How Veterans Rebuild Purpose After Service | Montana Vet Program | EP 428

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Cleared Hot

Society & Culture

4.9 • 11.2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2026

⏱️ 153 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, I sit down with Luke Urick, the Executive Director, and Bryon Gustafson, the Deputy Director of the Montana Veterans Project, a Great Falls–based nonprofit that helps veterans rediscover purpose, camaraderie, and resilience through veteran-led therapeutic adventure trips in the Montana backcountry. We explore how challenging wilderness experiences can help veterans reconnect with themselves, their fellow warriors, and the mission that doesn't simply end when military service does.

We dig into why traditional approaches sometimes fall short, and how shared physical challenge, communication, and hard work in nature can catalyze healing in ways that matter long after the trip ends. This is a conversation about more than PTSD or buzzwords — it's about purpose, belonging, and veterans building new life chapters with intention and grit.

Montana Vet Program - https://www.mtvetprogram.org

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, got the red smoke.
0:03.1	Gun runs. North and south. West of the smoke. West of the smoke.
0:09.1	Okay, copy, west of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now.
0:13.6	Come on winter, baby. Give it to me. I made it. You're cleared hot.
0:17.2	Copy, cleared hot.
0:19.1	Michael, are you prepared to do a sub-part job?
0:37.9	Yes, as per usual. Michael, are you prepared to do a sub-hard job? Yes, as per usual. Michael, are you from Montana? Yeah. He's never left. That's not true. Like actually here at Calispell? Well, I grew up in Butte. Oh, you're a Butte. Yeah. My daughter's going to the tech right now. She's getting her nursing degree. Okay. She loves Butte.
0:51.7	Do you love Butte as much as everybody else who's from Butte? I do. Yeah, I do like it. It gets a lot of hate. But yeah. Yeah. Is that a real thing? Pork chop sandwiches are real? Pork chop johns. I've never been. I pass through Butte. I get gas.
0:53.9	That's what most people do. That's how I used to be.
0:55.0	Here's the deal.
0:55.3	I'm not talking smack on Butte.
0:56.6	I'm just saying I get gas. That's what most people do. That's how I used to be.
0:55.0	Here's the deal.
0:55.3	I'm not talking smack on Butte.
0:56.6	I'm just saying I have yet to actually have a reason to go explore beyond the freeway gas station.
1:02.7	Yep.
1:03.5	My uncle lived there and so my mom would send us to Butte during the summer for like a month.
1:09.1	And he had his kingdom of two trailers.
1:15.2	I'm not going to get lost in this, but he would take us to Star Lanes, which is a huge bowling alley, or to Pork Job Johns.
1:22.7	And most of the time we're just shooting cats with BB guns outside of his trailer.
1:27.3	Because that's what you do in mute.
1:28.7	Yeah. How do you know those weren't other people's cats? I have no idea. No, I didn't. No, I didn't know. Murder's prick. Yeah. No, he didn't like cats. He had actually this whole imbred herd of dogs. I don't like a lot of things. that doesn't mean I deploy BDM.
	...

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