Here's a little advice. Listen to your own advice.
It was the last day of the season, the end of September. Ron and I considered our options and headed for a remote stream where once before we'd had some luck. It was a hit or miss kind of place. If the salmon were moving from one lake to another it could be great. If not?, well not so great, but it's pretty in Maine at this time of year either way.
There's the long ride from Belfast, then the gate, then another 17 miles of dirt roads, and finally a couple of miles of walking along the Appalachian Trail. Occasionally there will be some through-hikers that are either having the time of their lives and feeling like gods or sullenly trudging the last bit approaching Katahdin with a glazed look. We parked and broke out the gear. There's a steep section that's a bit of a trial for my old legs so we lightened our packs, eliminating what we wouldn't need. Water, snacks, waders, rod, reel, vest, and wading staff: in. Heavy jacket and head lamp: out. We promised ourselves not to stay late. Get out with plenty of daylight to spare. A day's worth of hiking, wading the stream, then hiking back out is exhausting and then there's still the long drive home.
If you've ever been involved in an accident investigation there's usually a chain of errors involved. A permanently taped down warning alarm, an unclear communication, or a short cut taken to save a little time. Take a look at the last paragraph.
We hiked in, up over the heights above the dead water which takes you away from the stream. Then there's a long downhill stretch that brings you back close to the water. When we got there, I pulled off my pack basket and climbed into my waders. I rigged up a little before Ron and made my way through the brush and into the water. I stood on a little gravel bar above where the water spilled into the pool and cast out a streamer. A couple of strips of the line and I was hooked up with a nice 18” salmon. Oh baby, oh baby. The fish were here and so were we. Nothin' could be finer, this was going to be a day to remember. I caught and released two more fish. I was relaxing on a rock when Ron pushed through the alders. I didn't want to hog all these first fish. I'd let him catch up a little while I sat there grinning. And he did. There really wasn't much of a trick to catching these fish. They obviously weren't fished over much.
It went on all day like that. One pool after another full of fish as we worked our way back upstream toward the dead water. We stopped and had a bite about midday. We admired the foliage. We noted the profusion of mushrooms that the damp weather had produced. We were on top of the world. We fished until the angle of the sun started to turn the light to maple syrup. It was lovely, but I figured it was time to head out while there was still plenty of light. Catching so many fish is tiring and there was still the long hike back out. I headed off the stream and toward the trail. Ron wanted to catch just one more; he'd follow in a minute.
I set off. There was a wedge of woods that was bounded by the stream on one side and the trail on the other. The narrowest part of the wedge is where we had left our packs. It was from there that we had started to work our way back upstream toward the dead water, so I would have to back track to pick up the gear before heading out. If I headed away from the stream I had to find the trail. I walked for a while. I detoured a little this way and that, around a side stream and around a patch of stuff too thick to walk easily through. Where the hell was the trail? I should have found it by now. I'd been walking maybe a half an hour, and doubts were creeping in. I must have walked right over the trail without even noticing. I decided to head down hill until I reached the water and locate the trail that way. Another half hour of walking and I finally found the trail and the stream, but it was a stretch of water that I hadn't seen all day. It must have been below where we left our gear so I started up the trail looking for our packs.
I found it about 15 minutes later, but everything was gone. I would have liked a suck on the water bottle and a pack of peanut butter crackers. The sun was now behind the hills and things were getting darker. I was already tired and I was soaked through with sweat. I had the bad feeling that there wasn't enough daylight for me to make it back to the Bronco before dark. I got down to walking without delay. The trail was marked with white blazes on trees. They became more useful the darker it got. And it was getting darker.
I climbed slowly up the rise to the high ground above the dead water. Occasionally I'd wander off the path into the thick of the woods, losing the trail, then back tracking and trying again. I couldn't see from one blazed tree to the next. Why didn't I bring the flashlight? Maybe 8 oz.? I was an idiot. I was exhausted. I was stumbling and falling over roots. Finally I got to a place where I walked off the trail three times and had to feel my way back to start again. I sat down and weighed my options. I was beat. I rested. I was soaked with sweat. If I stayed put here, Ron would probably head back this way with a light. But when? He must be back at the Bronco by now. I figured I was about a half hour from the car if I could see to walk, but I couldn't. It was getting colder so I decided to keep inching my way along. Trial and error.
So I took another step ... and fell. It wasn't a stumble and a short trip into another sharp tangle of underbrush and the ground. I walked off into the air and landed somewhere below, but it wasn't like cartoon physics where you don't feel gravity until you see that you've run off the cliff. It was a step into the dark air and the next thing I knew I was somewhere else wondering if I'd killed myself. I landed on my side and things hurt in there, but I knew I wasn't dead. My legs seemed okay, but now I really had done it. I felt a little sorry for myself. I sat there a while longer taking an inventory. What was hurt and what was working? I had hung onto my fishing rod through the fall. I saw the reflection of the dead water well down below me. I decided that maybe I could slide down toward the water on my butt and make my way along the water's edge. I eased my feet out in that direction and let my butt slide a little. I fell again.
I was all the way down now. The stream was probably twenty feet in front of me. I had a better idea of how far I had fallen this time because just a minute ago I was looking down, way down, at the water. I had gone feet first and seemed to have landed in among the roots of the old growth along the stream. Each leg was up to my knee in separate holes. I didn't know what part of me hurt the worst so I sat there and waited to find out. Maybe five minutes passed before I decided I wasn't hurt any worse than after the first fall. I wriggled out of the roots and found a place to sit with my back against a pine tree. I sat there for a while. It felt pretty good to not be falling and stumbling along in the dark any longer. I thought I could walk, but it was thick. Maybe I could get to the water and make my way by the shore. I could hold on to branches and inch along the edge all the way back to the road. So I crawled out to the water's edge.
I hung my feet out over the bank and into the water and slid off the bank. I immediately sunk in the water over my head and came up spluttering. I grabbed a branch and hauled myself up onto the bank. I crawled back to the comfort of the pine tree. It was peaceful. It was a beautiful starry night and I could see Cassiopeia through a break in the tree tops. I realized I wasn't walking out of there on my own. So the struggle was over. It was time to just sit back and wait to be rescued.
In my job, working on ships, I've taught a lot of classes on hypothermia. I know the stages. I know about when you start to shiver. I knew I shouldn't be wearing cotton. I know about what your body temperature is when you stop shivering. I know that your muscles aren't much use to you at a certain point. It was time to just keep as warm as possible and maybe I'd still be alive in the morning when someone found me, if they found me. Ron would go and get help. I couldn't call my wife. I couldn't have a nice last cell phone conversation with my son or my parents. They'd all have to worry on their own when they found out I was missing. My only business was to try to stay as warm as I could. My clothes were soaked. I had on waders, a tee shirt, and a fishing vest. I still had my fishing rod, but I didn't have a match. I watched the angle of Cassiopeia change as the time passed. All the heat my body had generated from the hiking was gone. It hurt my ribs, but I was able to rip a few limbs off the pine tree and covered myself. I put my arms down in the bib of the waders and waited. Across the water I heard a car. Coming or going? I tried to sleep, but couldn't. I just waited, thinking about how long the night was.
More time passed. Victims rescued from the cold say that it's not a bad way to go. You just drift off. No pain, just sleepiness. That didn't sound too bad. I knew that survivors all tell you the same thing, that the most important part of their survival was their will to live. I knew that I didn't have any will to live at all and I didn't really care. I was just happy to die comfortably or be rescued. It didn't matter. I felt a little guilty about that. Then I heard a car again. Ron? I shouted a couple of times but didn't get a response and I settled back in.
After maybe another half hour I started to shiver pretty good, but the waders had slowed the evaporation and my cooling. Then I thought I heard someone calling. It was. Ron was calling my name. What a nice sound. I called back and we Marco Polo-ed for a while as he came closer. I saw the beam of his light reflected off the trees high above me coming closer until he was standing above me. High above me, at the edge of the trail looking down what I now saw with the illumination of his light was a sheer cliff. Half way down was a ledge that must have been where I first landed. About 40' in all. Twenty feet in each drop.
He asked me, “Are you all right?”
I answered, “Not so much.”
He asked if I could walk. I said, “I don't think so”. I had about had it with walking around in
the woods for the time being.
He asked, “Are your legs broken?”
I said, “I don't think so.”
He said, “You'd better be able to walk because that's the only way you're getting out of here.”
I suggested he go back to the Bronco and bring the canoe down the dead water and freight me out that way.
He suggested that as soon as he could figure out how to get down to where I was, I'd better be ready to walk. He was not having any marine disaster added to the rest of our troubles. But he was happy to have found me. The rescue was underway.
I sat there for another half hour while he disappeared down the trail looking for a way to get to the bottom of the cliff. He and his light finally made it close enough to me that he could hand me a flashlight through the thicket of firs. I asked if he had by any chance brought my jacket because I was freezing.
“No, but you'll warm up when we start walking.”
After crawling through, over, and under the jumble of branches, roots, and holes for a while, things thinned out and we could move a little faster. I still had my fishing rod, I was using my other hand to pull myself over hard spots, and the flashlight was in my mouth. I tripped once and landed face first on a rock. Actually it was flashlight first. The flashlight was jammed down my throat, but still working. Just one more indignity. As soon as we pulled ourselves up the bank and regained the trail I moved the light into my free hand. I felt a new sense of relief. I was warmer and I really was going to get out of here.
The trail was no city side walk, but it was a whole lot easier to walk on with the light. Ron told me to look for the tip section of his rod and his red fleece vest. He had lost both on the way out. Even hurting as I was, I felt more like a godly through-hiker than a sullen trudger. We made it back to the top of the cliff that I had walked off. I took a peek over the edge and scared the shit out of myself. How wasn't I killed? The rest of the way wasn't too bad. A little more up hill where I found the tip of Ron's broken fishing rod. Then a steep decline where Ron took a short tumble and his flashlight fell apart. That's where I found his red fleece and he was able to re-assemble his light and get it working. Ten minutes more walking and we were at the car.
I couldn't get out of my waders, but Ron finally got me undressed and changed into some dry clothes. I had just folded myself into the front seat of the Bronco when the first warden drove up. He was happy not to have to go into the woods after me. Yesterday they had to drag a dead through-hiker out of the woods. The guy had walked all the way from Georgia and then had a heart attack right next to a beautiful lake in Maine. I hoped his last moments were spent peacefully sitting with his back against a pine tree knowing that he wouldn't have to take one more stumbling step. The warden would call off the plane search. Maybe they hadn't taken off from Greenville yet. Did I need any medical attention? He told me to call my wife as soon as I could. She had been notified that I was lost in the woods and they were out looking for me. He asked if we'd caught any fish and shone his flashlight around the back of the Bronco checking for funny business. There wasn't anything funny there at all. A couple of broken fishing rods, a pack basket stuffed with wet waders, a chain, an ax, and a come-along.
The road out was bumpy. Every jolt brought out a muffled little complaint from me. (I had a few broken ribs and spent the next month sleeping in a chair.) Between the bumps Ron gave me an account of just how bad his night had been.
First he waited by the packs until the time came that if he didn't get going he wasn't going to make it out in the light. He brought my pack basket thinking he might gather me up along the trail. He had lost his gear as it was getting dark and couldn't waste any time going back to look for it. He was sure he'd find me at the Bronco waiting for him. When I wasn't there he had some tough decisions to make. Should he go back in the woods to find me? I could be anywhere. Lost. Fallen with a broken leg or worse. Drowned in the stream? Carted away by aliens? Anything was possible, but the least likely seemed that I'd be anywhere on the trail or I would have made it out. He sat around a little while longer and expected or hoped I'd come stumbling out of the woods. Finally he decided to go get some help. A tough, but important decision. He drove back to the first gate where there was a phone and he called 911 which connected him to the warden service. He gave them our location and circumstances and they called my wife just to make sure I wasn't sitting at home. That was the beginning of her bad night, but Ron and I have given her more than one over the years. He then turned around and headed back. Again he hoped to find me where we had parked and was once again disappointed. So he headed back down the trail with a light and started looking.
My fishing buddy and rescuer made all the right choices. He was really happy to hear my voice when I first called back. Things at that point were looking up. He wasn't sure just how bad things would actually be when he laid eyes me, but at least I was found. Maybe his explanations to my wife wouldn't be quite so awkward and with some luck I'd have to make them, not him. When we hit the tarred road it was a relief. There was still the occasional breath sucking bump. We made it to cell phone range and I called home. Susie, my wife, could stand down. I was going to make it home tonight.
It was one or two in morning when we got to Dysarts. It took me about ten minutes to get out of the car. I limped inside and sat down to a wonderful bowl of fish chowder. I hurt a lot, but here I was surrounded by late night diners and truckers that didn't know a thing about what it's like to fish with Ron. I wasn't sitting with my back against a tree shivering, I was ladling up warm soup. I'd be home in another hour. In two months my ribs would be healed and my broken fishing rod would be fixed.
I'm writing all this down so that I'll remember to take my own advice. I'll carry a light with me even if I'm going to be out of the woods before I need it. We'll have the whistles our poker pal, Paul, gave us to make keeping in touch a little easier. I'll be a boy scout and “be prepared”. Maybe I will, but it's more than likely I'll continue to be human. Accidents will happen. They seem to happen more frequently when Ron and I take a walk in the woods. I guess it's just our nature.
Fall Fishing