These guys have climbed this mountain a million times, and still they've never seen anything like this. They study Julian as he leans forward, bracing himself with what look like ski poles. Fake legs or not, he needs to keep them dry. They'd been told about him-they knew he was a Marine, injured in Afghanistan-but still, they can't help but stare as he pulls gaiters up over his shoes and binds them to his prosthetics with duct tape. Up at the trailhead, the local crew of porters and guides that Tim's hired cluster around the Land Cruiser as Julian gingerly steps down. But to Tim, our trip these next ten days is just the sort of adventure that can change a man's life. So, not the first guy you'd imagine sermonizing about the healing power of mountaineering. A former Hells Angel, he's spent a little time in jail and a lot of time partying with the dudes from Guns N' Roses and Jane's Addiction for a while he was romantically linked to Cher. Tim, meanwhile, is all laughs, doing his best to translate a dirty joke for the driver. Julian is taking steady breaths, gaining inward focus-a soldier on a mission.
Out the window, I watch our path grow treacherously steep and comically muddy as we wind toward the trailhead at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest peak in Africa. He's tightening the bolts on his prosthetic legs, and I can see he's got the same mix of excitement and trepidation written on his face as when he first banged out that note to Tim. What have I gotten myself into?Ī year later, and Sergeant Julian Torres is crammed in the back of a Toyota Land Cruiser in rural Tanzania. I'm your guy.” And when Tim hits you right back, maybe you're beyond thrilled but at the same time belted by the notion: Holy shit. And maybe you pull out your phone to send a long, desperate message to a guy you've heard is a lifesaver-an ex-con named Tim Medvetz who trains wounded vets to climb mountains-an unlikely savior who now seems like the only person on the planet who can help. Maybe that's the moment when you dig through your pockets for an e-mail address one of your buddies at the rehab clinic slipped you a few weeks ago. feeling a phantom pain, not for your missing legs, but for your missing life? It's possible, don't you think, that one night, five years later, you might find yourself on your couch at 3 A.M. Your days as a soldier are done the things you've built your life around, evaporated.
And then let's say, just to imagine it, that three weeks in you step on an IED, and in a blast of light and sound, your legs are gone-and something more than that, too. So, right after high school you join the Marines and you train like crazy and get yourself shipped to Afghanistan, plunged into battle.Īfter years of prepping for this, you're finally there, fighting Taliban soldiers so near to you that you can smell their acrid sweat just across the tree line. And you grow up hoping somehow to follow in his footsteps. Let's say your grandfather, he was a soldier.