The life-affirming embrace of the wilderness has always filled me with wonder, its green arms making me feel more vital and connected with every plant, bug, and scurrying creature.
My father was a pilot, and I spent my formative years on Air Force bases overseas. In Japan, I was too young to wander on my own, so I dreamed longingly about the lush mountains with thick forests that surrounded us. When we moved to England, a grove of widely spaced trees abutted the row of houses where pilots lived, and those woods became my second home.
I often grubbed around in the forest floor, digging holes, certain I’d find buried treasure. That I did, discovering ants, beetles, spiders, and other bugs, each reticulated body an astonishment when examined from inches away. Sometimes I’d dig a shallow hole deep and long enough to lie in. When I lowered myself in and stared up at the trees stretching toward the sky, trunks creaking as they swayed, I felt more at peace there than anywhere else.
This was excellent practice for becoming a soldier. In the Army, I often trekked through dense foliage and dug foxholes in the cold, hard ground. Within platoon defensive perimeters, it was common to maintain 50% security at nighttime, meaning one soldier would scan their sector for intruders while the other slept in the bottom of the foxhole. These holes were deeper than the ones I dug in England, but I still felt the same sense of belonging as I tucked into the snug press of soil.
Most people think of dawn as the morning’s first light, but the sky actually begins to lighten when dawn occurs east of your position and reflects off the atmosphere—an event known in the military as Beginning Morning Nautical Twilight. During training exercises at that hour, we would stand-to and our defensive posture would rise to 100%, everyone alert at their positions. Although we were supposed to be scanning the distant arc of our sectors, I was just as fascinated by the close-up views of industrious insects.
On cold mornings, dew drops illuminated scores of spiderwebs that were normally invisible to me. Gazing out at my sector, the intermittent ground appeared inanimate, something to look around and beyond. All it took to give it life was shifting my focus. It was like peeking behind the magician’s curtain to see how the trick was performed.
As much as the woods thrilled me, they also occasionally tried to do me in. Twice in Fort Bragg’s forests, I was bitten by poisonous spiders in my sleep. The first time, I noticed a raised whitehead on my forearm the next morning. I didn’t think much of it, figuring it was a pimple after a few showerless days.
By that afternoon, my forearm swelled to Popeye proportions with red lines creeping toward my shoulder. Hot to the touch, these streaks tattooed what looked like a subway map on my arm. I was evacuated to the post hospital, receiving a steroid shot and a prescription for anti-inflammatory pills, but thankfully, no necrosis or scarring.
The second time, I knew what the whitehead on my hand signified and sought medical attention immediately. I still got sausage fingers, but the redness didn’t travel up my arm and subsided much faster.
Spiders weren’t the only creatures to attack me at Fort Bragg. During one patrol, our platoon stopped to prepare for a stream crossing. Standard procedure was to form a hasty defensive perimeter whenever we halted, so I found cover behind a log with my rifle resting on the trunk. Soon after, hot pinpricks of pain erupted on my arm. What I hadn’t known was that the log was home to a fire ant nest. Jumping up, I stripped off my BDU top and whirled about like a mosh pit dancer as my platoonmates laughed their asses off.
Those few painful encounters didn’t sour my love of the woods, but they did raise my level of concern when I heard my battalion was headed to Panama for three weeks of jungle training. Aside from poisonous snakes and spiders, our safety brief warned us about vampire bats. During nightly hunts, these bats sometimes descended upon sleeping animals to drink their blood. Crafty creatures, they wouldn’t plummet straight down on victims but would instead land a short distance away, then crawl up to their unsuspecting prey. Their fangs secreted a numbing agent so their hosts wouldn’t wake as they bit through skin and lapped up the leaking blood.
Fortunately, I never encountered any bats. But I did see and hear plenty of howler monkeys that were incensed we’d invaded their territory. Their screaming racket went on most of the day and night, especially when we dug in near their cherished fig trees.
Once, our squad was standing in the middle of an ant trail when an anteater lumbered toward us. It walked in a herky-jerky fashion, moving both legs on one side of its body, making it wobble back and forth as it climbed the trail. Extremely nearsighted, anteaters walk with their long snouts hovering inches above the ground, allowing them to vacuum up all the ants they encounter. But this one couldn’t see us from 50 feet away. Or 40. Or 30. Finally, 20 feet from our squad, it jumped practically straight up in fright, turned around, and scurried away as fast as it could. Which was still awfully slow.
What amazed me most in Panama were the migrating crabs. I’d seen individual crabs on beaches, but here I witnessed a 20-foot-wide swath of the prehistoric-looking creatures blanketing the jungle floor. In the dense foliage, the scuttling carpet of crustaceans seemed to stretch for miles. As they paraded by, their chitinous legs sounded like a million snipping scissors; it overwhelmed every other sound. I could almost feel it vibrating through my body.
It took my breath away.
Although Panama’s wildlife presented me with novelties, surviving its jungle required the same skills I’d honed in the woods. There’s only one environment the Army dropped me into that felt like a different world: the desert.
It’s hard to comprehend the scale of things in Middle Eastern deserts, which are so different from Utah’s sandstone and arches. In Saudi Arabia, our platoon marched long treks through sand, aiming for a distant point that never seemed to get closer. Daytime temperatures could rise to a brain-baking 120 degrees, so we employed a reverse training cycle, rehearsing battle plans at night and sleeping during the hottest part of the day. But restorative sleep was nearly impossible. Eyes refused to stay shut in the bright sunlight and flies tormented us, searching for open and unwary mouths.
Sometimes, we encountered Bedouins leading teams of camels through the dunes. Several soldiers traded Meals Ready-to-Eat with the Bedouins in exchange for a ride. The camel would kneel down for the riders, but if soldiers didn’t hold on tightly, they could be catapulted over the camel’s hump when it pistoned back to a standing position. It was like our own private rodeo.
Previously, during Ranger School, I trained in Utah’s scrubby desert, paddled through Florida’s swamps, and mountain climbed in Georgia.
Whenever I scaled a cliff in the Appalachian Mountains, twin strands of fear and excitement coursed through my muscles as I flattened my body against stone. Fingers scrabbling in search of cracks and fissures, boots seeking ledges for toeholds, always trying to maintain three points of contact. The majesty of immovable rock confirmed my soft mortality, making stolen moments of observation all the more important. Each time I gazed down on the treetops felt like a gift served up just for me. I never felt more alive.
During the swamp phase of Ranger School, we invaded the shore of Florida’s Panhandle and established a security perimeter. And where was this mock invasion? Fort Walton Beach. When our boats scuffed up to shore and we piled out, wielding M-16s to storm the beach, the throngs of bathing-suited vacationers were visibly shocked. But as we continued inland, bounding forward in synchronized fire teams, their dismay turned to delight. They pulled out cameras and snapped pics of soldiers with camouflage face paint.
So many times, I’d ventured into the wilderness and been transfixed by what I saw. That one time on the beach, I was on the other side of the equation, the awe-inspiring sight that fascinated others. As beachgoers gaped in wide-eyed wonder, I felt as feral as Panama’s monkeys, lethal as poisonous spiders, extraordinary as the carpet of crabs. Wildness thrummed through my body, and I was transformed—I was no longer just observing the wilderness, I was finally part of it.
This War Horse Reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mollie Turnbull.
