Not Yet Begun to Fight

Retired Marine Colonel Eric Hastings remembers flight missions ‘high above the death and destruction’ in Vietnam. From the cockpit, he traced meandering ribbons that cut through the jungle. He recognized the shapes of the trout streams of home. Every night, he dreamed about fly-fishing. When he returned home to Montana in 1969, to a nation decades away from diagnosing PTSD, he went to the water. He tied a fly onto a line and cast. The river, he says, healed him.In the space between war and a new battle, NOT YET BEGUN TO FIGHT unfolds: The Colonel reaches out to five men, a new generation returning from war. He brings them to the river and shares his secret: there are places where you can still be consumed by a simple act, find joy in a fight, and be redeemed as you gently release another creature, unharmed, into quiet waters.