Even through his head pain he admires the flower. He has no sense of the passage of time. He stares at the flower, bending in the light. After a while he looks at his watch and it appears to have moved forward half an hour. He gets up, keeps walking.
He returns to the wheel pattern, recalling its clarity and brilliance, remembering his purpose, and strikes off through more swamp. A half-hour later he finds himself in the middle of thick brush. He makes a wide turn in the brush, looking out at a nearby thicket. Along the edge of the thicket, water seeps down a shallow, swampy ravine. Dan turns along the seepage, trying to avoid the deeper pockets of muck. He angles in the general direction he was headed, but still wonders about his position. He moves ahead, toward an area of lowland brush that looks like it might open, possibly onto a lake. But when he reaches the opening he sees an old beaver pond, largely filled in but still covered by a few inches of water. He looks out over its edge and pans the horizon from left to right. Left, there are more swampy, abandoned beaver ponds. To his right, the walking appears slightly easier, with ground that rises high enough to promise firmness. Beyond it he sees what he thinks may be the edge of another lake. It is a long walk, but he starts forward, waving away bugs and lurching across the swamp-bog complex.
After another thirty minutes, maybe more, Dan comes to the edge of a U-shaped lake. The lake is small and will be easy to skirt, providing he has an idea of which way to turn, and in what direction he should head once he rounds it. He knows he is lost, but still feels confused. He tries to recollect his friends, wondering where they can be.
“Hey,” he yells over the water. His voice sounds feeble in the warm afternoon. The weak vocalization makes his head throb. Still, maybe if he yelled louder. “Hey!” he repeats, this time nearly as loud as he can manage until the energy out of his throat moves across his head like a jackhammer. The blow almost brings him to his knees. He reaches up to rub his swollen knot. The large contusion is sore and painful, and he knows he has to sit down. He rests for a minute.
Around the far shore he finds an open stretch of rock reaching down into the lake. At the base of the rock is a huge, white pine, arching up and over the water. He reaches the escarpment and sits in the shade, trying to calm himself, trying to figure his coordinates, trying to reassert some clear idea of his friends and their location. He sits for a while, staring out over the water, before finally realizing he needs a better view. Perhaps if he gets higher?
He considers the tree behind him. In spite of his mental fuzziness and the dull throb of his head, he feels physically capable. In less than fifteen minutes he is fifty feet off the ground, peering out over the massive complex he has spent so much of the day hiking into. He discerns what he thinks is the Man Chain, or at least one of them: it looks like Other Man. He is comforted to find something he remembers, something familiar. He sees that if he strikes off in the direction of Other Man he will have to skirt one small lake before reaching its distant shore. But he knows Other Man is a familiar paddle, a place where he might find his group or some other group canoeing down the chain.
Over an hour later he is still stumbling through thickets, realizing he has not yet encountered the small lake separating himself from Other Man. He thinks he should have found it by now. He wonders if his sense of distance went awry with everything else in this day. Dan finds another boggy beaver pond, with another large white pine rising above it. He scales the pine and peers in all directions until he discovers Other Man behind him, not closer, but farther away! He realizes he must have gotten turned around in the bush and hiked away from the lake. He is stunned. He cannot believe he became that disoriented. For the first time, he feels scared. He descends the tree, realizing that unless he figures out a clear plan, or at the very least a straight direction, he could be walking in massive circles until dark. The thought of walking in darkness unnerves him, and he comes down to sit beside the beaver pond and contemplate his next move.
Along the northwestern side of Bell Lake the Chattanooga Scouts find the campsite and unpack in worried silence. They fix themselves an early dinner, and then Jerry Wills takes two of his ablest Scouts and heads back over the portage to no-name lake. The cave-like gap in trees is exactly as it appeared before. But after swallowing their guide it has a new, ominous quality.
The three get out of the canoe, and Wills starts bushwhacking long semicircles into the perimeter of trees. The apex of the semicircle is the exact location of Dan’s departure. The three of them call out for Dan, but there is still no sign or response. Wills comes back, increases his semi-circle by another thirty feet. They call and whistle. Wills pushes deeper into the woods, but it is dark and the mosquitoes hound him. And he cannot get the ranger’s words out of his head. He knows that if he ventures too far in and gets lost or attacked, it will only compound their predicament. Like Tim Jones, Jerry recalls their collective prayer prior to leaving Chattanooga. In that prayer they pledged to stay together. They asked God to watch over them. They told the parents their children would be safe, that there was nothing to worry about. They gave their word.
Even now, Jerry Wills believes they will hike back over the portage and Dan will be waiting for them, or already back at camp. Wills is working on the close conversation he is going to have with their guide. Dan shouldn’t have bushwhacked. He should not have gone into the woods without them. He should never have walked off alone and left them in the middle of wilderness they know nothing about, with only a vague sense of the trail before them and no clear direction about what to do. He knows Dan Stephens didn’t plan to get lost, or worse. But Jerry Wills’s worry is starting to rise, and he cannot help but imagine the words he and their guide are going to exchange.
They return to their canoe, hoping to find him, but there is still no sign of Dan. Maybe back at camp, they think.
The late afternoon light is slanting into early evening. Jerry Wills and his two companions paddle back to camp and are shocked to discover there has been no sign of Dan. The others at camp are equally shocked. Everyone is getting tired, and Jerry knows Dan’s absence is taking its toll on the group’s morale.
Finally, the two fathers rummage for their FM radio phone. The Sommers Canoe Base sends one out with every group. The phone is a bulky, crude device, powered by six D-cell batteries enclosed in a twelve-inch length of PVC pipe. At one end, homemade wiring connects to the transmission device. If the phone gets damp or is jostled—both common occurrences on canoe trips—the connections can corrode or pull apart. And unless you were paying attention when Dan Stephens demonstrated how to use the device, operating it is not an easy thing to figure out.
And there are rules about its use. It is only for emergencies, and since it is battery powered, the calls must be brief. There is no way for the men to know that in Dan Stephens’s entire summer of guiding he never once had reason to take the phone out of its bag. It was periodically tested back at base camp, but the phone has never been field tested.
The assemblage is in the bottom of a pack and damp from riding low. When they switch it on, the red button light glows, but there is only a faint white noise coming from its receiver. When they press down to call, they assume their voices are being carried over the air waves. But there is no response.
Even if they knew where to look, there is no way for them to tell that the slim antenna near the top of the device is broken. It could have been the result of normal wear, or of being jostled. Maybe a previous user sat on it and bent it back, separating the connection from its base. Maybe it had a faulty antenna from the moment the device was assembled.
When the radio phone was tested near the canoe base the problem didn’t surface. Reception at that proximity did not require the antenna, and the phone worked fine. Now all they hear is faint white noise, not even sputtering static. Otherwise, the phone appears operational.
“Turn it off,” Tim Jones finally says. “We’d best save those batteries.”
“I think we need to get closer to base camp,” Jerry Wills suggests.
They are thirty-five miles north of base camp. Their situation is tenable at best, grim at worst. On the positive side they have the maps, compasses, Dan’s shared foreknowledge about where they were headed and how he planned to get them there. And they have plenty of food and gear.
On the negative side, they are alone in wilderness they saw for the first time just three days earlier. And they have six teenagers, two of them young. Above all else, Jerry Wills and Tim Jones know they will do whatever it takes to keep these kids safe. Their Chattanooga community isn’t large. They know these boys’ families. These boys and this group are among the best Wills has ever accompanied. And it is a good thing, given their current situation. The two leaders don’t voice their concern, but each of them is beginning to mull their options.
Those of their troop who consider their guide’s whereabouts worry about the slim Georgian and his engaging smile. It is too soon for any of them to contemplate complete tragedy, but already shadows dog their thoughts. What happened to him? What if he never comes out of those woods? What if they never see Dan Stephens again? Jerry Wills has not voiced this suspicion, but he wonders if Dan encountered a bear. Maybe a mother bear with cubs. Jerry knows stepping between a mother and her cubs is a dangerous proposition.
The two fathers, now absolute and unexpected leaders of their group, wander to the side of camp to talk about their options. Neither of them has paid attention to his mounting anxieties or to the group’s increasing, almost palpable, fretfulness. Until now Jerry Wills has been occupied with his efforts back at the edge of the cedar swamp. Tim Jones has been busy establishing camp. He and Shawn spent much of the early evening paddling Bell’s southern shoreline, hoping their guide would break through the trees and they could pick him up and paddle triumphantly back to camp.
And then they had been busy trying to make the phone operational, hoping for some kind of guidance from base camp. But nothing. Now they are alone, trying to make a viable plan, knowing these kids and their families depend on them. Truth is, it’s a little too much responsibility and surprise. Not that the two men are unequal to the task. But they are in unfamiliar country, a long ways from home, and it is all a little unexpected.
When Dan walked into the woods they were certain he’d return. When he didn’t return right away, they were sure it would only be minutes, then maybe an hour, then possibly longer—but he would return. They could always make camp and wait for him, they had plenty of supplies, and there was the radio phone.
At every point in the day they had another place to turn, another option ahead of them, another cause for hope. But Dan never appeared, and the radio phone wasn’t operational, and now there is every reason to expect they are going to spend this night alone. As the day ended, the two men have few places to go for solace.
In the growing dark, near the edge of camp, the pressure boils over. Jerry Wills thinks that in the morning Tim should take Justin White, their strongest paddler, and paddle back over no-name, Fran, and the other portages they’ve crossed, climb the Silver Falls portage, and return to the Cache Bay Ranger Station for help.
For Tim Jones, the thought of returning over those portages—portages he is not even certain he can find—and then scaling Silver Falls while carrying his canoe, is a little too much to imagine. And he is worried about Jerry Wills. While Jerry has held his own, the strain is showing. His face is drawn and pinched, and his periods of rest are becoming more frequent and longer.
Tim Jones hasn’t expressed it, because until now it has not been an issue. But Jones has wondered why Jerry Wills came on such an arduous journey. Clearly, he was not in the best shape for it. Now the thought of separating the crew, leaving the kids (including his own son) with the strained Jerry Wills for two days, is an option he refuses to consider.
For a moment—before the two men realize the stress and anxiety that has crept up on them—a sharp flare of words threatens to ignite into something more troubling. Eventually they grow silent, each stung. They turn away into the waning daylight and gradually come to consider each other’s perspectives, knowing that nothing will be served by either of them losing themselves in darkness.
Finally, Jerry Wills sees the sense of Tim Jones’s perspective, and Jones understands Wills’s concern. It doesn’t take much persuasion to convince Wills their troop won’t be well served by separating. They have to get closer to base camp. Tomorrow morning they will break camp at dawn and continue along the Man Chain, paddling for help. They don’t believe they can help Dan by going in after him, and they worry about getting lost—or something worse—themselves. The best solution is to go for assistance, and they stare at the map, seeing how it is possible. They are doubtful they can paddle twenty-seven miles in a day, but are hopeful that they can get close enough to make the damned phone operational so they can get word back to base camp. In the early morning Tim and Shawn will cross back over the portage and make one last check for Dan, providing he doesn’t find them tonight.
The Scouts have started a fire in the camp’s pit. There is plenty of wood. As the long evening stretches into darkness, Jerry Wills instructs them to hang lanterns in the trees near the shore. They will stay up later than usual tonight, tending the fire, keeping it well lit. The campfire and lanterns will serve as reasonable beacons in the dark, should Dan Stephens make it to the opposite shore.
Near the close of day, Dan Stephens stumbles along the edge of the old beaver pond. He is tired. He is not thinking clearly. This deep in boggy woods the bugs are swarming. He locates a dead spruce, breaks off enough branches to make a crude but snug lean-to. He pulls up three-foot-high swamp grass and bundles it tightly enough to line his shelter. He knows he needs to cover himself. It is getting cold. A mosaic of tiny lacerations make his bare legs ache. He watches the bugs swarm over his arms and face. He fights them off, rubbing his body, brushing the insane clouds from his scratched and broken skin.
His reasoning is still muddled and unfocused. Of one thing he is sure: he is about as uncomfortable as he can ever remember being. Darkness is coming. He considers the oncoming cold abstractedly, as though it is something outside him. He is close to water, and coherent enough to know it is essential. He kneels in the high grass at the beaver pond to take one last drink, and an insect swarm rises. Something about the way it comes over him, in the dusky light by the pond, falls on him like a pile of rocks. A dull anger rises in his throat and a scream throttles out of him. It is a long, piercing wail—practically inhuman. It is a call to obliterate all pestilence and malaise. It is a plaintive lamentation for solace, and it is answered by an intensified ache in his head.
The insect whirr pauses, startled by the cry. His anger doesn’t subside, but he restrains himself enough to prevent another wailing scream. And then the whirr recovers, and the dark cloud threatens him anew.
Almost a mile away, the Scouts are gathered around the campfire. The entire group is quiet in the growing dark, happy to have the fire to tend, to give them purpose and comfort. In the west, the long northern dusk hangs above the trees. The still water reflects the opposite shore and the fading crimson light. The Scouts are quiet for a moment, gathered around the campfire.
And then out of the southern dark they hear a cry. It is far away and faint, but clear. Blood curdling are the words that come to Tim Jones, though he doesn’t utter them. Before he can look up to see if others have heard, one of the younger boys asks, “Did you hear that?” The boy’s face is pinched and incredulous in the firelight. He looks like he has heard a phantom. Jerry Wills raises a hand to silence everyone, and they listen in the dark for several mute seconds.
“God,” Jerry Wills mutters, before he can catch himself. “My God.”
“What was that?” another Scout finally asks.
There is no way to know. It could be Dan’s voice, or mayb
e something inhuman. Or maybe entirely too human, filled with misery and anguish.
Jerry Wills thinks that if it is Dan, a bear may have finished the work it started earlier. But he doesn’t voice his suspicions. Instead, he gets up and turns to the dark eastern shore. “Dan?!” he yells, screaming into the night. His voice echoes back empty against the trees on the opposite shore.
The others pause after Jerry Wills’s call. They stop to listen for a response. Then they all join him in the near dark, calling Dan’s name, blowing their whistles. Their efforts are frenetic and hopeful, as though one last chance has been offered at the close of a very long day.
Tim Jones finally makes them stop. They pause, listening in the dark. Some of them have blown so hard, their breathing is labored in the flickering light. The only other sound is the flames eating their way through heavy pine boughs.
“I hope that wasn’t him,” one of the younger Scouts says.
They all feel heavy in the day’s last light. They crowd a little closer around the flames. They all wish for the same thing—that it wasn’t their guide who cried out. They don’t want to contemplate alternatives: either the depth of Stephens’s pain, or the being out of which a cry like that arose.
“Maybe a cougar,” Jerry Wills finally suggests, though he doesn’t believe it. “I’ve heard a cougar’s caterwaul can sound like a man’s scream.”
“Maybe a wolf,” Tim Jones adds. None of the Scouts quarrel with their leaders, but no one believes them.
After a while Dan Stephens has calmed himself enough to turn back down to his hovel. He has heard nothing in the dark. He is hunkered down near the beaver pond, at a low point in the landscape. He still has a headache, and there’s a mild ringing in his ears. He can hear the swarm. He can hear the dull seething mass of bugs fighting to feed on him.
Lost in the Wild Page 6