Returning Home

By: Jennifer Patronas, USAF Veteran

Reintegration after a deployment does not end on Homecoming Day. Of course, it is an exciting day to be welcomed home, but is followed by a huge adjustment period for the entire family. Everyone changes after deployment. Everyone has unique experiences, good and bad. New habits are developed, good and bad. But afterwards, everyone must live together again and resume life, but things never go back to the way they were before. A new normal had to be created.

The Science Behind Huts For Vets

The Science Behind Huts For Vets

By Stephen Otero

As a human who is consistently humbled by the power of our environment, I believe in the healing properties of life which exist all around us. Sometimes all we must do is stop, look, be present, and we can experience the education our planet has to offer us.

Meet our New Program Director

My name is Erik Villaseñor. I served in the US Army as an infantryman from 2006 to 2012, with two combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m 33 years old. I’m a husband, a father of two amazing children, a reader and writer, hiker and mountain biker. I’m also thrilled to announce that I am the new program director of Huts For Vets.

A Veteran Discovers the Soul of Wilderness

Huts For Vets helped change a man’s life

By Erik Schlimmer

During the spring of 2019, when I finished my master’s degree in clinical social work and gained my license to practice, I was anxious to get to work.  Since therapists had helped me process my own post-military mental health challenges, I returned to school as a nontraditional student to get my degree and license to return the favor.  After all, it is always better to give than to receive.  Though I was a New Yorker, I sought an employer that was based in the Rocky Mountains, worked with veterans, and embraced wilderness therapy.  Huts For Vets checked these three boxes.