CRAIG – Tommy Enseleit is 27, a strong man from Valier, a veteran of two tours in Iraq.

Most recently, he served as a “door gunner” for a Montana National Guard chopper crew that flew military staff around southern Iraq.

After a year in country, he came home to Montana in January.

Eight months into his return, he studies sociology at the University of Montana with the goal of working in law enforcement, preferably for the U.S. Forest Service. He is engaged to be married in mid-September.

Sitting on the banks of the Missouri River, he is on the edge of tears.

“It’s not easy to come back,” he says. “It’s an adjustment, and for me, the hardest thing is making decisions. I have to decide, make some choices, get on with my life. It’s a battle for me.”

Tommy Enseleit fought for our freedom. Now he doesn’t know what to do with his own.

That is why he is here today, on the riverbanks, reconnecting with some of the men he served with in Iraq.

He is learning to fly fish with local guides who have volunteered their time. He is being given the time to just sit with his friends, to reinvigorate the bond he first forged with them in Iraq.

“There’s a bond that will always be there,” he says quietly. “Those are the guys who know what we’ve been through. That’s who I trust. It’s really good to see them, to see my captain.”

***

This gathering along the river is the work of a volunteer group called Montana Healing Waters, with help from the Pat Barnes chapter of Trout Unlimited, with many others who gave liberally of their time and skills.

Montana Healing Waters is part of a larger national organization called Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing, and its simple premise is right there in its name.

Take veterans fishing on wild rivers and let the rhythmic magic of both the sport and the river do their work.

“It’s not something with an active therapy component,” says Carroll Jenkins, a Helena psychotherapist who co-founded Montana Healing Waters. “Basically it’s fishing, being outdoors, being with your buddies. It’s no more simple or complex than that. More than that, I guess, it’s an effort to stop making the same mistakes we made with soldiers for generations.”

Tim Crowe is a public relations specialist for the Montana National Guard.

“What they’re doing is finding a way to honor the warrior regardless of how they feel about the war,” he says. “We’ve always been good at turning citizens into warriors. We haven’t been so good at going the other direction. This is part of an effort to fix that, to transition the warrior back to being a citizen.”

Montana Healing Waters is part of the movement to come face to face with the collateral damage that war inflicts on soldiers.

“Obviously, we didn’t do a good job with troops coming back from Vietnam, and everybody knows that,” says Jim Smith, a Helena real estate loan specialist who co-founded Healing Waters with Jenkins. “But we didn’t do a good job with World War II, for that matter, or any other war.”

For a long time, of course, little was known about the enduring mark war made on those enlisted in its service. Now, although researchers continue to learn more, it’s clear that many soldiers struggle as they return to “normal” life.

“Part of what’s happening here is understanding PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and what it means,” says Smith. “It’s not who you are, it’s something you experienced. We’ve confused those things, to the detriment of soldiers.”

But not every soldier has PTSD. Sometimes there’s simply an uneasiness at returning to what previously seemed normal.

“You’ve been in a state of constant vigilance for a year, but when you’re back, there’s really nothing to be hyper-vigilant about,” says Jenkins. “What do you do with that? How do you channel it? How do you let go of it? Who do you trust?”

Tommy Enseleit trusts himself. He trusts his fellow soldiers, but he doesn’t know them like he knows himself, so the trust is not as complete.

“I think that for me, some of the brightness has gone out of the world,” he says. “I’d like to find it, but I’m not so sure.”

***

The men who came out to the Missouri for three days of relaxation and fishing spent 2009 in Iraq as Task Force Raven, a Blackhawk helicopter support team.

They weren’t a combat unit, but they were constantly in perilous situations in and around Basra. Several of the men had already served previous tours in Iraq.

Their captain in Iraq was John Gehring, a 36-year-old who has made the military his career. He picked the men who came out to the Healing Waters retreat.

“We are, as a group, guys who could use a little help transitioning back to regular life,” says Gehring. “Everybody who came out was pretty eager to come. There’s a bond here that will never be broken.”

Even the captain’s rank doesn’t mean immunity from the anxiety of “regular” life.

“I’ve had my hard times,” Gehring says. “This job takes a toll on you. That’s why I think coming out here was important for both myself and the other guys. It’s a chance to just relax and enjoy yourself.”

That moment of peace, Carroll Jenkins said, is what Healing Waters can provide.

“There’s a thing called bilateral stimulation of the brain and that can be produced by some sorts of sports,” he says. “Fly fishing is great for that. It pleases the brain. And when you get it right, it’s called grace.”

***

The men of Task Force Raven stand in a hay field casting fly rods without flies.

“It’s a pole, but we call it a rod because it’s five times more expensive,” jokes Mark Raisler, co-owner of Headhunters Fly Shop in Craig.

Raisler and his business partner, John Arnold, have donated their day to the vets, and their guides will take the group fishing the following day.

“This is the right thing for us to do,” said Raisler. “We do a lot of charity and that’s a good thing. It doesn’t always make business sense, but the whole business is sort of dumb. And I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.”

Some of the vets take to casting immediately, while others whip their rods wildly.

Raisler and Arnold offer up advice, slowing down one vet’s backcast while encouraging another to finish his cast with only his wrist.

“You don’t have to be perfect and everybody does it a little differently,” Raisler says.

A bit later, Raisler works through a primer on knots, some of which the vets know, some they don’t. After a couple of repetitions on the blood knot, which is used to tie two lines together, Raisler makes a recommendation.

“The best knot in the toolbox is the one the guide ties,” he said. “That’s what I’d do. Just let the guide tie it.”

Thirty yards away on the river, pelicans skid to a stop while an osprey circles looking for the next meal. The sun shines, the mountains rise to the clouds and every single thing seems crystalline clear.

“This is just what the doctor ordered,” Gehring says. “This isn’t what I’d be doing today, but this is what I need.”

***

It escaped no one’s notice that a mammoth effort went into putting on Healing Waters’ three-day trip.

Dozens of people gave their time, their money, their hearts to carve out something special for the Guard vets.

“We’ve done this wrong for so long, it’s great to be doing it right,” said Jenkins. “We don’t know everything about reintegrating soldiers, but at least we’re acting on what we do know.”

Gehring and his men appreciate it, nearly more than they can say.

“What they’ve done for us is beyond the call,” he says. “We did our duty. That they recognize it, well, we are thankful in so many ways. I hope we can say that clearly enough.”

Tommy Enseleit wants to find the words – the words to say thanks, the words that would describe the way war changed him, words eloquent enough to describe what he feels in a heart he has mostly hidden away.

“I was taught to think before you talk,” he says. “Sometimes I never really get around to the talking part.”

When he did his second tour in Iraq, he offered himself up as a voice of experience to his new colleagues.

“I don’t know it all, but I learned something that first time around,” he said. “I just wanted to be a benefit to the other guys, help them if I could.”

One of the things he talked to the new guys about was phone calls home.

Keep it short, he said. Don’t talk too long, he said, because a long conversation will eventually work its way to the bottom of things.

To the bottom of separation from your family. To the bottom of missing your kids. To the bottom of what it means to wage war.

“If you stay on too long, it turns bad,” he says quietly.

But keeping it short was a war strategy that hasn’t worked at home.

“I struggle sometimes with my fiancee to fully express myself,” he says. “I realize I’m not holding up my end of the bargain. It’s hard, and I know that it’s happening. I know I’ve got a lot of work to do still.”

Late in the afternoon, after the casting and the knot lessons, the men grab their rods and start making their first tentative casts into the silvered Missouri. Most fish from the bank, while a few wade in up to their thighs.

Tommy moves into a curve of the river, where the current sweeps into the bank, then swerves away, leaving an eddy line where the water runs both ways.

He wades deeper and deeper, deeper than the others, until the water is over his waist. His left-handed cast draws the fly from the water’s surface, cycles it back and forth, then sets it down gently again.

For just a moment, a hole in time that is beyond the words Tommy can’t find, there is grace.

Reporter Michael Moore can be reached at 523-5252 or at mmoore@missoulian.com.  Photographer Tom Bauer can be reached

at 523-5270 or at tbauer@missoulian.com.