How a Fly-Fishing Trip in Montana Taught Me to Open Up

Joshua Cogan

This story includes references to suicide. If you or someone you know is experiencing a crisis, there is help available. You can call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988, where a trained counselor can talk to you and connect you with further resources.

“Get ready for some active fishing, boys,” says Bozeman native Dan Newhall. “I’m gonna take you to this super juicy spot.” We’re floating down the Yellowstone River in Montana’s Paradise Valley—a stunning 100-mile stretch of the longest free-flowing river in the lower 48 states where Dan rows us to a rocky riverbank in our 15-foot drift boat. It doesn’t take long for our boatmate’s pole to start jumping.

Joel Greenberg, a clinical psychologist from Des Moines, Iowa, hooks an 18-inch rainbow trout, but like most men on this trip, he's new to fly-fishing, so Dan grabs his fly rod to help reel in the catch. The gesture doesn’t faze us neophytes, but later that day, as we slowly float between the majestic Gallatin and Absaroka mountains, Dan opens up. “I’m sorry that I grabbed your pole,” he says. Quite perplexed, Joel responded honestly: “But, I was totally lost.”

And that’s when it hit me: Joel allowed himself to be guided by another man with the expertise, advice, and wisdom to assist him in the moment. Sure, it was to help catch a fish in this beautiful natural setting, but the lesson learned that day was as crystal clear as the Yellowstone’s waters. As men, we often don’t allow ourselves the chance to be witnessed, guided, or—more to the point—to have open, honest conversations with other men about what we may be struggling with at any given time. That’s exactly why I’m in Montana.

According to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America, nearly one in ten men experience some form of anxiety or depression, but less than half seek treatment. Additionally, national suicide rates have risen, and men die by suicide at a rate four times higher than women, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

By all accounts, men require support for various mental health issues, including but not limited to PTSD from military combat, substance abuse, marital or family problems, plus the gamut of work-related stress that ultimately piles up. Why men don’t seek the support they need is complicated—shame, lack of resources, and fear of stigma are a few reasons. A collective called The Journeymen is trying to change all that, one adventurous trip at a time.

"If it's a cultural problem, then there needs to be a cultural solution—especially for men who don't traditionally seek out safe spaces to tell their stories,” says Journeymen founder Joshua Cogan, who has also organized men’s retreats in Joshua Tree, West Virginia, and some of the largest wilderness areas throughout the country. “When we take guys out into the land, we can connect in deeper, more meaningful ways.”

Joshua also likes to say that the land is bigger than all of us—that its beauty, wisdom, and magnitude can hold men’s stories in profound ways without distraction from everyday life. Call it a community-based kinship with nature, or simply a beautiful natural place where you can let your guard down. Either way, a therapist’s office this is not.

That notion becomes immediately clear to me later that night, as I sit around a campfire eating grilled tri-tip steak and spicy cobs of Mexican street corn at Pinecreek Campground, in Custer Gallatin National Forest. I’m with 25 other men from a wide swath of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds who’ve traveled across the country for this three-day retreat in the Montana wilderness. It’s here where I meet another retreat participant, Dave Butenas, who is an addiction counselor based in Massachusetts.

As embers blow in the nighttime air, Butenas tells me about his wife’s years-long battle with breast cancer, and how some of his patients have tragically succumbed to their self-destructive behavior. “The benefit of participating in Journeymen is that I now have an outlet for processing those feelings,” he says. “This group is ready and willing to go to those places with you, and it’s helped me feel more comfortable opening up about the mental toll that work and life can take.”

Back on the river, this time while fly-fishing on Montana’s expansive Upper Madison, Dave’s comments start making sense. I’m casting for brown trout with two other men I’ve just met, when suddenly thoughts of my father, who recently passed away at age 91, and the rigors of parenting two young boys start bubbling to the top. The pair may be strangers in a strange land, but my stories of love and loss are being heard, held, and supported by two men who’ve come to this wild open space for similar reasons.

“That’s what happens on these trips,” says Dan Newhall, my fishing guide from the previous day who knows firsthand the power of connecting with other men in the great outdoors: Following the suicide of his closest friend, he attended the first Journeymen retreat in West Virginia in 2022—a three-day experience that inspired him to start a chapter of the group in Bozeman immediately thereafter. “The beauty of nature is so entrenching,” he says. “So when the group explicitly puts down the guard in a beautiful natural environment, it really just opens up this container for connection.”

By day three, we unzip our tents to welcome yet another crisp Montana morning, which includes pots full of piping hot coffee and vegetable frittatas heated on an open fire. Following breakfast, we circle up in a vast sagebrush field surrounded by towering spruce forests and collectively breathe in the cold mountain air. There’s so much to be grateful for—the meaningful conversations on and off the river, the opportunities to feel heard, and this new brotherhood of men who, like me, will undoubtedly return home with the tools to help other men who might be struggling in their own communities.

And according to Journeymen founder Joshua Cogan, that’s exactly the point. “Above and beyond all else, Journeymen is a community where men can be witnessed in the truth of who they are,” says Cogan, who’s also quick to emphasize that groups like this break down the barriers of casual conversations so you can get right to the point of how you’re feeling, no matter how difficult it may be to share. It’s a recipe he’ll use in a trio of trips planned for next year in West Virginia, the southern Utah desert, and Montana. And like this one, it’ll be alongside skilled facilitators and outdoorsmen who’ll help groups return with deeper connections to themselves and to the land itself.

“When we give men the skillset to help other guys belong,” says Cogan, “we all become better men for it.”

Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler