Garrett Eaton, a U.S. serviceman, was depressed and struggling with alcoholism after his tour in Afghanistan. Eaton, who describes himself as a “company man” for an oil-drilling rig in North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields, needed an escape. The father of four decided to get into recovery, but the real healing began, he says in the new documentary film Return From Desolation, when he became a rafting guide near Desolation Canyon on the Green River in Utah. 

The film, from award-winning director Justin Clifton, and supported by YETI, Chaco, NRS, and Sierra Club, is not only a vignette of Eaton’s life as a veteran, father, husband, recovering alcoholic, and outdoors enthusiast; it is also a love note to public lands. The possibility of enjoying natural spaces means as much to Eaton as his service. “I’ve seen a hundred shrinks. I’ve taken all the antidepressants, and all the bull-crap in the world,” Eaton explains in a moving part of the film. “This place saved my life.” To him, the use of public lands is incredibly personal, and necessary.

Stacy Bare, the former director of Sierra Club Outdoors, echoes the sentiment in the film. The Outdoors program in part teaches vets to be rafting guides. Eaton took up the offer. The film pulls back to lively scenes on the river with Eaton manning a raft, hiking around the canyons where John Wesley Powell, the famous explorer, once traversed over 150 years ago, and stopping by walls in other parts of Utah where ancient petroglyphs are carved into the sides of rock. 

The film is a clarion call to never forget the majesty and importance of wild spaces. Eaton certainly doesn’t. “Without it, I’d be dead for sure,” he says.