This story has bugged me for the past year. In part, because I can relate. I have hiked the Appalachian Trail, and as a youngster, I wandered from home and became lost in the woods.
Starting on April 23, 2013, 66-year-old Geraldine Largay walked over a thousand miles from Harpers Ferry in West Virginia on the Appalachian Trail (AT). After her traveling companion, Jane Lee, left for home on June 30 to attend to a family emergency, Largay hiked into the densest forest of the AT and disappeared. According to witnesses, Largay left a shelter in Maine to continue her hike north and went missing on or about July 22.
Ms. Lee told investigators that Largay had a poor sense of direction and had taken a wrong turn on multiple occasions, adding her friend could become flustered and combative when she made mistakes. On October 14, 2015, a logging surveyor discovered Largay’s remains less than a mile from the trail. She had chronicled the last days of her life in a notebook and never-sent text messages. The wayward hiker found higher ground but was unsuccessful in acquiring a cell signal. One text message to her husband indicated Largay had stepped off the trail to relieve herself and had become lost. Multiple agencies hunted for the hiker by foot, horse, and the air. Her written chronicle details the last 3-4 weeks of her life as she waited for rescue. She eventually died from exposure and starvation.
I applaud Largay’s hiking feat right up to the point where she sat down at her campsite and waited for rescue and barring that, her death. Rescue, to me, implies that she was incapable of helping herself. While she had some medical issues, necessitating medication to control her anxiety, but when faced with a decision to save herself, she chose otherwise. I can only imagine what went through her mind as she sat surrounded by dense forest and underbrush, waiting. It seems debilitating anxiety didn’t affect her fight for survival as there was evidence of her attempted tries to use technology and make herself visible from the air. Obviously, Largay wasn’t the proverbial deer in the headlights, but why didn’t she simply walk to safety?
Like Largay, I spent six weeks in my youth on the AT, walking north, always north. Hikers walk from the sun up to sun set. There’s nothing else to do. As I trekked north, the sun rose on the right side of the trail and set on the left side of the trail. Does the AT always meander due north and south? No, but in general, yes it does. Even if Largay couldn’t remember which side of the trail she stepped off to relieve herself, a single day of walking either east or west and two days in the reverse direction would have crossed the trail. Ms. Lee didn’t mention if her friend used a compass or not. I didn’t use a one either, but I was alert to my surroundings. At worse, Mrs. Largay could have walked toward the sunrise in the morning and with her back to the sun in the afternoon. This would have guaranteed her a chance at crossing a road or river within the three to four-week survival time frame she endured in the woods.
The AT uses a system of trail blazes set up to keep hikers on the right path. This is the same system used over two hundred years ago by our forefathers as they explored new territory. The AT’s blazing system should have been an adequate example for Largay to move in a straight line either east or west from her campsite and return before dark. She could have eventually moved along her self-blazed trail and set up camp further away from where she camped. If only.
One day in my youth I got lost. When I was seven, and in a fit of panic, I ran headlong into the woods surrounding my parent’s summer house in western Michigan. I didn’t believe my brother that the sounds coming from the direction of the house weren’t a herd of bears (or lions or tigers? Oh my!). Way back in the 60’s (not the 1860’s) my parents lived in the middle of a forested nowhere. There were a few homes within a half mile or there about, but not in the direction of my flight. I asked my father once when I was a big kid (aged 4-5) what I should do if I got lost in the woods around our house. His answer was simple. Walk in one direction until I found a road. If I came upon a two-track, I should follow it to a road. I may not have followed his advice at first during my head long flight away from the bears that I thought were chasing me, but after an hour or two, I found my head. My grandmother discovered me as I walked along a two-track in search of a road. At first sight of her car, I hid behind a bush, because I thought the teal colored 1950’s Ford was a bear. Remember, I was seven.
My point is, at the age seven, I knew how to find my way out of the woods. It was a different time. Back then, I was responsible for keeping track of and get myself to T-ball practice and games. Within a year I would ride my bike two miles to play ball. So, playing in the woods without adult supervision was normal extracurricular activity. My four-year-old sister was with my brother and me.
In full disclosure, my AT hiking partner and I did get turned around once. Imagine the hilarity on meeting fellow hikers coming toward us on the trail and us trying to convince them that they were hiking in the wrong direction. Classic, classic.
My prayers go out to Mrs. Largay and her family.
Karl G Rich 