Lost in the Wild

by Cary Griffith

  Dryden to Atikokan is almost two hundred miles. With enough coffee and the right wheels you can run it in a little over three hours—providing you are willing to bend the rules. At this time of night, on this emergency, Moline’s only worry is a big mammal—moose, deer, or the rare woodland caribou—straying out of the woods.

  They take Trans Canada 17 almost eighteen miles to Provincial Highway 502. There they settle into a comfortable ride for almost one hundred miles. This highway is broader than 17—safer, given their speed, and they make excellent time.

  Moline’s trip is made only marginally easier by the company of Scott Moore, the other ERT member from Dryden. The two men hurtle through the dark Ontario night. Not long after starting on the long haul down 502, Moore nods off.

  Moline turns from 502 onto East Provincial Highway 11. He guns the last eighty-five miles in just under an hour. At that time of the morning he sees only the occasional oncoming car, but thankfully no big animals sticking their wary heads out of the thick bush.

  They arrive in Atikokan before first light, right on schedule. Before leaving, Moline was briefed on some of the details, and now he knows he wants to be in the woods with base camp set up no later than noon. They will have to hustle to make it.

  In the hours before dawn Dan Stephens tries to return to sleep. As he begins to drift off he does not think about God. If he paused to consider, his heart might fill with recrimination. Instead, he feels determination. He knows God has provided him with everything he needs to survive. God has done his part in this bargain. Dan has the resources of the woods, water to drink, and the know-how to put it all together. In the bush, Dan reasons, everything watches out for itself. Unless you get in step with the wilderness program, the bush will devour you whole.

  He wants to assuage his parents’ worry. He wants to stop the search and rescue he suspects is being waged on his behalf. He doesn’t like to think about the time and money being spent, or of his parents’ anxiety. He can imagine them in knots, fraught with fear. He wishes he could reach out and let them know he is fine, that he can walk out under his own power. He wishes they would call off the search, but knows it is an idle thought. They will search until he gets out under his own power and lets them know he is okay. Hungry, but okay. A little torn up over the legs, but otherwise fine.

  Now Dan Stephens knows he needs to rest. He is determined to execute the plan he feels certain will take him to safety—and not make mistakes.

  Sometime before dawn he dreams. Fisher Map F-19 is laid out over a huge table. He cannot see the edges of the table, but knows the portion of the map in front of him is the country he now traverses. He stares at the map, searching for the point that will show him “You are here,” but there is nothing. He again notices the lakes spread across the map in a northeast to southwest direction. There are no topographic numbers, no indications of elevation, but he realizes, staring at the map in his dream, that the ridges he is now crossing must conform to the striations of water. They move in the same direction.

  On the dream map he notices a series of ridges and valleys before encountering Ottertrack Lake. Before the dream evaporates he makes note of the realization, and in the morning, he remembers.

  At dawn he throws off the coils, rises, and crests the ridge, dropping over the other side. He watches the sunrise, shivering in the early morning cold. It was a reasonable night: no rain, with temperatures in the sixties. It was hard sleeping—he was too keyed up, ready to get underway. He shivers now, starting to feel the sun warm him.

  He takes note of the sun and lays another stick in an easterly direction. He marks the location, comparing it to the three sticks he laid last night. He wants to be absolutely certain of his southerly direction. The pointers line up, and he crosses back over the ridge. He looks out over the low slope of land. In the distance he can see two small ponds, connected by small creeks, laid out in a southwesterly direction.

  Halfway down the slope is a large white pine. Dan starts down the hillside toward the tree. He is ravenous. He opens his knife blade and digs into the fragrant wood. He peels off the outer layer, revealing the resinous white cambium. It smells strongly of pine. The smell reminds him of solvent, or air freshener. But he is hungry. He peels off a long strip. It is like a damp length of flattened bailing twine. He puts an end of it in his mouth and starts to chew, but it is like chewing on a piece of Pine-Sol–soaked leather. He tries for almost a minute trying to gag the bark down, then spits it out. There is a little water left in his canteen. He drinks a mouthful, swishes, and spits, trying to get rid of the bitterness.

  He turns and continues down the hillside, moving into the lowland, alert for berries or anything else he can eat. He is careful to keep the landmarks in front of him, the ones that guarantee his southerly direction.

  In the lowland he finds occasional thimbleberries. Most of the ripe ones have been eaten by the birds or bears. Some have fallen on the ground. He gathers a few near-ripe ones and devours them. They are sour. He sees a few on the ground, eats those, and is thankful for their sweetness. He is especially thankful that the taste of the berries overrides the bitterness of white pine bark.

  In the morning Constable McGill and Staff Sergeant Donald brief the assembled team at the Atikokan station. They explain everything they know about the case: where and when Stephens disappeared, Stephens’s experience, what the group was doing in the Quetico, the fact that his friends left him, the location of his friends now. They cover it all in detail, answering ERT members’ questions.

  Moline has chartered two Beaver planes to take them into the bush. They will set up base camp at no-name lake, at the precise location Stephens walked into the woods. He has also requisitioned the OPP’s helicopter, which will take a while to arrive from Sudbury. This time Scott Moore pulls the lucky job of spotter. It pays to have one of the search coordinators come from your detachment. After Moore helps set up base camp and determines a likely landing spot for the OPP’s twin-engine Aerostar copter, he will be searching from the air, not bushwhacking through that part of the Quetico. There will be plenty of searchers on the ground. Moore has done it often enough, and he smiles to know this time he will have the bird’s-eye view of the place.

  At the Atikokan OPP station, sometime after 7:00 AM, the shifts change. Sergeant Heather Lacey replaces a tired Phil Donald. Jim McGill has already shared everything he knows with the searchers and Sergeant Lacey. McGill has gone out for donuts and coffee. In all the planning and preparations, McGill and Donald haven’t had a chance to get back to Stephens’s parents.

  “I’m on it,” Lacey says. She doesn’t look forward to calls like these, but at least she can inform the Stephenses about the OPP’s efforts. The small Atikokan station is humming with ERT staff. Supplies are being gathered and packed. Dogs have been sent for, and the first Beaver has arrived. The first contingent of four ERT members is ready to load and take off. Everything that can be done, is being done.

  A little after 8:00 am, Sergeant Heather Lacey calls Jim and Mary Ann Stephens. It has been a bad night for the couple. Jim Stephens stared in the dark, trying to imagine his son’s whereabouts, to place himself in the Quetico woods, about which he knows nothing. He is familiar with wilderness, but from what Dan told him earlier that summer, northern wilderness seemed wilder than the southern woods; everything but the water has a sharp edge. And there is too much water. He has looked at the maps. He cannot believe the latticework of lakes and streams. There is as much water as land. He hasn’t said it to Dan’s mother, but with so much wild water, drowning is a possibility. He knows his son, knows he is an excellent swimmer and water man, careful about life vests. Still, with that much water, anything is possible.

  A bleary Jim Stephens answers the phone after the first ring. Heather Lacey introduces herself and the Ontario Provincial Police. She is barely into her discussion about what is being done before Stephens has words of his own
.

  “We’re catching the next flight up,” he says. He knows he cannot spend another night in the dark, without shuteye or any sense of what is being done for his son—without doing something himself.

  Sergeant Lacey assures him that they are doing everything that can be done. She tells them she will contact them every hour and give them updates until they find Dan. At this point it would be premature for them to come to Canada. They would be helping Dan more by staying home, attending to their move, giving the OPP any other details they think might be relevant.

  Stephens is doubtful anyone could turn over as many stones as himself—the boy’s father. But he spends the next half hour repeating everything they have already told Doug Hirdler. They are impatient and anxious, but to Jim Stephens, who has an ear for bureaucratic mumbo jumbo, Heather Lacey sounds granite-solid. They are relieved to have the staff sergeant on the other end of the line, and for now are convinced to remain home by the phone.

  Throughout the warming August morning, the two yellow Beavers ferry men and supplies into no-name lake. Moline and Moore are among the first to arrive. They fly low over trees and water, examining the entire shoreline of Fran Lake, no-name, and Bell. The place is nothing but trees and brush. They can barely discern where the waters of no-name lake begin and the brush ends. They are looking for some kind of granite promontory, or high ridge outcrop—the best place to be seen, providing Stephens is still around and thinking clearly enough to make himself seen.

  The pilot makes two passes over the lake, but there is nothing open about it. From the air they believe they can see where the portage should be and the area where Stephens disappeared. The plane makes one more wide circle and lands on the lake from the northeast. The pilot taxis the float plane down to the far southwestern corner.

  Moline and Moore see the wide cobblestone path at the far end—the one Stephens was first certain was the port-age. And then almost fifty yards to the southeast, the wide, dark spot and the opening into the cedar swamp behind it. It is the only place that looks like a cave, the way the Chattanooga fathers described it. Behind open space, cedar boughs close overhead in a dense wall. Inside, under the boughs, everything is dark. The first thing they are going to do, Moline knows, is hike into that dark space and explore every cranny of it.

  The float plane taxis up to the open edge of water, and the men throw off the rope and tie it firmly ashore. Then they take no more than five minutes to unload supplies for base camp. Tents, coolers, food, bags, radio equipment—everything is tightly packed and easily handled. When it all sits in a huge pile on the shore, the float plane is untethered and cast off. In moments it wings back out over the lake.

  As part of the initial search coordinator setup, Moline and Hunter have laid out a search grid. The grid is divided into kilometer-wide squares that stretch out and away from the point where Stephens walked into the woods and disappeared. By now Dan has been gone two nights, approximately thirty-six hours. That means the search area is going to be wide. When they unfold the map and examine it, the expanse of wilderness is daunting.

  Moline, Moore, and Hunter realize that if Stephens hiked north, he is in a world of hurt. That direction disappears into over fifteen miles of heavy bush until the next big body of water—and that’s if he hikes due north. People in woods without anything to guide them—like a compass—tend to walk in circles. If they are left handed, they tend to veer left. It makes them walk in a huge, left-leaning circle. Right-handed people veer right. Eventually most people pushing through brush end up at or near the place they started.

  Due north from Bell Lake is one of Canada’s thickest, most impenetrable forests: nothing but big trees, thick brush, blackflies, and mosquitoes. The likelihood of coming in contact with any wilderness travelers would be one in a million. More like a billion, Moline thinks, given the fact there are no good canoe routes and certainly no hiking trails. A hike north is a walk into oblivion.

  In terms of woods and distance, the hike south doesn’t look much better. But at least in that direction he has a better chance of running into someone—providing he can hike all the way to the Canadian border. The search team has spent enough time in the Quetico woods to know the likelihood of making it all the way to the border—to the long narrow strip of Ottertrack Lake that straddles the international boundary—is at best remote, more likely impossible. Even if Stephens knows what he’s doing, the hike would be through bush so thick and bug infested most would be turning in circles and unhinged within twenty-four hours.

  Stephens went into the woods without a compass or map. That means dead reckoning via the sun, most likely, providing Stephens is savvy enough to compensate for the rule of dominant handedness. He has the season working to his advantage, but even in August it gets cold at night. And the heat of the day, particularly at dusk, will bring out the swarms. He might find some berries, but more likely he’ll go hungry—damn hungry. Moline knows the woods have plenty to offer, if you know what to look for. But it takes training and time to recognize the possibilities. The kid might know something about it, given his background and Eagle Scout rank. But people more experienced than Dan Stephens have walked into the woods and disappeared. All in all, they’re not feeling good about this search.

  The team is well rehearsed in setting up camp. By noon the entire place is a hive of activity. They have already been over every inch of the cedar swamp and the surrounding area, but they find nothing. Not a track, not a sign that the young man has passed. They’re disappointed, but not surprised. Searches of people gone as long as Stephens rarely have a rapid conclusion.

  Some of the men are already in the woods starting their search along obvious routes. They have ferried in dogs, and the dogs are trying to pick up Dan’s scent. If he is in the neighborhood, Moline knows, the dogs will smell him.

  The helicopter is almost in from Sudbury, but they realize there is no good place for it to land. The area around no-name lake is so thick with brush—trees running straight up to the edge of the water with no flat granite outcrops—they will need to create some kind of makeshift helipad.

  Sergeant Norm Mitchell and Moore know the copter doesn’t need much. But it should be plenty open, so the rotors have no chance of hooking on a tree branch. The most open place close to camp is the cobblestone end of the lake, but the boulders are too large and tumbled, in the same state the glaciers left them. Its surface is too uneven.

  A kind of log-dock landing pad could work. It doesn’t have to be much, just spread in an even plane across those boulders.

  Mitchell and Moore envision the way the logs could be cut, stripped, and laid out in a simple latticework across the open rocks. Two long log sides with four logs strapped across it. They enlist the help of four recently arrived ERT members and make their way along the shoreline to the cobblestone end, sizing up trees as they maneuver along the tight bank.

  While the men build the makeshift helipad, the copter touches down at the Prairie Portage Station and picks up Jerry Wills. He is amazed at the copter’s speed. In minutes they pass over the twenty-seven miles of terrain that had cost hours of back-breaking pain and labor the previous day. They fly low over the southeastern end of no-name lake, where a yellow Beaver lies tethered near the shore. Jerry points out the location where Dan Stephens disappeared, now occupied by the ERT. The pilot radios the ERT ground crew and then ferries Jerry Wills back to Prairie Portage.

  By early afternoon all sixteen ERT members have arrived, dropped off their gear, and started searching. Jeff Moline and Norm Mitchell are setting up gear, waiting for the Aerostar twin-engine to reappear. They’ve been in radio contact with the chopper and expect to see it any time now. Moline and Mitchell consider the handiwork of their makeshift helipad. They have both seen the copter land on worse.

  The OPP–ERT members preparing to search the Quetico bush; Constable Moline, sitting at left, is search coordinator (courtesy Constab
le Scott Moore, OPP-ERT)

  And within the next half-hour the copter has put down, picked up Scott Moore, and taken off over the lake, making a wide circle of the entire shore—the most obvious place anyone could be seen. Moore and the pilot have the grid laid out in front of them. They make several wider circles of Bell Lake, but even when you’re on top of it you cannot see much more than the conical tops of pines. In another half hour they exhaust the local possibilities. They radio to Kevin Hunter that they are turning south.

  A Beaver float plane takes off near the log platform built for the helicopter near ERT camp (courtesy Constable Scott Moore, OPP-ERT)

  For the rest of the day the dogs and men search through the Quetico woods. Scott Moore and the copter pilot make several runs south, covering different grid quadrants all the way down to Ottertrack Lake. But it is as though the trees have swallowed Dan Stephens whole. Even the dogs find no trace of him.

  17

  No Tracks, No Signs, Nothing

  The Pow Wow Trail region, BWCAW, Saturday-Sunday, October 27–28, 2001

  Saturday morning at first light there are over a dozen searchers assembled. Jim Williams is serving as incident commander. Rebecca Francis is there to co-command and to make sure proper wilderness authority is available in case BWCAW regulations need explaining. ATVs and overhead planes are entirely allowable, she assures them, in cases of search and rescue.

  Brad Johnson, a DNR conservation officer out of Silver Bay, has also answered the call. He was patrolling the area when he heard the radio chatter. In less than an hour he is in the trailhead parking lot, ready to hike into the woods.

  Together, Williams and Francis send pairs of searchers along the obvious routes, some in ATVs, others on foot. Most of them head up the trail. The initial goal is to circumnavigate the entire Pow Wow. They need to walk every foot of it, since the trail is the most likely place Jason could be found. But the early going is difficult. The weight of the heavy, wet snow has clogged the trail and bowed many of the young trees bordering it. The trees and brush have to be shaken and flung upright to make way for hikers and 4-wheelers.