The Bar X Project
A veteran's retreat with a purpose
The Bar X Project
The market for Veteran Retreats is saturated with hundreds of programs that offer support, healing, and camaraderie. Many Veteran retreats offer counseling from licensed therapists, and some provide healing via psychedelics; all of them approach the problems of PTSD as a psychiatric issue requiring treatment by licensed professionals. It warms the heart to see the amount of concern and money flowing to Veterans suffering from PTSD, but it is tempered by the simple fact that drugs and counseling don’t work.
I’ve spent thousands of hours over the past 20 years reading, talking, and listening to podcasts about veterans dealing with PTSD and its devastating consequence: suicide. I have never heard a veteran say, “After I took all the pills the VA gave me and went to counseling, I was fine.’
Medication and counseling can often feel like a test of endurance, leaving you deep in the Valley of Death without a guide to help you climb toward happiness. While veterans' retreats can provide a temporary boost of dopamine from activities like fly fishing, horse petting, and yoga, this boost doesn’t last. Upon returning home, veterans often feel the crushing weight of isolation compounding the frustration of being back in the same circumstances they were in before the retreat.
The Bar X Project is the single exception to this trend.
For 14 years, The Bar X Project has been hosting all-expense-paid trips to Montana for former Marines who served overseas in the post 9/11 wars. Bar X was founded by James Moran and Wade Zirkle, former Marine infantry officers, who struck gold with a nationwide ATM business, and one of their regional salesmen, Montana native Rob Lowe. James and Wade solicited funds from a group of successful Marine infantry officers who have done well since leaving the Corps. The donors had served in Afghanistan, Iraq, or both, and all of them knew Marines who had struggled to integrate back into civilian life. More importantly, all of them were haunted by the specter of Veteran suicide and wanted to find a way to fight back.
The Lowe family is the proud owner of the Bar X Ranch, which sits astride the Yellowstone River. They hosted the first retreats, thus earning the honor of having this project named after them. Anyone who has spent time fly fishing on the Yellowstone River understands the restorative nature of being immersed in the great outdoors. James and Wade thought that combining fly fishing therapy with re-establishing the special bond forged in combat overseas was an untapped avenue for combating PTSD. Rob Lowe was happy to help make that vision a reality.
Over the years, Bar X has learned important lessons that it has incorporated into its program. One of their ‘best practices’ was to include unit leaders with each group. Many of the participants struggled with survivor’s guilt. As fireteam leaders, squad leaders, platoon sergeants, or platoon commanders, they had issued orders that resulted in casualties. They carried guilt inside a muddled bundle of self-blame that did not reflect the reality on the ground or consider decisions from on high that left them limited choices in their course of action. Unit leaders were able to put some of that guilt to rest by providing context that is never visible to the riflemen or machine gunners who close with enemy combatants.
Take three minutes to watch the video below to see how that works.
James Moran, a savvy businessman who spends a lot of time on the road, developed a taste for interesting and informative podcasts, which led him to All Marine Radio. Over the years, he listened to Michael “Mac” McNamara’s interviews with veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mac is an expert interviewer who extracted fascinating stories from his guests, and he always concluded by asking how they fared upon returning to civilian life. Their stories were different; most struggled, often for decades, with depression, alcohol or drug abuse, compounded by isolation. Yet they all ended up in the same place. They were at peace and productive once they stopped self-medicating and connected with the members of their units during reunions.
Mac’s interviews validated the Bar X approach of focusing on men who had served together. When Mac launched his Post-Traumatic Winning (PTW) program, James immediately recognized its potential to bring about lasting, positive changes for Bar X alumni.
The message of Post Traumatic Winning is that nothing is wrong with you; PTSD is a normal reaction to extraordinary trauma. Trauma affects all lives; nobody gets through the car wash without getting wet. Marines, who specialize in inflicting trauma, should be the experts on how to deal with PTSD. They should be leading others out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, not stuck deep inside it with no way out.
Picture this: you’re a squad leader for a Marine Corps rifle company stationed in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. Three of your Marines, having just returned from spending the night in an observation post, report that they left a pair of night vision goggles behind. What do you do? You send them right back out to get them, that’s not a decision, it’s an automatic response, it’s how Marines are raised – we don’t leave sensitive gear behind.
But when they return, the Taliban have occupied the position, and in the ensuing firefight, two of the three Marines are killed. How do you get over that? Will time heal that wound to your soul? There is a conversation to be had about the stupidity of risking Marines to retrieve a $500 piece of gear, but that is a conversation for Generals, not Corporals.
The answer is you don’t get over it; that decision will haunt you for the rest of your days. Time is not going to heal that injury to your soul; time doesn’t heal anything. There is only one way to transcend that kind of hurt. It starts with following the four goals and ten commandments of Post Traumatic Winning and ends when you can help another person out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
After presenting the PTW program to audiences around the world, Mac wrote the bestseller From Trauma to Joy to bring the PTW message to a broader audience. For the past three years, Mac has traveled to Montana to present his class to each iteration of the Bar X Project. Mac tells the participants he is creating Archangels capable of going into the Valley of the Shadow of Death to lead those suffering there to the heights of happiness. As Ryan Holiday wrote in The Daily Stoic, “It’s not enough to just not do evil. You must also be a force for good in the world, as best as you can.” That’s what the Bar X Project aims to accomplish with the Vets who come through the program.
The subtitle of Mac’s book is Life-changing lessons fellow US Marines taught me after traumatic events occurred in my life. Lessons that apply to ANYONE. If you read the book (and you should), you’ll note most of the stories have nothing to do with combat or the Marine Corps. Everybody gets wet in the carwash, and the most jarring stories come from men and women who never served in the armed forces.
When the Bar X Project was founded, James included three of his fellow infantry officers on the board. All three were highly successful in their post-Marine Corps business ventures. All three were decorated combat vets with multiple tours. The board members not only donated time and money, they found the participants, which is why, to date, there have only been infantry Marines attending. Bar X would love to host an Army unit or mixed-gender support outfit, or an all-female Lioness Team, but they don’t know any.
The ideal group consists of between 8 and 10 veterans who served together, accompanied by a unit leader. If any of you know of a group like that, please email me at tim@barxproject.org, and I’ll pass it on to the Bar X management, which now includes me. Our target audience is 9/11 vets from all services and both genders who deployed to fight or support the War on Terror.
The reason I’m on board is to expand the program, which requires full-time fundraising. You can donate in one of two ways: the first is by buying some stylish Bar X Merch, and the second is by donating directly to Bar X here. Do not hesitate to drop me an email regarding our program. If you know somebody with deep pockets looking to make a donation that will positively affect the lives of post 9/11 veterans, please reach out.
Great article Tim. I am glad you were able to come out and see the restorative power that the American West, reunion, and Post Traumatic Winning can have on our war fighters when they return from battle.