and picked it up with both hands, then heaved it as far as he could over the side of the mountain as it thumped down the cliffside until he could no longer hear it.
There was nothing he could do to bring his brother back. He was gone. No amount of talking to himself would make Matt appear, no amount of memories would make him any more alive, and no amount of tears or rage could bring him back.
It seemed the whole world had stopped that afternoon. Hanes could no longer hear the birds chirping, there was no breeze, no rain, no life force in the air. The earth was utterly still, watching him.
“Noooo! Noooo! Noooo!”
He lunged forward and ripped a lingering branch from the tree in front of him. The branch cracked loudly, and he hurled it over the cliff. Then he kicked a heavy rock over the cliff, and another, before racing towards his extra-durable hiking poles. With all his might, he grabbed a hiking pole and whacked every tree and bush in front of him with wide, forceful swings, screaming a scream that seemed to rise from his chest and not just his throat. He clubbed the scarred branches as if he were killing them, until, after many minutes, he stopped and leaned forward, his hands resting on his knees, panting in exhaustion. Then he collapsed to the ground in defeat. He felt oddly lighter.
In his state of rage, he suddenly realized he had dropped his brother’s fairy cross stone, it had slipped between his hands, and he bent down, nose to the ground, frantically searching.
“Noo, noo, please no,” he pleaded, his eyes filling with the beginnings of tears. And then he saw it, shimmering in a patch of light, and scooped it up with both hands. He sat there, gazing at the stone, long into the afternoon, and at the blue mountains as the horizon darkened, and then he zipped the fairy cross rock back into his pack and walked back down the trail through the autumn leaves.
…
Losing Their Humanity
The laughter erupted, a mask they would all later realize was a way to deal with the madness, a madness that would later catch up with them one way or another.
Baghdad, Iraq, April 2003
Before sunrise hit the streets of Baghdad, a line of Humvees, stocked with young men in uniform staring back with blacked-out faces and .50-caliber large guns, sped towards the city’s center.
The US Force Recon Marines had no time to waste. Looting had erupted at the bank.
Two Marines sprung out of the vehicle before it screeched to a halt outside the bank, a precarious graffiti-smattered cement tower torched in flames beneath an ash-colored sky. Smoke billowed out the windows, attracting a crowd of dark-haired men hollering in Arabic.
Nearly all the Marines would secure the area on street patrol while Hanes and two other Marines would risk entering the building. Once they reached the bank’s vault, they’d grab the money, then escape the building before they ended up in flames or buried under charred rubble.
Hanes and two other Marines nodded their heads, then moved swiftly towards the blazing building, their gear rattling heavy across their backs. Their face shields clouded quickly, and they coughed, combing through the heavy smoke that grew denser by the second, until they arrived at a gray brick-walled room with a large hole blown in the side, spilling with rubble. The hole was just big enough for a Marine to crawl in, and what lay on the side was exactly what they were after - the money chamber.
They moved quickly without speaking, climbing on top of the rubble and piling the cash in the larger duffel bags. Hanes could feel the sting of near-fire on his skin, and then suddenly, he heard a thud on the ground behind him. He turned around and looked down to see his fellow Marine crumpled lifelessly at his feet. Hanes set one finger on the pulse of the Marine’s neck and grabbed his radio in his other hand.
“We need assistance. Leaving vault.”
He lifted the Marine to his knees. “Hang in there. We’re almost finished. Just use your feet to make it out,” he instructed loudly.
He coughed. Hanes’ head felt heavy and explosive from the smoke and intensifying heat, and his throat stung. Perhaps this was how people died in fires, he thought. They passed out from the smoke before flames engulfed them. Hanes helped the Marine to his feet and braced his shoulders and arms.
“Almost there. Now just follow my steps.” The other Marine clambered in front of them, coughing and gasping. The flames crackled above them, and they could hear pops and bangs from the ignited infrastructure as the smoke grew thicker. And then, all visibility was lost.
…
At nearly midnight, the Force Recon platoon received another call. “A small group of bandits are looting the bank,” the commander said. “Everyone back out!” The bunk beds emptied within seconds.
The Marines’ Humvees screeched to a halt once again at the downtown barren Baghdad streets, and for a moment, silence filled the darkness outside of the charred bank.
The Marines dispersed at once. Hanes stood armed, a 50 caliber machine gun mounted as ordered alongside his best friend, the team’s EMT. His friend crouched down near the Humvee. Most of the platoon would raid the perpetrators in the bank. For now, the others would stand watch.
“F****** towelheads, I’m about to get my KIA”, a Marine near Hanes muttered under his breath. He grazed the tip of his finger up and down the trigger, one eye latched to the sight of his machine gun.
“Target in motion,” another Marine said quietly into his radio.
Then a burst of gunfire exploded like 100 fireworks at once, the muzzle flashes firing in shrieks of yellow and white, leaving trails of smoke spraying the hazy neon air.
“Enemy hit! Enemy hit!”
Whatever fatigue Hanes and the other Marines felt lying in their bunks just moments ago had been stripped, and an electric buzzing pulsed through their veins as they embraced the fire and chaos.
Moments later, the shadows of two Marines emerged through the thick dusty night air dragging a limp man towards Hanes and the EMT. He must be dead, Hanes thought.
The Marines heaved the man on the hood of the HMMWV next to the EMT beside Hanes.
“Here’s one of ‘em. There’s still like five other hajis running wild out there,” a young Marine yelled, waving in the direction of the bank.
Hanes watched as his EMT friend grabbed the man under his arms, propped him up, and laid him on top of the hood of the Humvee. The man’s chest leaked blood, and his shirt stuck to his skin. Then, his brown eyes, rimmed with tears, raised upwards in agony. He was saying something, repeating words. He was pleading for his life. Hanes glanced down at the man’s shaking hands. The man looked terrified, or cold, he thought, or both.
“Hold him, Mike,” instructed the EMT. Hanes leaned against the Humvee and helped hold the man to sit up as his friend wound cloth bandages tightly around the man’s head.
“Hold him here.” His friend tilted the man’s head to the back. That’s when Hanes saw it, a bubbling hole nearly exposing the brain in the back of the head, with fragments of a shattered skull that leaked thick blood. He recoiled. His friend continued wrapping the bandage around his head in quick, contemplative strokes while applying pressure to the man’s wounds until suddenly, the pleading stopped, and the man’s hand stopped shaking. There was no need to keep going.
...
It was clear dawn when the squad of Humvees roared back down the road to camp. Three of the bandits had been captured and one was killed. Hanes’ ears were ringing, his head throbbed, and his eyes stung. They were all immune now to the smell of blood that covered their dirty uniforms, but they couldn’t wait to wash it off.
After a breakfast MRE, Hanes stepped outside the HMMWV. The air was hot again. He could see the heat rising off the ground in the distance. He could hear the inaudible shouts of Marines behind him, and he walked around until he could hear the voices.
Two civilian men on their knees, their arms behind their heads, cried and pleaded as a group of Marines circled them.
“Terrorists! ***** terrorists!”
“Stupid ***** hajis.”
“Look at you now. Whimpering like a dirty ******* animal. You’re all pathetic.”
The captured men crouched down, begging between sobs or prayers every time a Marine vehemently screamed or hovered.
Hanes peered beyond the shouting Marines at one of the captured men. Beneath his coiled black hair was the face of a teenager, wide-eyed, smooth, unlined skin, thin, boyish body. A boy. The boy pleaded in a high voice. Hanes recalled the body that lay on the hood. Perhaps they were friends, he thought. They looked the same age - teenagers - they couldn’t be older than their early 20s.
A sadness swept over him. It’s not really that simple when you capture the enemy, whatever that means. It’s not like you read about in stories or watch in the movies. It’s more like watching another human being suffer and feeling like you didn’t do anything about it. Hanes walked away.
Back inside the tent, the squabbling began.
“That was my kill!” one Marine shouted, jumping up and walking towards another Marine as he pointed towards his chest with tight fists.
“No, that was my shot. We’ve got all these witnesses. Who saw that it was my shot?” The other Marine jumped up, opened his arms, and spun around the room. A few hands shot up, and some Marines mumbled in agreement.
It was always like this after every raid, an even mix among the platoon of irascible pride and detached melancholy, especially when many of the raids just turned out to be homes of families, void of a target.
“Yep, that was my kill, the sweet sound of freedom exiting the skull.”
Half of the Marines shouted and laughed. The other half fell silent.
“That’s cute, but you know that’s my KIA buddy. You’ve had your training today. Maybe next time,” the other Marine said, staggering back to his bunk.
Then the laughter erupted, a mask they would all later realize was a way to deal with the madness, a madness that would later catch up with them one way or another.
…
“These were just families...”
As the war dragged on, raids compounded daily, and the American soldiers’ role became less clear. It was always the same routine. About 10 of them would race up to a home, usually in the middle of the night, with M4s and M203 grenade launchers, shoot or kick open a door shouting, yanking the men in the family out of their homes at gunpoint, tie their wrists behind them in plastic zip tie cuffs, and throw sandbags over their heads while the onlooking family members screamed in frozen terror, so traumatized they often peed themselves as they witnessed their home shredded; the troops yanking open every drawer, dumping out all of its contents, throwing all of the clothes on the floor, kicking over furniture, leaving the home looking like a tornado just hit it, then throw the males of the families on a truck to a detention facility to be interrogated before moving on to the next home and doing the same thing to the next family.
And some of the Marines dug it. “Losing their humanity,” Hanes called it.
On every raid, Hanes wondered how Americans back home would feel if an invading force from another country were just able to kick in doors and enter homes at will. It didn’t seem right.
“Fifty to 60 percent of the intel was just flat out wrong. These were just families we were terrorizing,” Hanes said, the word families heavily weighted with a chord of disillusionment. “It hit me when I hear little girls screaming and I’m seeing Grandma thrown against the wall. It’s not what I signed up for.”
...
The day they came upon the house, a barebones structure of concrete sealed with a heavy lock on the front door, looped in Hanes’ mind since.
“No! No! Please!” the woman would beg again and again in his memory, just as she had that day in Iraq. The Marines had kicked the door twice and then stood aside as Hanes breached the lock with his shotgun and thrust open the door.
A young woman with wide, dark almond eyes cloaked in a brown dress and pale hijab stood directly in front of him, frozen in terror. Her screams soon trailed behind the troops as they pounded through the home. With little to destroy and nothing to discover, it took only minutes for every belonging to be shattered, turned over, and thrown onto the floor.
As half of the troops barreled through the house searching for a particular man or weapons, Hanes began to walk down the hallway until, suddenly, out of his peripheral vision, he saw a crying woman dash in and out of a room, then out the front door, carrying something in her arms covered with a blanket. He walked towards the room, and the door creaked open just a sliver, enough for him to catch sight of a barren crib. And he thought about his newborn daughter.
And at that moment, and many moments afterward, he realized the awful truth.
“I had become the very thing I came here to fight against.”
…
“We can start our lives over.”
Three nights later, the platoon gathered at the top of a building overlooking Baghdad. It was here, at this temporary base in this fortified position clustered around other buildings ensconced by a wall, where Marines and US troops could rest assured that no one could harm them. The Recon sniper stood watch on the roof above them, and the Marine and other US forces patrolled below them.
The deep sleep that Hanes and his team fell into that night during the usual rotating sleep-ops, was short-lived, not because it was their turn to watch vigilantly into the blackness, gun in hand, but something else instead.
“Pack your shit and gather downstairs. Now!” the squad leader yelled. There was an iciness to his voice Hanes had never heard, and the Marines glanced at each other uneasily.
“What is happening?” Hanes asked.
Once back at camp, outside on the ground floor, Hanes and the others approached a room full of dire Marines, some who stared blankly at nothing before them, some with tears in their eyes. Hanes sat down.
The commander broke the silence. “As some of you have heard, our Marine was just shot. Our sniper misidentified a target during watch. He was dressed as a local, operating covertly with an intel group.”
There was a moment of silence, followed by roars of protest. It seemed everyone was yelling at once.
“This is not right!” Hanes best friend, the platoon’s EMT. protested. He lunged toward two other Marines who yelled back at him. Every direction, tumultuous brewed, the yells spiraled all around the base, increasing in volume.
Hanes could see his friend getting closer to the other Marines now, arms raised, fists clenched. In an instant, he raced towards his friend and pulled him aside. His friend breathed heavily, his chest rising. The shouts continued. The platoon was divided, loyalties trampled. The weight of the tragedy had turned them all into assailants, enemies to each other in a foreign land.
The words spilled at once. “We're almost done. Let's stay focused, stick together and stay low so that we can get back home in one piece. Then we can start our lives over.”
Nothing was ever the same in the platoon after that night. The mission in Iraq, whatever it was, had lost its appeal. The uproar of moral division dimmed into a tense silence, the dining hall quiet, the sleeping quarters void of the usual laughter - all the camaraderie vanished.
…
As the transition to the Army began, the moment the Marines had all been waiting for had finally arrived. They were leaving Baghdad for good. It should have been a joyous occasion, maybe for a moment at least, but Hanes saw that he wasn’t the only one who wasn’t celebrating. The other Marines mirrored his apprehension with becalmed, faraway glazed stares that remained on their faces long after they returned.
What would await him? He didn't have a wife anymore. He was served the divorce papers the day after Christmas, just before the Iraq War began. His daughter was still just a baby. He’d been gone so long. Would she even recognize him?
Hanes thought about these things and his life after the war during those final days in Iraq as he stood at one of Saddam Hussein's former Baghdad palaces. It was there where he saw the man stroll out of the building with the top brass colonels and then turn to shake their hands. They must be meeting to talk about creating an embassy there, Hanes thought. He had overheard weapon contractors and head decision-makers discussing it days earlier, and recognized the man as a weapons contractor for Blackwater. The man walked in his direction.
He stopped in front of Hanes and Hanes greeted him with a nod. “You know,” the man said, leaning in as if disclosing a secret, “There’s a whole other world out there of providing security, especially if one was prior military and in a spec ops unit. You can make a shit ton of money. How much are you making now?”
Hanes shot him a number.
“Try multiplying that by 10,” the man said with a triumphant laugh. He nudged Hanes. “That’s how much they pay me.”
After unrequited banter, the man walked off and Hanes could feel that unsettling feeling once again, and nothing about the mission, the titles, or all the accolades that one could ever achieve in the military would ever change his mind. He would soon be free from it forever.
…
Life after war is not promising. Wherever former soldiers go, they take it with them. Almost 20 years have passed since Hanes first stepped in Iraq, and none of it has left him. Sometimes it’s a burning smell, and he’s back in the dusty streets of Baghdad. Sometimes it’s the scream of a little girl at the park, and suddenly the Iraqi girls in their nightgowns reappear in his mind like apparitions, as real as the person standing in front of him, screaming for their fathers. All it takes is a barking dog, a car backfiring, a bang, 4th of July fireworks, and suddenly, he’s back in Iraq.
As the war raged on inside of him, his family took notice. Who was this stranger bursting in emotional rage at nuances? Who had taken over the body of the once calm, upbeat child they had always known? Why was he inconsolable? Sometimes Hanes didn’t even realize that the rage was inside of him but once unleashed, he couldn’t go back.
It seemed the farther he pushed the events, the more they surfaced in his dreams, always drifting, somewhere in Iraq, or back to that pool. The pool that he always tried to forget.
…
Don't Look Behind You
How could anyone have known? They all had rubber rifles. The gleam of real metal on the man’s gun was indistinguishable.
Parris Island, North Carolina, October 31, 1994
Some call Halloween the Day of the Dead, but this particular day took on a whole new meaning. It had begun like any other early morning for 18-year-old Hanes and the recruits. By the break of dawn, they had spilled into the water, the sun’s morning rays lighting up the entire building, beaming into every arched window that spanned both sides of the pool walls, shining upon all the recruits and the increasing crowd of onlookers. The whistles blew, and one after the other, they dived in, the sting of chlorine in their eyes, the weight of the rubber M-16s on their arm, paddling vigorously.
At first, Hanes hadn’t noticed the man as he stood in line to jump off the diving board. How could anyone have known? They all had rubber rifles. The gleam of real metal on the man’s gun was indistinguishable. Hanes stepped onto the diving board and dived into the pale turquoise water. He surfaced with a gasp, clutching his rubber rifle, and began swimming.
That’s when he heard the shot followed by the screams. He stopped swimming and turned around to catch a glimpse of the limp body of a man tumbling head-first off the diving board, spiraling, as if in slow-motion, blood spilling from his shattered skull, a man who no longer had a face.
A splash. Blood engulfed the pool. The screams.
“GET OUT NOW!!” Hanes’ instructor yelled, waving his arms wildly, beckoning his recruits out of the pool. The body bobbed, leaking blood, the turquoise water blurred a murky reddish-brown slowly coiling to the bottom of the pool, its surface rocked by panic waves, the swimmers dispersing in every corner, abandoning their rubble rifles.
“Don’t look behind you!”
Hanes swam harder.
He reached the edge of the pool and hoisted his dripping body onto the cool tiles, bursting into the madness of the crowd as his instructor herded him to the wall with the other recruits. The echoes of nearly 200 screams bounced off the pool room’s walls.
“Line up! Face the Wall! Don’t look behind you!” Hanes put his arms against the wall alongside the other recruits.
“Don’t look behind you!”
The instructions that followed back at barracks were just as clear: Hanes recognized the same glazed stares and suspended chatter in his fellow recruits. They could see the chaplain they were told, but then, they must put it to rest. “...section 8…” “...flagged…” “...on your record…” “Don’t speak up…” were the words that flared incentive for Hanes to keep the man just where he left him in his memory - floating in the pool that day.
His friend had told him later what he had witnessed along with only a few others, quietly, of course, away from the discerning glares of the sergeants. The 24-year-old drill instructor had strode to the base of the pool that morning, climbed the 5-foot diving platform, and removed the hat from his head. Now, in ordinary life, there’s nothing special about a hat. But in the Marines, the military - a drill instructor hat like that is weighted with sacrilegious devotion. The drill instructor gazed at the hat and then tossed it in the water. The hat bobbed at the surface as a dozen or so onlookers stopped trying to make sense of the scene before them and rushed to the diving platform. But the drill instructor was too quick. He leaned against his M-16 rifle with a look of defeat and determination.
“No!” The others around him yelled, climbing the diving platform.
The drill sergeant huddled the rifle close to his body. Perhaps if it hadn’t happened so fast someone could have rescued him, but his presence was obscured by the recruits around him, swimming, diving, the amass of gurgled chatter on the sidelines, the other instructors shouting commands, the whistles, the splashes, it was all too much and too fast, hidden in plain sight. Once they reached the diving board to pull the gun from his grasp, he shook his head and mouthed a definitive, “No,” hugged the rifle under his chin, and pulled the trigger. The shots pierced the air, launching the drill instructor off the edge of the diving board, where his body splashed beside the swimming recruits, followed by an eruption of screams.
The sergeant’s falling body would play again and again in Hanes’ mind like a looped movie reel, and then he would think about the wife and child the sergeant had left behind. Sometimes, he tried to replay a different scene, one where the sergeant had been saved. But how long, really, would that have lasted?
…
He could have attacked him with anything, but the crowbar behind him was the first thing he saw, so he snatched it.
Hanes shook his head, trying to release the chilling scene from his mind as he walked into the warehouse where he worked. Nightmares had kept him up most of the night. Even now, over a decade since the incident, the haunting image of the sergeant’s face and his lifeless body falling off the diving board had awoken him that morning. He would always be a purgatory prisoner on that day at Parris Island he decided. His mind, he thought, would forever be suspended just before the sergeant’s body hit the pool water.
He exchanged the usual pleasantries with his colleagues that morning, struggling to release the images in his mind. He tried to focus on the task that day, but it kept coming back.
“Don’t look behind you!”
He could hear the screams echoing off the pool house walls. He could smell the chlorine, and see the man’s body floating amongst the abandoned rubber rifles. The “man,” who he had seen as a man then, really, at 24, was only a boy.
By the time the supervisor appeared in front of him, watching from afar at first, as he usually did, glazing over his perfections, seeking one minor imperfection as he usually did, it was too late. Hanes had ignored the behavior until he couldn’t anymore.
“Mike!” I don’t know what your deal is, but you haven’t shipped these packages on time,” the supervisor said. He then paused before adding in a lower tone, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s too much for you.” Perhaps, it was the slight quiver of excitement in the supervisor’s voice, as he awaited a reaction. Perhaps, it was Hanes’ lack of sleep. Or perhaps, Hanes had felt, for a brief moment, what the sergeant on the diving board platform felt that day as he tossed his hat into the water.
Hanes stood up and looked the supervisor in the eye. He felt foggy and unpredictable.
He could have attacked him with anything, but the crowbar behind him was the first thing he saw, so he snatched it. Hanes reared back, aiming for a strike to the supervisor’s head, and then, at the last moment, turned behind him and smashed a cashew crate as he screamed, “I will f***** kill you!” The words surprised him as they fired from his body. But he couldn’t stop. The profanity spilled. His lungs filled with fiery rage, and his face reddened.
The others, who had been working beside him, cautiously backed away before shuffling briskly out the door along with the supervisor, leaving Hanes alone, splintered crates strewn across the warehouse floor around him. He knew they would all talk about it. He knew they’d never look at him the same again. Over and over, he hit the crates until he released the crowbar that tinged on the hard floor by his feet, and then, he fell to his knees and sobbed.
It was only later, in the VA therapy rooms, that he could make sense of the moment when the madness caught up with him.
“You can see the chaplain, but after that, don’t talk about it.”
“...section 8…”
“...flagged…”
“...on your record…”
“Don’t speak up…”
Well, it was about time that somebody did.
…
The Overview Effect
The cool nuzzle on Hanes’ face made him believe he was dreaming. Then, the animal exhaled forcefully…
Fall 2018, Appalachian Trail
Hanes awoke to morning light rays piercing his tent. He pulled himself out of his sleeping bag and liner, put on his boots, and stepped outside. The leaves crunched beneath his feet, matted to the ground under fresh frost. The temperature the night before had plummeted to 30 degrees.
He looked down and noticed his clothes draped heavily over his body. The last time he had weighed himself at the hospital, he’d lost 15 pounds. He did the math. He was burning roughly 5,000 calories a day, hiking 18 miles a day. He ate mostly oatmeal and cured sliced meat with cheese for breakfast, protein-filled lunches, tuna packs, peanut butter, jerky, nuts and butter, and freeze-dried stews with edible greens and roots at dinner. He could get used to this, he thought. It seemed the longer he was on the trail, the more the outside world was abstract to him. He carried shelter with him. Water wasn’t an issue; he’d filter mountain spring water along the trail in the creeks and rivers that streamed nearby. Besides the weekly food replenishment runs in nearby towns, he was an autonomous avatism; he had never felt more universally aligned.
He could feel his beard growing wildly now, but he had no reason to cut it. He had only 500 miles left. If he was lucky enough to avoid a catastrophe like a snowstorm, ice, or another major fall, he would finish his journey in time before the end of the year, and, if he kept pushing himself, he could make it back home to Georgia before Christmas.
He packed up his tent, hoisted his heavy pack on his back, and began walking back onto the trail through the dimming Pennsylvanian foliage, up the slanted rocks, cautiously, with conviction, never a foot out of place. “Rocksylvania,” the trail hikers called this part of the trail. He could no longer hear the chirping birds by now, and it seemed, with each day he walked, he saw fewer and fewer hikers.
He imagined the end of his journey, McAfee’s Knob, where at only 13, the birth of the idea to walk the trail was planted. His uncle had seen him stop and stare at the hiker just beyond them, a real hiker, who looked just as he did now, heavy pack on the back, long beard, poles in hand, walking briskly up the trail. His uncle had recognized the glow of admiration on Hanes’ face as Hanes thought of the magnificence one must feel to take on that challenge.
“It’s not as simple as it looks,” his uncle had said. The weight of the pack, every item, every step, he explained, the intention must be planted long before you set foot on the trail, and then, there’s always the unplanned.
Ah, yes, the unplanned. It had visited Hanes on the trail before when he fell down the rocks, and it would visit him again that night.
As the late afternoon faded into a golden-sky evening, he found a clearing and unpacked his hammock. The two heavy trees in front of him were only feet apart, and he wanted nothing more than to eat dinner and rest. He adjusted his hammock on the trees, then lit a fire and added his freeze-dried stew mix with water into a canteen cup, with edible greens and roots and a dash of butter. He always looked forward to dinner, as it was his only hot meal of the day, and always felt content, that night, and every night after he would extinguish his fire, slide into his sleeping bag, and quickly fall into a deep sleep that arrived so easily in the forest.
It was at this time that the animal approached him. The cool nuzzle on Hanes’ face made him believe he was dreaming. Then, the animal exhaled forcefully, and he sprung up with such a jolt that he almost twisted out of the hammock and fell over.
“Raaaaaa!” Hanes yelled. The echo faded into the blackness.
He heard the pounding of the earth and then a deep “Rrouuugh!” as the shadowy mass in front of him thudded off into the wilderness. His heart thumped rapidly. He scanned the area around his hammock. The creature was gone.
He could feel the air forming clouds where he exhaled and the rising in his chest. Sleep was no longer feasible. At 4:30 a.m. he finally got up, packed up his hammock, and walked back onto the trail, heading south.
He walked on as the day broke, fatigued yet determined. Only 10 more miles and he would stop, he told himself. He walked through thick brush and trees, when suddenly, just 15 feet ahead, around a corner where the trail turned near hidden brush, a massive black bear ambled in front of him. Hanes froze. Two cubs bounded behind the big black bear who turned her head around behind her as if nodding for her cubs to catch up.
Then the bear turned her head and stopped walking, staring directly at Hanes, her small dark eyes, penetrating into his. She moved her body parallel to Hanes. Hanes' breath stopped. He stood still. After about 10 seconds, the bear shifted her contemplative gaze away from him and ambled off the trail, deep into the thick forest with her cubs. Hanes inched slowly backward until he could no longer see the black bears or hear the snapping of the branches.
That night he pitched his tent near a mountainside cliff. He lay there, staring into the valley, encased by mountains illuminated by billions of stars. And he looked up at the starry sky and thought about Matt. He held the fairy cross in his hand, turning it over, and wondered if all of those moments he felt Matt was there with him on the trail were real. He could see his brother’s prankish grin clearly in his mind. And at that moment, he realized that the entire Appalachian trail journey was just as much for his brother as it was for him. As he massaged his wrists, releasing tension from the sprain, he wondered once again if Matt was messing with him by throwing obstacles on the trail like his recent fall. It only sounds crazy if you don’t know Matt like he did.
Hanes laughed. “That’s just your style, isn’t it?” he said out loud while still gazing at the stars. And he thought he saw one twinkle back in laughter.
…
Icicles dangled from his beard like daggers as he walked over fallen trees in his path, over patches of ice embedded in huge rocks and boulders.
As the days drifted into December, the temperatures plummeted, and blackness blanketed the land. Hanes woke up earlier each morning, sometimes at 4 a.m. just before sunlight, to get a headstart on the trail before the early nightfall. Icicles dangled from his beard like daggers as he walked over fallen trees in his path, over patches of ice embedded in huge rocks and boulders. His body stayed warm enough if he kept moving. With two wool socks on each foot and bread bags wrapped on top, he didn’t fear the sting of frostbite. He felt alert and hydrated despite trekking an average of 18 miles a day in the snow. He had learned to sleep with his water bottles and shoes under his legs at night to keep them from freezing, and it worked. He just had to keep moving now, or a winter snowstorm could hit any day and deter him from his final destination, or worse, he may not escape the snowstorm at all, which the locals and weather channels had warned him would hit any day.
When the Virginia ice storm arrived, a thick white swallowing wall that left every freezing bare branch dangling with icicles, and plowing more fallen trees in his path, he did what he always did: he kept on walking, through the heavy snow and solid ice, his feet throbbing, the cold numbing in his back from the skydiving accident.
“Only one more week until I reach McAfee’s Point,” he told his mother on the phone one evening in a nearby town near the center of Shenandoah National Park.
“Where are you now?”
“I’m finishing the Shenandoahs in Virginia.”
“Then I’m driving up to Virginia,” his mother said decisively. I’ll drive up there to be with you off the trail until you finish your hike. I’ll pick you up at the main road at the end of the park, and I'll get you a hotel for the night, some warmth, good food.” Just the thought made Hanes smile.
When he saw his mother for the first time since the first day in May when he began his journey, she did not look like her usual self. Her face was pink and swollen, and puffy red lines rimmed her eyes. He knew this was because, as she had told him, she had cried every day since Matt died. But after they embraced, he also saw something else in her eyes this time - relief. At least they could be there for each other now.
An immense determination swelled inside him as he began each dark, cold morning in the silent forest with a headlamp clipped to his head, trumping onwards towards the 4,000-foot snowy peaks, his breath puffing into wispy clouds, the snow brushing his knees, hoisting one buried leg in front of the other.
The chatter of other hikers was long-gone. The animals, the birds, had vanished. The sun held a distant glaze over his head, the only remaining life form it seemed, besides him, until he approached the clearing.
A large gathering of about 50 deer clustered in the deep forest snow as if in a communion of serenity. What were they doing there? Hanes wondered. And why so many of them? The silence of the winter enveloped their mystery further, and the deer eyed him with brief curiosity before shifting back their gaze. It was their world after all, not his.
…
He raised his head towards the sky and screamed. The scream rumbled from his entire body, not just his throat, a lion-like roar releasing pride, sadness, and ultimate humility.
On December 17, Hanes stepped back onto the trail as a golden dawn rimmed the blue mountains of Virginia. Today was the day, he thought. Today was the day that he had thought about nearly every day for seven months, and he was so close - just hours from his final destination.
Before his journey, he had never experienced such equal confrontation between outward silence and inner noise. The trail had resurrected decades of buried memories, the kind that one can only feel in absolute solitude. He felt lighter now, and he walked with a steady stride, his spirits lifted, his head clear.
Just half past the hour after noon, he could see his final destination in front of him: a chiseled rock with a narrow ledge overlooking a 270-degree panoramic view of Virginia’s blue ridge mountains and rolling hills some 3,000 feet below: McAfee’s Knob.
He raced towards the overlook, jogging up the side of the mountain until he reached its peak. Once he arrived at the top, he walked slowly to its edge and glanced below him at the mountains as far as he could see that spilled across the earth like a watercolor painting. Then he lifted his poles in the air, raised his head towards the sky, and screamed. The scream rumbled from his entire body, not just his throat, a lion-like roar releasing both pride, sadness, and ultimate humility. He screamed again, and again.
And then an odd sensation came over him. Astronauts call this “The Overview Effect.” It happened to them when they gazed out their space shuttle windows and saw the earth: a small, hazy-covered pulsating sphere suspended in the vast blackness of the universe. And it happened to Hanes when he fell to his knees that day at the tip of McAfee’s Knob, above all of the mountains, and the forest. They had taken him in, listened to him when he yelled, comforted him when he was in despair, and now, it was over. He bowed over in tears.
He didn’t know where the tears came from, but they erupted deep inside him, tears stored in every cell of his body for years from all the loss. Tears for the loss of all of the civilian families in Iraq who were terrorized and killed. Tears for all of his friends who didn’t make it back. Tears for his friends who did and couldn’t live with themselves afterward. And tears, most of all, for Matt. Matt, who he couldn’t see but could feel beside him, in the fairy cross in his pocket, in the mountains below him, in the sky above him, and in him.
…
A Great Design
“To make a change, create a new model that makes the old model obsolete.”
On a cool, overcast December morning, almost exactly one year after the completion of Hanes’ Appalachian Trail journey, I joined him in San Diego’s Mission Hills.
I had met Hanes through a mutual pacifist friend a year before, and Hanes had agreed to be a part of a brief I was writing alongside others on a different story entirely. But as I witnessed events in his life unfold, I saw that he had a story worth telling, and within time, I knew that he’d talk about it all. It’s difficult to get people to talk about these things, and the ones I’ve met that come in guns blazing, ready to recast their stories are always full of anecdotes based on self-importance. Hanes didn’t have an agenda and didn’t even appear to understand that he had a story to tell, which is a good indicator that one does.
My family in San Diego found this distantly amusing. I was staying at my sister’s house not far from the Mission Hills, and before I left that morning, she had asked, “You going out to eat some acorns?” She was referring to Hanes’ online post from the previous day.
“Eating wild foods keeps a person locally grounded and close to the Earth. Enjoy and protect the wonderful bounties of the Earth!” Hanes had posted photos of fresh acorns that he had cobbled into some bread. I don’t know what kind of weirdo goes out to meet a guy in the hills to munch on acorns, but I decided it was more interesting to let that image simmer in their minds.
“That’s right,” I said before shutting the front door. “Don’t bother saving me dinner. I’ll have plenty of acorns.”
I’ll admit, Hanes’ obsession with living off the land is somewhat unusual in a modern western city, but then again, there’s nothing usual about Hanes. He’s one of the few - no, the only - person I know who can survive in a forest with nothing, not even a fire starter. He likes to create fires from scratch (with different techniques that involve rubbing sticks together), and he knows all of the plants alongside the trail because he’ll forage them like every day and brew them up for dinner.
“And this here, this is tiny, but it’s chickweed that you can make into a salad. And there’s a poisonous lookalike, pimpernel. And these are mustard seeds.” Hanes said as he bent down and stroked the mustard seeds gently. “Give it another week, and it’s going to be yummy!”
I get all this, I told him, but you know, the average person, they’re going to say, “Why bother? Won’t you use less energy jogging on down to the grocery store and buying it?”
But that’s like telling Hanes not to hike the Appalachian Trail and use a treadmill instead.
“The more dependent we are on society, the more we’re a slave to it,” he said. What he did on the trail, hike all day, walk amongst the wildlife, sleep under the stars, forage - that’s how humans lived for 95 percent of our existence.
“Connection with the earth builds a connection with yourself.”
We sat down near a pond while Hanes continued thoughtfully. “The connection humanity has with the earth now, with climate change, all pollution - there’s a Texas-sized trash ball just circling in the middle of the ocean. We gotta get our act together. But in the worst-case scenario, if our society collapses, I know I’ll be okay. I can go out in the woods and survive.”
Hanes turned around and led me to a large flat rock near a river. The rock dipped like a bowl at the top with scattered acorns. “Look,” he pointed. “This is where the Kumeyaay Indians ground the acorns.”
Hanes’ obsession with wilderness survival and foraging began after he was spit back into society after the war. How is it, the former Recon Marine wondered, that months of preparation and heavily protocoled transitions were in place for a soldier entering combat, but nothing once he returned? Through his new lens of suspicion, Hanes wondered if he’d just been “fed a bunch of lies.” Who made these rules for society anyway? Not only for organized murder but for money, politics, religion, and relationships?
It wasn’t until he arrived in the southern California hills at Colin and Karen Archipley’s hydro-organic farm that his anger from these answers slipped away. He discovered the healing power of working with plants, and for the first time since the war, peacefulness washed over him. He was no longer on the wheel of death and destruction; he was a creator.
The farm's owner, Colin, is also an Iraq War veteran and immediately welcomed Hanes into the farm's Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training program. Their farm is known for being up to 90 percent more water-efficient than traditional farming because it uses water to carry nutrients to the plants pumped through a table that gets reused and delivers 3-5 times the crop production. Armed with this new knowledge, Hanes designed his own hydroponic systems: solar-powered deployable greenhouses for areas recovering from warfare or natural disasters, and then built ones for himself, his family and friends. Once he started, he couldn’t stop. It was more than an obsessive hobby. And people caught on, not just the press but his favorite audience, the kids at school. Hydro-organic farming leads not only to self-sufficiency, Hanes teaches, but can create a world beyond war.
How? With new designs for cities, linear and radial transportation, efficient local food production, vertical gardens, and atmospheric water harvesting (that acts like a humidifier and collects water from the air because there’s six times more water in the atmosphere than in our rivers), the need for war as a means to obtain and control the planet’s resources can be eradicated.
“Get kids to think outside of the box, you know,” he said with a smile.
“People shouldn’t be in a state of need for basic necessities of water, food, and shelter,” he said. “We have the technology and capabilities to have an abundance of resources. With climate change, the real threat is food and water.”
The bustling San Diego hills that day and the rest of the vibrant city gave no indication of the darkness that would fall in the following months. I was glad I had caught up with Hanes just days before he left, just before a worldwide pandemic would stretch across the earth, retreating all the people on it like prisoners in solitary confinement. But with the endorphins from the Appalachian trail fully desaturated from his body, Hanes had other plans. It was time to move again. With nothing but a backpack, he began early in the following year at the pyramids and volcanoes of Mexico City, jumping off a waterfall in Guatemala, swimming through its caves, trekking the jungles, and finished with some light sunrise yoga on top of a Mayan Pyramid with the roars of howler monkeys below him. But for just then, he would roll up his what, four belongings in the back of his car and drive across the country back to Georgia for a week before launching his journey.
The moving part, he said, it’s not a big deal. Hanes gave away nearly all of his possessions a long time ago.
“The more you own, the more you’re owned,” he said in that thick Georgia accent that loses the r’s.
The books were the hardest to part with; to the used bookstore they went. Hanes' living quarters were barren by choice: just a mat on the floor instead of a dining table and chairs, a thin folding blanket used as a mattress (easier for traveling and packing), and a body pillow that acts as a couch if he puts the two head pillows together, all inspired by his travels in Japan.
“But,” he added, noting my laughter, “I’m sure when I get like, a home, you know, I’d get a table,” he said. “The more simple we can be, the better off we are. The lighter we are, the clearer we can think.”
As we moved through a narrow trail up a steep hill, Hanes offered to carry my camera backpack that felt like a load of cinder blocks. The heavy pack is not a big deal, he reassured me. It’s like the pack he carried walking the Appalachian trail, where every ounce counts, “to the point where you’re cutting your toothbrush in half.”
We rounded a corner as a dachshund trotted in front of our path and paused confidently, its mouth gaping open, eyes squinted, chest out, waiting for approval of his cuteness. Hanes stopped to crouch down and pet the dog. “I can’t help it. That’s too much cuteness right there,” he said. The dachshund moved his stubby legs and bounded off.
I ask Hanes about his anti-war activism. He went all over the world only to speak out that war is not the answer obviously. But he soon realized that neither is fighting the existing reality. There were answers he’d been seeking since the war - his entire adult life. But he couldn’t find them in school, religion, or any institution.
Then he met a man on the other side of the country that understood the very thing Hanes told me that day: “To make a change, create a new model that makes the old model obsolete.”
And this man had models - thousands of technological designs and societal blueprints to save the planet. This man was a futuristic genius.
...
“Being born human beings, we should have access to all resources of life without debt or servitude.”
92-year-old Jacque Fresco donned a midcentury Fedora when Hanes arrived in South Florida for the first time. He walked upright, looked Hanes in the eye, and gave him a firm handshake. Then he led Hanes and a group around his research center through 21 rural acres of walk-in housing, city, transportation models, and agricultural designs as he spoke unforgivingly about the world’s problems that he deemed stemmed from the monetary system. Replace that with a technologically advanced resource-based economy, and the world changes for the better, Fresco said.
Fresco’s innovative designs and technology were exactly the answer to Hanes’ prayers.
“A Palestinian baby isn’t born hating an Israeli baby. They get that from the environment,” Fresco told Hanes during the tour. “Think of our social system, particularly our city design like an organism. The human body distributes blood, oxygen, and nutrients in the efficient quantity where it is needed. If our bodies operated under capitalism, the brain would say, ‘I’m the most important organ, so I get most of the blood, oxygen, and nutrients.’ Then the liver would say, ‘Hey, I’m important too! If I can’t filter the blood, you can’t operate as a brain.’ The brain would respond, ‘Okay, I’ll give you just enough to survive.’
But the body would not survive,” Fresco said. “It would wither away within a month.”
“By replacing human labor and intelligence with machines, we achieve a standard of living unknown even to royalty in past times,” Fresco said in his book “The Best that Money can’t Buy.”
Availability of all the planetary resources to meet all our needs sounds Utopian, but Fresco assured us it’s not. No system is perfect. But this one is better than what we have now. And so Fresco dedicated his life to developing detailed guides for society sustainable for everyone because, as he stated, technology, not politics, solves problems. The betterment of humanity - not profit- should be society’s motive.
Fresco labeled his collection of blueprints and machines “The Venus Project. He continued to build his vision of a technologically-advanced society in a post-monetary world until just briefly after Hanes’ third visit to see him.
On May 18, 2017, at 101 years old, Jacque Fresco died, leaving the world behind a great design. Now it was up to everyone else to assemble it.
“Being born human beings, we should have access to all resources of life without debt or servitude,” Hanes told me that day, echoing Fresco.
“Our economy incentivizes squandering the resources, maintaining an exploitation and waste of the cyclical consumption of purchasing, throwing away, purchasing, throwing away,” Hanes said. We have resource allocation and management issues, but if we redesigned city systems like Fresco’s blueprints that he left behind, the world wouldn’t be in a state of poverty like half of it is today.
…
“Those experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan...do not define who you are...Surrendering your past does not mean you’re forgetting. It doesn’t mean that you’re weak. It just means you’re letting go of it so you can move forward and find your true purpose and calling.” - Ryan Holt
As we approached the base of the hike, we decided to head to a nearby coffee shop just down the road.
“Simple Coffee Shop,” the sign read as we pulled up. “That’s totally you,” I said. “Simple living.”
We sat at a table, and over hot tea, Hanes leaned towards me and lowered his voice to divulge the new mustard growth that sprouted in the area after the rainfall.
“That’s exciting,” I said.
“We’ll soon have plenty of mustard, radish greens, stinging nettle, malva…I should have shown you the curly dock out there. It’s one of those plants that has uses in all stages. You can use the greens for food, and when the stalk grows and gets old, you can use that to make a fire. I also like to sprout the seeds for fresh greens when there are no other greens available.”
I studied Hanes’ face as he continued talking fervently. He was all lit up. I’ve never met someone so dedicated to nature and primitive living, and I thought about what he said earlier when I asked about bugs. You have to eat some kind of protein when you’re out in the wild, right? Or his case, here in San Diego.
“So yeah, this is going to be an interesting story,” he had said, chuckling. “Crickets can be grown real easy, and freezing them is way more ethical than the slaughterhouse method. The bugs go dormant if you put them in the refrigerator then pop them in the freezer - then cook them right up.”
He then lightened his voice as if singing a lullaby, “So it’s like, they’re going to sleep, they’re okay.” Then he added, “From a climate change perspective, there's less CO2 impact since there’s no clear-cutting. It’s a protein of the future - that along with algae.”
Hanes added that regenerative agriculture methods apply rotational grazing that tilts towards ethical measures ensuring the animals live well, “allowing them to graze on grass in open fields, getting sun while sequestering CO2 back into the soil. It’s important because ruminate animals have a role in the ecosystem and ensure the health of the soil with microorganisms and provide the balance in the CO2 cycle.”
I was still trying to wrap my head around a former Recon Marine weighing the ethical implications of killing insects when Hanes said, “Check this out.”
He turned his phone around to show me a video. A bunch of hippie-clad men and women ran around in what looked like some kind of a commune or just a really fun outdoor gathering. Then a bearded man with a star-patterned shawl draped around his bare shoulders appeared in the garden. Hanes’ long-lost brother, I would later call him, or, Ryan Holt.
Some might recognize Holt as a five-time contestant on the TV show “Naked and Afraid.” But to Hanes, he is Yukon, a former Marine who also hiked the Appalachian Trail for months to deal with his PTSD from the Iraq War. Hanes met Holt near the Appalachian trail at his “The Human Nature Hostel,” a geodesic dome on 42 acres in Maine designed for Appalachian Trail hikers in need of a place to sleep for the night. He also leads wilderness retreats to help other veterans heal through nature. Holt and Hanes clicked immediately.
“Those experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan...do not define who you are,” Holt said in the video, his calm state suddenly transitioning to blinking back tears. “Nature saved my life….Surrendering your past does not mean you’re forgetting. It doesn’t mean that you’re weak. It just means you’re letting go of it so you can move forward and find your true purpose and calling.”
Before Hanes and I parted, he reached inside the zipper wallet that was no bigger than a small fingernail (another form of his downsizing) and pulled out an object. He opened his palm before me to reveal a small weathered rock in the shape of a cross - his brother’s Fairy Cross he had given him.
“I carry it everywhere I go,” he said.
…
I wouldn’t speak to Hanes for many months afterward when he was back in Georgia after his Central American travels, but when I did, he told me he carries a part of Matt with him and his essence on how he viewed life.
The world is afraid right now, I told him. What on earth was he doing looking so happy?
“Matt never had any ounce of living life by fear. And I feel like that has become a big part of me.”
Of course, Hanes washes his hands a lot and uses common sense. His journey launched pre-pandemic, and then he was in the midst of it. Still, he knows “fear carries immune-compromising energy.”
“What would my brother do?” he often asked himself before a new adventure.
And the answer was always the same, every time:
“My brother would do whatever the hell he wants to.”
Music by Trevor Powers' Youth Lagoon: Montana and Cannons www.trevorpowe.rs
In Mike's Own Words
Friends lost to combat and PTSD
Sergeant Zain Pradhan, 34
May 28, 1987 - August 6, 2021
Lost to PTSD
Zain is an Army Veteran whom I met and became a friend with after the War. I knew that he was a Veteran in need and I helped guide him in pursuing his VA benefits to get the support that he needed. Once he got his full benefits, I was under the impression that he was on the path to harnessing the coping skills needed. I met him through the Venus Project. We were both disillusioned from warfare and we were always pondering different and better possibilities in how society could be better. I wish that he reached out to me. There were no warning signs and I never saw his suicide coming. I miss Zain dearly.
Thomas Alexander, 42
June 22, 1977 - November 2, 2019
Lost to PTSD
I met Tommy when I first got to 1st Force Recon Company in the year 2000. I met him at Company headquarters and somehow got into a discussion about the difficulties of preparing for Recon training to be an operator as a senior Sergeant who had a lot to learn. He gave me a lot of encouragement and told me to “never give up, just keep moving forward with a positive attitude and determination and I’ll make it through.” We never really hung out as the op tempo kept everyone extremely busy and we were in different platoons, but every time I would see him, or in passing, he was kind and always asked how the training was going and encouraged me. He carried with him such a great positive vibe and was just a good genuine person.
Lance Davidson, 35
January 8, 1979 - February 11, 2014
Lost to PTSD
I went to the Basic Recon Course with Lance. We were both in 1st Force Recon together. He was a very tough Marine. He was very knowledgeable in the tactics of Recon. When I went to Recon school with him, I didn’t know much about the tactics because I was previously on Embassy duty and a radio communicator. I had a huge learning curve and Lance was pushing me through the whole time. He was a great Marine and friend, always truthful, even when the truth hurts. We were training together in 2000 and we lost him due to PTSD in 2014. Lance will be missed by many, especially by his son.
Captain Alan Rowe, 35
Died September 3, 2004 in Iraq
Lost to Combat
I also knew Capt. Rowe in BRC. He was our Recon instructor. He motivated me in BRC and always told me that things will come together and to not give up. There was so much to learn. I had a difficult time in BRC as a senior Sergeant with hardly any infantry experience. I think he tried to understand my plight and frustration and he always gave me words of wisdom. He was a mentor and it was heartbreaking to hear that we lost him in combat.
THE HUMAN NATURE HOSTEL
The Human Nature Hostel
The Geodesic Dome built and operated by Ryan Holt, (“Yukon”) lies off the Appalachian Trail in Maine. Holt, a former Marine who walked the Appalachian Trail to deal with his PTSD, also leads his “Warriors’ Awakening Retreat” (W.A.R.) to help struggling veterans connect and heal through nature.
Zeitgeist: Addendum Film
The second film directed and produced by Peter Joseph.
The Venus Project
Alternative To War
By CNN Money
Alternative to Cities
Video by TZM San Diego San Diego Zeitgeist Movement