David H. Scott poses next to his canoe on a paddling trip of Canada’s Mackenzie River in July 2024. (Submitted photo)

When David H. Scott shares tales of the life he’s lived over the last 79 years, he’s often met with words like “inspiration,” followed by curiosity about how he continues to be active at his age.

Scott is a Vietnam veteran who spent 26 months in combat, ending his service in 1968 with the highest disability rating assigned by Veterans Affairs.

Then, 28 years later, he achieved sobriety at the age of 50.

“I spent a lot of time figuring out who I was, what made me happy, what made me grounded, what made me centered,” Scott said. “And I realized it was being outside.”

Following that realization, Scott found joy in river rafting, which led to his passion for solo kayaking and canoeing, sports that afforded him a greater degree of blissful solitude.

He has followed his love of paddling around the world. The number of miles logged on a river raft is impossible to assess, he said, but he estimates he’s covered over 16,000 miles in a kayak and canoe. Half of those trips have been accomplished with his faithful dog and sidekick, a Ridgeback mutt named Stormy, by his side.

His trips have brought him to the world’s deepest lake, Lake Baikal in Russia, and along much of Canada’s longest river, the Mackenzie, all of which are chronicled in a stack of bound kayaking journals, also accessible on his website.

1,000 miles or more

Scott’s first trip was in a wooden kayak, following the shoreline of Lake Mead outside of Las Vegas, he said. He put his kayak in below the Hoover Dam and paddled the Colorado River to the Parker Dam, passing through Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu. By the time he reached the Parker Dam, he was hooked. In line with what he describes as his grandiose nature, he declared he wouldn’t embark on any further kayaking trips unless the trips covered at least 1,000 miles.

While on a 2,000-mile trip on Lake Baikal in 2019, Scott knew something was wrong. He hitched a ride with a commercial fisherman and then booked a plane back to Bend.

Not long after, he discovered he had colon cancer. There were complications with the surgery to remove the cancer, leading to challenges he continues to battle to this day, he said. One of these challenges is short bowel syndrome, an inability of the small intestine to absorb nutrients.

“I should be dead,” Scott said. “I told Stormy if I was going to drop dead, I was going to drop dead doing something and I haven’t stopped since. If nothing else, it has accelerated the forward momentum. Sheer determination is the only way I can put it.”

After surviving colon cancer, Scott has mainly transitioned to canoe trips, allowing him to get to the bank and out of the canoe faster.

He hasn’t given up kayaking, which he’s still able to do with the help of a paddling partner. In August, he plans to complete the remaining 600 miles he has yet to complete on the Mackenzie River with the help of a veteran of the Iraq War.

If it’s a successful paddling partnership, Scott and his partner plan to paddle the Inside Passage, a coastal route that spans from southeastern Alaska through British Columbia and culminates in Washington.

Sharing his learnings

Scott is on the cusp of launching an online campaign and podcast rooted in a humble motive.

“I’ve never met anybody on the river as old as I am,” he said. “I’m so enamored with my sobriety after 29 years. I am so engrossed in my life. I hate to go to bed because I can’t wait to get up.”

His message to all, but especially to veterans, is that it’s possible to live a life that’s happy, joyous and free. The key, he said, he said, is to stop self-medicating.

In addition to becoming sober, Scott also abstains from using drugs or watching television, which has granted him time for painting and playing the piano.

He’s the author of “The General’s Manager,” about his time in Vietnam, followed by another self-published work about all the things he wished he knew following his time in the war, named “101 Ways to Tell the World to Kiss Your Ass.”

He’s planning to write a third book on a paddling trip around the shoreline of Arizona’s Lake Powell during the winter, which he’ll title “The Patriot Cabin,” after one of the structures on his private property, located a few hundred feet from East Lake at Newberry National Volcanic Monument. It will tell the story of how his private property inside the bounds of a national monument came to be and how it was instrumental to his enduring sobriety.

Scott invites others to share his small slice of heaven by staying inside two of his Mongolian Gers on the property. The two circular dwelling units are available to be booked on Hipcamp during the summer months.

He’s made it a goal to speak at the Alcoholics Anonymous International Convention in five years, when he’s 84.

“If my message and my inspiration can save one … then my message is worth the effort at this stage of my life,” Scott said.