BANGOR, Maine — On a warm mid-September afternoon, Bill Braniff stepped to the end of a casting platform overlooking a small, weedy pond and began the rhythmic ritual that has enchanted fly fishermen for hundreds of years.
Backcast. Pause. Cast. Wait. Watch the water for signs of action. Repeat.
Eventually, that’s followed by smile and joke about the one that got away — or perhaps was never there at all.
That last part is perhaps most important. Braniff, a 71-year-old from Bucksport, admits that finding enjoyment in anything — let alone fishing — was elusive. He retired from his post-military job a decade ago and became reclusive.
“I’d been stuck in the house with [post-traumatic stress disorder] for years,” Braniff said. “Never went out. Never did anything.”
But since March, thanks to the efforts of volunteers of Project Healing Waters, he’s begun the journey back from the experiences that have haunted him since his time serving in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.
Braniff was an infantryman, he explains. “A tunnel rat,” he says, using the name for the harrowing job that he and his comrades performed, searching and destroying the extensive tunnel system the Viet Cong had built.
In March, he heard about Healing Waters through his local Veterans Affairs office. The national program’s goal, according to its website, is the physical and emotional rehabilitation of disabled active military service personnel and disabled veterans through fly fishing, activities and outings.
Braniff learned there was a new Healing Waters chapter in Bangor and began attending meetings. On Monday, he joined a group of volunteers and participants who enjoyed a bit of fishing and a cookout at a small pond on the grounds of Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center.
Nestled between athletic fields, walking trails and a parking lot on the Dorothea Dix campus, the pond isn’t visible from nearby Mount Hope Avenue. A thick ring of cattails surrounds it, while a mowed path offers the only access to a new dock that serves as a casting platform.
Maine Game Warden Jim Fahey said the pond has a history as a fishing spot, which helped lead to its rejuvenation for use by Project Healing Waters and potentially Dorothea Dix patients.
“I knew this pond existed because [back in the 1980s] Fred Kircheis, a former [Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife] fisheries biologist, used to bring bass back for the [former Bangor Mental Health Institute] patients to fish for,” Fahey said.
Fahey helped spearhead the effort to stock a few dozen bass in the lake, and many volunteers and Dorothea Dix employees have helped by sprucing up the grounds and adding the dock.
Fahey said a chance meeting with Jeff Spaulding, the co-leader of the Bangor Healing Waters chapter, led to the pond’s reclamation effort throughout the summer. Spaulding, a 34-year-old disabled Marine veteran who lives in Orono, said fly fishing has played an important in his life, and he wanted to share the activity with others.
“It’s just so calming,” Spaulding said. “It gives you something to do when you’re stressed out or depressed. You get on the river, and everything kind of goes away except for the fishing. It gives me something to focus on other than the bad things.”
Fahey spoke to officials at Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center to see if they’d allow the pond to be stocked again, and since then, employees of the center have pitched in in a number of ways, including mowing grass and making the pond accessible. The DIF&W and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection have also played key roles, Fahey said.
Fahey and Spaulding said they’d like to improve the pond, perhaps by deepening it and making it even more accessible to casting along the shoreline. To do that, some additional volunteer work in the months and years ahead would help.
“We’re looking for people with [earth-moving] equipment to help out with the pond,” Spaulding said. “Anybody who wants to donate time to work around the pond, people who know how to fly fish, who want to teach fly tying, teach fly fishing [would be welcome].”
Braniff hopes more veterans also discover the power of Healing Waters. After all, the program has worked for him.
“I’ve always been kind of a loner,” he said. “Now I’m trying not to be a loner.”
Watching his interaction with volunteers and fellow veterans over a post-fishing barbecue, it’s obvious he’s not just trying.
He’s succeeding, one outing, one cast, one fish at a time.
Braniff said he’d experienced enough of the bad things. And eventually, he heeded the advice that everybody had been giving him and that even he knew was necessary.
“I knew in my mind I had to get my ass up off the couch or step away from the computer or the TV,” Braniff said. “I was doing nothing. My wife was working, and I was doing nothing around the house. I was convinced by people at the VA, and myself, to go out and get off my butt and do something worthwhile with my life.”
And since his involvement with Project Healing Waters? Well, he’s been on a drift boat trip on the East Outlet of the Kennebec River and caught his first brook trout on a fly.
But that’s only part of the story.
“I’m doing almost all the cooking at home now,” Braniff said proudly. “I learned how to bake bread. I’m having a ball. My life finally means something.”
Those wishing to volunteer their time or equipment to help Project Healing Waters, or veterans who want to learn more can contact Spaulding at jspaulding13@gmail.com, call 802-598-4664.
