Getting to know the woods ~ December 17, 2003

David Heiller

The two dogs and I headed into the woods on Sunday afternoon. It was something I had wanted to do for several weeks, but work had kept it on the back burner.

There’s something very inviting about woods this time of year. The ground is hard, so there’s no mud. There’s a little snow for contrast, but not too much to make walking difficult, and you can see everything.

The view from our deck as well as all of the east facing windows. The river is down there, but also our woods, and what we refer to as Heiller Valley.

It is now owned by the State of Minnesota.

Our woods are even more of a magnet to me because I really don’t know them yet. I’ve walked over the hills a time or two, but it takes a while to get to know a piece of land, years really.

I scurried down the hill, eased over a barbed wire fence, and entered the woodlot. My new Allis Chalmers WD tractor was in the back of my mind. “Could it handle this trail without tipping,” I asked myself as I walked along.

“Νο, not here,” I said with a grimace at a few steep spots.

“Here it will be fine,” I said at an equal number of places. Cindy calls my tractor a widow maker. I hope she’s wrong—and so does she!

I skirted three hills, sizing up the trees that were standing, and looking at the debris from the logging that had taken place a few years earlier. We have hundreds of cords of oak and hickory firewood ready to be sawed up and hauled to the house. Making firewood is never an easy job, and this project will be even harder because of the steep terrain where much of it lies. That’s why I was visualizing the tractor in the woods.

It was a sober walk in some ways, seeing all the tree tops lying on the ground. I kept wishing I had seen these woods before the chainsaws came. I noticed a new gully that had opened up in the midst of the logging, with fresh brown dirt ready to be washed into the valley with the spring run-off. Would the trees have held that in check?

But I’ve seen enough woods to know that they recover in time. The trees still standing will far outlast me. That’s the big picture. The ones that got cut will go to good homes, like the one we are building.

I reached the edge of our 20 acres of woods, and crossed onto some land owned by Duane Thomford. He has a cabin overlooking the broad Heiller Valley. That’s what I call it, because it’s where my grandparents and then their son Donny lived and farmed for about 40 years. It’s state land now.

Duane had told me to take a walk out there, that it was a good view. I realized on Sunday that Duane is a master of understatement. The sight from that cabin was as close to an Ansel Adams view as I’ve seen in Minnesota. The huge valley is flanked by hill after hill, then it opens up like a huge smile to the Mississippi River.

I peered down into the bottom of the valley and saw the familiar fields where Donny had planted corn and alfalfa. I traced the route that he would go, first on the north side of the ravine, then down into the gulch and up to the south side , then a bit west, and then up the steep hill to his field on the ridge.

Talk about tipping tractors—Dοnny would make that run up the ridge with a hayrack behind!

I’ll always remember a joke he pulled on me on that trail. Before he would descend with a full load of hay bales, he would take iron wedges and put them in front of the wagon wheels. Only then would he slowly creep down. The wedges kept the wheels locked in place. His helpers, like me, sat on top of the hay bales, oblivious to any danger.

One time after a swaying descent, when we got to the flat land in the valley, Dοnny backed off the wedges and called me over. “Feel how smooth that is,” he said, running his hand over the shiny wedge.

I ran my fingers over it and yelped. That metal was hot enough to fry a grilled cheese sandwich. Donny was always a famous trickster, and he had fooled me again. I had to laugh in spite of the pain. And the burns healed just fine after a couple years.

Just kidding Donny.

The Heiller Valley beckoned to me again on Sunday, just like it did those 40 years ago. But the light was fading, so I turned around and went home through the top of the woods and I found what I was looking for.

No, not the spring that Duane said is on the property. He’ll have to show me that himself, unless he’s pulling an Uncle Donny.

The spot I found was a big tree that had not met the loggers standards for cord wood, for some blessed reason. It was standing on a ledge with smooth ground all around, and a four-foot high crop of limestone at its edge.

Oh boy, I could see myself with a book or a banjo at that spot, leaning against the tree on a fine spring day.

Yes, I’ll get to know our property better. I can’t wait for the next 30 years to transpire.

Feeling a little looney ~ November 16, 2005

David Heiller

Several years ago I heard a strange thing while on a canoe trip.

Three buddies and I were camped on an island on Lake Insula in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. It was mid-May, a beautiful, cool evening, with a full moon on its way. Loons were calling around the lake. That’s a pretty hard sound to beat, especially in a remote spot like we were on.

Malika's loon and baby.

Then I heard a loon in front of our campsite calling like I have never heard before or since. The loon had a hoarse voice. It tried and tried to make its majestic presence known. Maybe it was a call marking its territory or a call for a mate. I’m not sure. Loons have several very fascinating calls. But that loon couldn’t do it. Its call came out thin and raspy. You could tell it was straining with all it had, but it ended up sounding weak and weary.

The oddest part was that the other loons seemed to rise up and call even louder. I know it was my human imagination, but they seemed to be laughing at their weak-voiced competitor. They drowned him out, and he eventually gave up trying. It was all kind of funny, yet sad too.

Without a strong voice, that loon had to be at a disadvantage. I wonder what became of it.

I felt like that loon last week. It started about Monday, when my voice started cracking. I knew I wasn’t going through puberty again (thank goodness). “Cold coming on,” I thought.

On Tuesday, I took half a day off from more cold-like symptoms, stuffy head, ringing in my ears. By Wednesday, when I spoke, I felt like I was in an echo chamber.

Healthy and happy David.

By Thursday, it was hard to talk. My throat hurt. I went to a roundtable discussion in Coon Rapids with some fellow newspaper editors. I tried to make some comments, but my throat was plugged up. My voice came out thin, and died about three feet in front of me. It didn’t even seem like my voice. That made me think too much about what I was saying. My words weren’t spontaneous at all. I was one step behind everyone, one step more than usual at least.

That persisted at home too, and went further. I didn’t want to talk, not about what happened at work, what I saw, what I read. It hurt to talk, so things went unsaid. I wasn’t me.

More of the same on Friday. Big football game, incredible ending, going to the Metrodome, all I could muster was a raspy, “Wow.”

I didn’t sleep at all Friday night. I croaked like a chain-smoking whiskey tenor. Cindy insisted that I go in for a strep throat test on Saturday. I argued that of course. Every guy has to argue a trip to the doctor. A doctor? No way! I’ll ride it out just like my great grandpa Cro Magnon used to do. The one that lived to age 43.

Cindy got out a medical book. “Call your nurse information service or doctor if you’ve tried self-care but your symptoms haven't improved after 48 hours.” she read. It only took about two more hours of me thinking about that to see that Cindy was right. Saturday morning I had the positive strep test results in hand and a shot of penicillin in my behind.

Then things got better, as they usually do. My smoldering throat quit burning. The echo chamber went away. My voice slowly came back to normal. I picked up the fiddle, did chores, told my wife about that interesting banjo article I had read recently. Everything seemed more fresh, more interesting. I felt thankful about nothing in particular and about everything in general.

Getting sick can be a good thing in a perverse kind of way, and I’ll be the first to acknowledge that my brief sickness hardly registers as serious. But it made me appreciate good health, and the simple desire and ability to speak. Like that loon.

The feeling of December ~ November 28, 1996

David Heiller

It really feels like December.

Certain months have certain feelings. When sap starts running, it feels like March. When frogs start peeping, it feels like April. When leaves start falling, it feels like September.

But December is different.

It’s in the light mostly. Maybe there’s a scientific explanation for where the sun is in the sky, and how it reflects off fresh snow. I don’t want to know about that. It might spoil the feeling of December, the way learning how to pilot a steam boat spoiled the Mississippi River for Mark Twain.

I felt December for the first time last Saturday, November 24. It came a week early for me, but Mother Nature doesn’t go by our calendar. Quite the contrary.

I was lying in bed at about 7:30, and I looked out the window, and there it was, that light of December. Α couple inches of fresh snow had fallen, and the sun was just coming up, and the bedroom was filled with December.

It was like God hadn’t just brought a new day, he had brought a whole new season, one that carried hope and promise.

I wanted to jump up and tear into the hope and promise, the way a person does in the spring when the weather is perfect and the garden is ready for planting.

Yet at the same time I wanted to lie in bed a few extra minutes to soak it up. 1 wished it would last forever. Every year I feel it, and every year it is good.

Ah December!
A wintry ride for Claire with Mom and Dad.

Some of it has to do with childhood memories. The first snow meant ice skating on the harbor and on the river bottoms. It meant snowmen, and snowball fights, and sliding down the big hill, across the street, and down past our house, two whole blocks of sliding if you didn’t get hit by a car, and no one ever did, because we took turns watching out.

The feeling of December back then carried thoughts of Christmas vacation, and presents, and good food, and more of the fun things like skating and sledding.

I don’t have quite those same experiences in my life now, but the feeling of December is just as good. The snow is clean and new. It seems to fall in big, feathery flakes. It belongs here, and it’s ours. People who have fled to Texas and Florida are missing it. We may envy them in March, but now it is their turn to envy us. It’s the kind of weather Robert Frost would write poems about.

The promise of a new season is here. Yes, it is winter, and yes, winter can be hard. Who will ever forget last year? No one wants to relive that. But we need change. It’s good for us. It rejuvenates us. It gives us new things to do. It brings wonder, about how everything can shut down for four months and then rejuvenate itself again.

And there’s something good about that fresh snow and those cold temperatures. There’s something good about the white blanket that’ spread over the garden. There’s something g about giving the lakes and rivers a rest, about seeing them skim over with ice.

The feeling of December brings the satisfaction of having the storm windows on and the woodpile nice and neat and the outside tools and toys put away and everything buttoned down like a snug sweater.

And then there’s the anticipation of Christmas. I know it can be a stressful time, with the pressures of giving the right gifts and going to family gatherings. But these are overshadowed by cutting the Christmas tree and smelling a kitchen full of fresh baked cookies and watching the kids in the church Christmas program and by a hundred other little pleasures of life.

That’s my sermon for today. The feeling of December. Did you catch it? It will be gone soon enough.

Working like a woodstove ~ November 29, 1990

David Heiller

The woodstove is finally earning its keep at our house, and so are Noah and I.

On Sunday, we stacked about four cords of wood. I did most of the work, but Noah kept a steady pace too for four hours. We stacked wood and listened to the Vikings beat Chicago 41-13, and even took a hot chocolate-peanut butter cookie break. Is there a better way to spend a sunny November afternoon?

Afterward, Noah had to take off his shirt and make me feel his arm muscles. Yup, I said, they feel a little harder, and they did.

The wood stove was, for much of the year, central to our house and family. (Why don't I have any photos of it?) 
Anyway, this is more or less how we
 heated our home for many, many years.

(I must confess that he was also motivated by the dollar I promised if he helped stack the whole pile, and he got his buck.)

We’ve had fires in our Fisher wood stove since September, mostly burning up old elm that feels and heats like cardboard. A stove-full is gone in an hour or so.

But these days, with temperatures in the single digits, you really appreciate that old woodstove.

You come home late at night or after work, and the house has a chill to it that makes you shiver when you take off your coat, which you don’t do until the ritual of lighting the woodstove:

n   Crumple up some newspaper; maybe add a little birch bark and kindling.

n   Strike a match—only ONE match is allowed. Soon you hear snap-crackle-pop that puts Rice Krispίes to shame.

n   Add more wood—the crackling turns to a roar. The smell of smoke trickles into the room. Not the ugly stink of charred homes and tragedy, just the hint of smoke, the kind you smell in a sweater in the summer that reminds you of winter, of birch and pine and oak.

n   Stand over the stove for a few minutes, feeling the heat pulse out like a friendly heart beat, as it reaches slowly for the kitchen and living room and through the ceiling register to the kids’ rooms upstairs.

In the morning, the kids carry their clothes down from their bedrooms and get dressed in front of the stove. I button my shirt there too. It’s a friendly spot, in front of a woodstove.

In fact, there’s nothing friendlier than a woodstove when it’s earning its keep. The colder the days, the friendlier the stove.

I like to burn wood for a lot of reasons that could list out here in logical fashion. But that would seem pretty silly, because I suspect the main reason is the simple Boy Scout joy of lighting a fire.

But here are two anyway:

1.      Heating with wood is a lot of work: cutting and hauling and splitting and stacking and carrying all that wood. Sometimes I dread the thought of it, especially when it’s the first of September and I realize that I don’t have enough wood for the winter, and I think of all the work that lies ahead. It creates a primitive fear that I won’t have enough firewood for the winter, and Cindy and the kids may freeze to death because of my careless sloth. But I like that fear. It makes me think and plan and feel proud and, yes, work.

2.      And once that work starts, I’m thankful in a perverse way. My back hurts at first, and my arms ache a little. But soon I feel my arm and back muscles tighten, like they do every fall. I start to feel a bit more in touch with my body, a bit more in shape, a bit younger.

But not as young as Noah. Although sometimes I still take off my shirt and feel my arm muscles.

‘We don’t give up easy.’ ~ November 25, 1999

David Heiller

The mark of a good deer hunter isn’t always in his or her marksmanship. The Bruce and Sandy Lourey family of Moose Lake proved that on November 7.

Bruce Lourey, 53, was hunting that Sunday morning on land that his brother, Dal, owns west of Kerrick.

Bruce saw a buck early on that opening morning. He shot at it three times while it was running.

After the third shot, the deer flopped out flat, like it was dead. Bruce was confident that he had killed it. He still had a shot left, but he thought he should reload before he walked over to it.

“By the time I got two or three more bullets in there, I hadn’t even gotten them in the gun yet, he jumped up and took off running,” Bruce recalled on November 15.

Bruce watched where it went into the woods and started trailing it. “I kept thinking, he’s only going to go a hundred yards. He kept going and going and going.”

Bruce looked for the deer for about three hours. Two times he crossed the Willow River, wading in his wool pants and leather boots. But he couldn’t find it.

At about 11:30 he marked his spot, then went in for lunch. He told his two sons, Andrew, 17, and Jake, 16, about what had happened, and they went back with him.

They tracked the deer through the woods. It wasn’t easy, because the deer had stopped bleeding when it got on a trail.

They saw that the deer had run up to a log on the trail. Bruce and Andrew figured it had crossed over the log and kept going down the trail. Jake had a different hunch. He got down on his hands and knees by the log, and for about an hour he scoured the ground like Sherlock Holmes. All he lacked was a magnifying glass.

Jake finally got a break when he found a spot of blood in the other direction. He saw that the deer had reversed course at the log and walked down to the river. There Jake found a track in the sand and another drop of blood.

“It had actually run up alongside the log and went down the river. It threw us off there,” Jake explained.

Bruce and Andrew crossed the river, using a bridge, while Jake waited where he was. They saw that the deer had crossed the river there, because there was more blood on the ground. It had started bleeding again.

“It tried to go up a hill and fell back down and started bleeding,” Jake recalled.

Bruce figured it couldn’t have gone far. He started walking in a big circle around the spot.

Jake went straight ahead, up the hill to a trail and across it. The deer jumped up and took off about 10 yards in front of him. Jake shot it two times with his Remington .270, and the animal died.

The deer had an eight point rack and weighed about 200 pounds, Jake estimated.

Bruce wasn’t happy that he didn’t kill the deer cleanly in the first place. “Ι’m not very proud of it, put it that way,” he said.

“It all started when I didn’t make the very best shot. I’m getting old, I don’t shoot as good.”

But he was glad that they found it. I could tell that it wasn’t a matter of if they found a deer but when they found it.

“Ι don’t think there’s anybody else that would have found it except us,” he said without a hint of boastfulness. “We just basically hounded it until we had it. Jake really spent a long time down crawling around on his hands and knees, sorting that trail out, where did that deer go.”

“We don’t give up easy.”

I asked Bruce if he was proud of his son. It was a dumb question. Bruce answered by saying, “I’m glad he didn’t get lost anyway.” In case you don’t speak the language of males, that’s the way a guy says, “Yes, I am extremely proud of my son.”

I asked Jake if he considered himself a patient person. “I’m remotely patient,” he answered with a self-conscious laugh. “Once I’m sitting on the stand, Ι get a little edgy but I don’t have a problem with tracking deer.”

I asked him another dumb question: “Did you feel it was important that you find the deer?”

Duh!

“Yes, definitely,” was Jake’s simple answer. Jake shot a six point buck the following day.

As for our household, we did not get a deer. Noah is already planning his strategy for next year.

Memories of Grandma Heiller ~ November 23, 1983

David Heiller

Our favorite photo of Grandma Heiller. 
Thank you Jeanne Roster!

THINK OF Α SONG FOR this season, an old favorite, not something that you might hear on a popular radio station. It’s too early for Christmas carols, and there’s no national holiday to sing about. But there is one song that fits Thanksgiving time, and it’s been on my mind this Sunday, November 20, 1983.

“Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go. The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifting snow. Over the river and through the woods, oh how the wind doth blow. It bites the nose and chills the toes, as over the ground we go.”

I’m thinking of that song today because I’m thinking of my grandmother, Edna Heiller. She shared many Thanksgivings with her eight children, with her 29 grandchildren, and even these last few years with her 17 great grandchildren. Sometimes she would be the hostess, and we’d all converge on her house, everyone bringing something special—cranberries, hot dish, vegetables, pies (pumpkin and apple). There would be coffee and beer, which the men would drink alternately through the afternoon and long evening. Tables would be zigzagged everywhere, covered with linen taken out for this once-a-year time. Kids would sit in the kitchen, teenagers would sit at their own tables, and the aunts and uncles and young adults would sit at the longest table, along with Grandma.

Grandma didn’t dominate the gathering. She didn’t bustle back and forth, entertaining, cooking, talking all at the same time. That’s something you might see on TV, but not many grandmas are really like that. Grandma was more of a presence. She was there, overseeing things without saying much. Asking if the potatoes were done and all the lumps mashed out. Wondering why Donny was late coming from the farm, but not worrying, having lived on a farm herself most of her life. Telling about some old time when there was a foot of snow on the ground many Thanksgivings ago. Watching the kids, and the grandkids and the great-grandkids, and trying to keep them all straight.

Mostly though, people would come to her at Thanksgiving, especially these later years. They would sit by her because they could talk to her, and she would listen. She seldom judged, and I never heard her condemn anyone, even when others in the family did. She was strong and content, and maybe that’s why people were drawn to her. Maybe that’s why I think she personified Thanksgiving.

Grandma was special to me, just like your grandmother or grandfather is or was probably special to you. I used to ask her questions, lots of questions, often the same ones, when I’d come home from college or work to visit. She was not a great story teller, but maybe that made her more believable. She would not say, “Did I ever tell you about the winter of 1933...?” Instead, I would have to ask her about these things. Then she would tell me. Like the time a rattlesnake bit their neighbor in the arm so they filled him with whiskey while they watched his arm swell up and take on a color just like a diamondback rattler, and the man lived, and the whiskey saved him, and every year his arm swelled up the same time, looked just like a rattler, Or the time at a county fair in the 1930s, during the depression, when a man came by selling ice cream for 10 cents, and they didn’t have 10 cents for the ice cream, not even 10 cents, and grandpa wanted to buy that ice cream so badly.

The only time I ever heard Grandma complain was about eight years ago, when I asked about living alone all these years, since 1953 when grandpa died. She said she didn’t mind, that she wanted to live alone and raise a garden, and not be a burden to anyone. And she did just that, so it must have been true. But she said something else, something on another level. “A mother takes care of her family all her life; but the family can’t take care of the mother.” I’ve never forgotten that, and I don’t think I ever will.

I’m telling all this, and maybe boring you as I do, because you may have a grandparent that’s special to you. You don’t have to go tell her that in words maybe, but I hope you realize it, think about it, and show it. I have in the past, as much as I could, and today I’m thinking it wasn’t enough. Maybe it never is.

Grandma Heiller died this morning.

STRANDED!

David Heiller

Editor's note: This was originally published in Backpacker Magazine, and later included in a book called "The Whole Hiker's Handbook."

The cruelty is beyond comprehension.

10,485-foot Tuolumne Peak.

“The most crucial 150 feet of my life,” I thought as I stood shivering in the snow. For the past six hours of that fateful November 10, 1973 day, I had waded through drifts up steep switchbacks below the peak. Now, standing on a small bare patch of soil protected by a dozen large pines, I scanned the outline of the snow-choked trail as it rose steeply over a crest.

Beyond the crest was Yosemite Valley, 20 downhill miles to the south. For seven days I had back-packed over mountainous trails, many like this one, always managing to stay one step ahead of the deep snow. But now?

This was the most crucial distance. The final 50 yards. The chilling wind, my snow-soaked clothes and numbed hands were forgotten. With all my remaining strength, I began wading up the drifted trail. Twenty steps brought knee-deep snow; each successive step was worse. Leaning forward, hands pawing uselessly, I crawled through the snow as it drifted around my waist. But it was no use. I could go no farther.

The long day’s bout with snow and wind had taken its toll. Defeated, I waded back to the shelter of the pine grove. With hands that had no sensation, I clumsily tied my nylon pup tent between two trees, staked down the sides, threw my sleeping bag, food bag, mess kit, matches and note-books into the tent, and myself with them. My body was deeply chilled; I shook uncontrollably from head to foot as I slowly stripped off wet jeans and long-johns. My mind was numb. There were no thoughts of the magnitude of my predicament, or of home or death; only of the freezing cold and my savior—my down sleeping bag. But as I reached in the stuff sack, my heart sank: the bag was soaked! The night before, a steady drizzle had infiltrated my tent and seeped into the bottom of the bag. My spare clothes also were soaked. I hadn’t taken the time to dry anything. Now, lying cold and nude in the half-wet bag, with darkness falling and the wind beginning to howl from the mountaintops I started to cry. My fight to survive the snow and cold and find civilization in the Sierra Nevada had begun.

FROM SATURDAY NIGHT to Monday’s dawn, as a blizzard raged, I reflected on the past month. I had taken a fall vacation from my University of Minnesota studies to try backpacking and see some of the country. The week I’d spent in Yosemite National Park had been my first extensive backpacking. Now, beginning my second week, totally unprepared for snow and freezing temperature, I chided myself for being such a greenhorn.

By Monday morning three feet of fresh snow, blown by roaring winds, had piled up against the tent, pressing in upon me like an icy iron maiden. Initially I had tapped the inside of the tent to knock off the snow, but my fist soon met with a heavy thud. Now the tent was almost buried.

I put on my wet clothes again, crawled out into the tempest and waded a trench around the tent. The dim morning light made the scene eerie and unreal. The blue tent sagged like a squeezed marshmallow under the snow’s weight. The bare ground of two days before was covered with swirling, flowing mounds of silvery snow. And there was no sound, save for the wind as it sifted over snow and through pine boughs.

A few hours later on that morning of November 12, I began writing a diary in one of my notebooks. “The wind howls and blows snow over my tent as I write this. I can only hope and pray (I’ve done a lot of both in the last 48 hours) that the storm will soon blow itself out, and I can make it back to civilization on my own two feet, not on a stretcher or over a horse. With the help of God, I’ll do all within my power to get out of this hellhole. I don’t want to die.”

When the wind quieted down an hour later, I put on my wet clothes and stepped out into the white stillness. Common sense told me to stay where I was: to wait for rescue, build a fire, get warm. Common sense warned of the futility and danger of retracing the 30 miles I had come, especially in three feet of fresh snow. But fear overpowered common sense. I stuffed everything into my pack and started wading.

It was nearly my last living mistake. I was much weaker than on Saturday. During the last two days I’d eaten only a raw trout left over from Friday and a bowl of granola. My stomach muscles ached.

I went 50 yards before hitting a drift up to my waist. I tried pulling myself out, but the snow held me fast.

In the deathly silence a tiring but peaceful calm settled over me. “It would be so easy,” I thought, “just to lie here and sleep.”

Flashes of death crossed my mind, first with vivid scenes of my mother’s heartbroken sorrow; scenes of grief, tears, the funeral. Then with a face-to-f ace confrontation with death. I realized that the past 20 years were all in vain. Only the unknown lay ahead. It was the most frightening, awesome vision I have ever had, enough to give me the strength to roll out of the drift and wade back to my campsite among the pines. There I determinedly secured the tent to four trees and began another phase of my ordeal—waiting for rescue.

After the rescue.

I HAD NO REASON to be optimistic

I about search planes ever finding me. Because of my inexperience I had not checked in with Yosemite Park headquarters, had not obtained a wilderness permit and had not told any ranger about my trip. No one except my mother knew where I was.

Nevertheless, I hoped for rescue. “Let me say what I hope and pray happens, and what is really my only chance for rescue,” I wrote in my journal. “Mom gets worried after she doesn’t hear from me by Thanksgiving (two weeks away). She calls up park headquarters and asks whether they have any information. Perhaps they’ll have found the food and clothes that I left in storage locker 41, and she’ll verify that they’re mine, which will indicate that I’m still in Yosemite somewhere. Maybe they’ll check the past weather records and recall the big storm of November 10, and they’ll assume that I’m either dead or snowbound. Either way they’ll send out search parties, most likely by small plane, and scour the area. With a signal fire or an SOS in the snow, they should find me. So I’ve got to hang on for a long month.”

Underneath this, I added a post-script: “Of course, I doubt things will go exactly like that. The rangers might not discover the locker, in which case they won’t even be sure I’m in the park and might not search at all.”

I did my best during the next week to prepare for search planes. After a pair of denims and a shirt had dried on Tuesday, I broke off all the dry dead wood I could reach from the trees and put it in my backpack on a rise 20 yards away, along with some white gas fuel. Beside this I piled some large dead boughs wrapped in my tarp. If any search planes did come, I’d be ready with a quick signal fire. I also kept a small mirror handy to signal planes.

Monday and Tuesday were both sunny with a slight breeze. By Tuesday evening, after two days on a makeshift clothesline, all my clothes and, more importantly, the sleeping bag, had dried. And I made the crucially important discovery of a creek, about 75 yards away. I had crossed the foot-wide stream flowing off Tuolumne Peak on Saturday. On Tuesday I waded back through thigh-deep drifts to look for it. There was hardly a trace in the deep smooth snow, merely a single hole about three feet across, but I could hear the beautiful sound of gurgling water. After three days of eating snow, the sweet, icy liquid couldn^’t have tasted better. From then on I had a full canteen.

Knowing any rescue would probably be at least a month away, I began rationing my two-week food supply. The inventory, as I recorded it in my journal, consisted of: one-half bag (pint size) brown sugar, one-half bag Malt-O’Meal, one-half bag instant rice, one-half bag instant potatoes, one-third bag granola, 12 servings pancake mix, one serving instant eggs, one quart instant milk, two instant breakfasts, three one-cup cocoa mixes, three packets Lipton Instant Soup, four packets Lipton Cup-a-Soup, three packets chili seasoning mix, one-half packet Spanish rice seasoning mix, three ounces cooking oil, one packet freeze-dried chicken and rice, one-half Gerry tube of peanut butter and jelly and seven tea bags.

I began limiting myself to one two-course meal daily. For the main course, I had half a bowl of mixed granola, rice, instant cereal, instant potatoes pancake batter, cooking oil and dried soup mixed with water. Along with this paste I ate “snow salad”—brown sugar and snow. I was constantly, ravenously, hungry, but the prospect of running out of food before getting rescued reinforced my will power.

The worst hardship I encountered the first week, though, was loneliness. I reread Thoreau’s Walden, then finished Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn in two days. Walden’s reverence for nature and simplicity seemed to befit my predicament. I wrote daily accounts of my thoughts and plight in my journal; I played my harmonica; I sang Christmas carols. But most of all, I reflected on my past. I began to realize the value of life and how much I had taken for granted. A Wednesday, November 15, entry in my journal reads: “All I really want is to get back home, back to school, to see my friends and loved ones again, to live out my life. If I could only see everyone again; I’d be more aware and loving, more appreciative.”

For the first time ever, I began believing in Christ. Maybe it was only “pocket Providence,” pulled out under the stress of silence and thoughts of death. But at the time it was sincere. It grew into a faith that kept me going when I thought I lacked the physical strength to continue.

As my mind cleared during the week, my hopes for rescue grew dimmer. By Thursday evening I was in a mental dilemma. I wouldn’t admit that my chance of rescue was almost nonexistent, for I needed that hope to keep my spirits up. It had spurred me through the first four days, sustaining my will to live. But on Thursday evening it received a deathblow. As I lay looking at a park brochure and map, I read, “This is Yosemite National Park, a 1189-square-mile scenic wonderland of sculptured peaks and domes...” With that much territory to cover and not knowing where to begin looking, the National Park Service would never find me, even with a signal fire.

I PINPOINTED MY location on the I sketchy map, just north of Tuolumne Peak, and then it occurred to me that I might be able to walk out on my own. To the east and stretching north–south was a large valley with a creek. Even though the creek flowed north into the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River, I figured it had to cut a natural pass through the mountains to the south and might even intercept May Lake and Tioga Road, which were seven miles due south of Tuolumne Peak and my campsite.

I had seen the valley every day, a wide one with a dense pine forest and small mountains sprinkled throughout. No longer content with waiting, and with the snow more compact, I planned my escape for the first weather-permitting day.

Friday and Saturday brought an-other storm, though nothing like the blizzard a week earlier. Sunday held hurricane-like winds. When Monday dawned clear, windless and warm, I packed my gear and started toward the valley. I was exchanging security for the unknown. Although frightened, I felt strength and pride for assuming the burden of my rescue. It was no longer up to my family or the rangers; it was up to me and the Grace of God to make it back alive.

During the week from Monday, November 19, to Sunday, November 25, I hiked south, using a compass and common sense as guides. My hypothesis that the valley creek world cut a natural pass through the mountains to the south proved to be correct. Except for two days when I rested, I followed the creek south, passing through dense conifer forest. The hiking was slow and treacherous. Not only did my progressing weakness force me to take four or five breaths with each step, but I had to avoid streams, rocks and trees obscured beneath the snow. At first the streams were nearly impossible to spot ahead of time; I’d suddenly sink up to my crotch and feel my boots fill with icy water. After this had happened twice, I began to recognize warning signs—a barely perceptible crease in the snow, a soft swish of flowing water. I also improved at detecting boulders and young pines by the slight mounds they made in the snow. Sometimes, however, they were unavoidable. I’d step gingerly on a half-inch mound only to go crashing down on a buried tree that had formed an air pocket under the snow.

I learned a few other important tactics by experience, such as erecting my tent in a position for the morning sun to warm it quickly and thaw out, my boots early enough for me to get in a full day’s hiking. I learned to wear wool socks on both hands and feet while hiking; only wool kept them warm, even when wet, and saved them from frostbite. I learned to wrap my two-quart aluminum canteen in spare clothes at night, preventing it from becoming a two-quart ice cube by morning. And I learned how to withstand intense pain. Both heels developed blisters the size of a quarter from the unnatural motion of walking in deep snow. At night when I was drying and thawing my cold, clammy feet, my heels would ache for 15 minutes, badly enough to bring tears. It became a ritual to sing Christmas carols or play my harmonica at this time to take my mind off the stabbing pain.

I HAD MY SHARE of frightening and frustrating experiences. On the first day, just 150 yards below my campsite, I came to a sheer 15-foot drop-off. The only way off the ridge was down the smooth, almost 90-degree face of a huge boulder. I sat down and gingerly pushed myself feet-first toward the snow below. Not reckoning the influence my pack would have, I belly-flopped, miring myself up to the waist. My glasses were gone, but no bones were broken. I quickly scanned the snow, sighing in relief when I spotted my wire-rimmed glasses lying a few feet away. With my 20-200 vision, lost glasses would have been disastrous.

Weighed down by the pack, I discovered I could not walk through the deep snow at the foot of the slope. So I slipped off the pack, unrolled my Ensolite sleeping pad, cut four holes in it and lashed my pack onto it. The makeshift sled pulled with ease, enabling me to wade through a half-mile of snow before the drifts lessened and I could resume hiking normally.

The most frustrating experience occurred late Friday afternoon. After spending all day hiking up a steep incline paralleling the creek, I was able to look to the south and east, in the direction of Yosemite Valley. The sight was discouraging—a solid wave of Sierra mountain range lay across the horizon as far as I could see. As I stood on the ridge, weary and depressed, a low droning sound gradually drifted nearer. I looked up eagerly and spotted a speck in the distance. A small plane was heading directly for me, flying low. I pulled out my mirror and frantically tried to flash to the plane in the dimming light. I waved my arms and yelled, “Hey I’m here, I’m here! Stop, please stop!” But the plane kept going.

By Sunday the creek had dwindled to almost nothing, an important sign that I was nearing the summit of the gradual rise I’d been climbing for three days. After one last knoll, I found myself on an expansive, open ridge which offered a good view to both the southeast and southwest. Jagged peaks were everywhere. To the southwest, however, a pine forest sliced between the mountains. If there was any way through the mountains to Tioga Road and May Lake, it was via that forest. But three days of steady drift-wading on my starvation diet had drained me physically. I pitched camp and rested the remainder of Sunday and all day Monday, trying to decide what to do.

“NOW IS THE BIG debate, and my life hinges on my decision,” I wrote in the journal. “Do I push south and hope I hit Tioga Road and not another mountain range; or do I pitch camp here, where it is open, and pray I’m rescued before I starve? I’m tempted to push on, but I’m getting weaker. I might last for two weeks if I stay put, keep warm and eat a bare essential every day. If I push on into the valley, I might become even more lost and exhausted, and they’d never spot me in that forest. I don’t know what’s beyond it. Maybe May Lake and Tioga Road. Maybe not.”

Tuesday, acting on the impulse of clear, snow-melting weather; I decided to push on. It was the toughest hiking I’d encountered in eight days. Dense pines dropped clumps of melting snow on me; dead logs, boulders and my arch-enemies, hidden streams, were constant obstacles. Yet despite them, I was in good spirits. I repeated the Lord’s Prayer, saying one word with each step. I’d had uncanny good fortune, both physically and with the weather. There had been no severe storms for 17 days, and now the temperature was above freezing. But I hardly expected the beautiful sight I beheld in a clearing that afternoon. Jutting from the snow were two rusty punch-letter trail signs. I knelt in silent thanks as I read, “May Lake—3.7 miles, Yosemite Valley—14.5 miles.” It seemed as if God had heard my prayers, and answered them.

I followed trail markers blazed on trees for two hours, then set up camp as dusk approached. It was the happiest night in 17 days. Before I had been only hopeful; now I began to gain a wary confidence. I had enough food for 10 more days; still, the 13 miles to Yosemite Valley would take a long time to walk with the progress I had been making. Yet I knew that once I found May Lake I would find Snow Creek, which would eventually take me to Yosemite Valley. “If this good weather holds out, I’ll be in the valley in three to four days,” I wrote in my journal Wednesday morning. “Thank God. I kept faith when there didn’t seem to be much hope. I’ve got a lot of promises to keep to the Lord now, and I plan on doing it.”

Some of my promises were concise, like not smoking, lying or eating meat. Others were closer to convictions than promises. I vowed never to take anyone or anything for granted again. During the previous two weeks I had thought much about people I knew and loved, almost to the point of being unrealistic, as we do when dear friends have died. We tend to over-praise their good traits, forget the bad and wish to God we had another chance to meet again, just to say, “I love you.” It seemed I would be getting that second chance.

Although I lost the trail 10 minutes after I started out Wednesday morning, I wasn’t worried or upset. The descending valley had to pass May Lake, and I’d be sure to see it. Skirting the forest’s edge, I happily discovered a hard crust on the snow along the perimeter of the valley. I stayed on it most of the day, making what I thought was good time and expecting to see May Lake around every corner. I even made up a song entitled “Just Around the Corner,” which I sang while I walked and marveled at the pristine, snow-covered valley and mountains.

But as the sun dipped behind the mountains, I still hadn’t come to May Lake. I was positive I couldn’t have missed it; it had to lie close ahead. I pitched camp, confident that I would find it early the next day.

Ominous gray clouds were filling the sky when I packed up and started hiking Thursday morning. A storm was heading my way. Half an hour later, my song came true. As I rounded one last corner, the most beautiful and anticipated object of 10 days of sweat, tumbles, blisters and tears—May Lake—stretched away to the south, a quarter-mile of ice and open water. From my high vantage point, I could see several drainage streams merging at the end of the lake into a wide pine forest that converged on Snow Creek. The creek wound southward to Yosemite Valley. There lay my final haul. Ten more miles.

Feeling more drained than usual, with stops every 10 steps, I found Snow Creek and alongside it a wide alpine meadow. Slowly, methodically, I trudged through the meadow’s knee-deep snow, eyes downcast. Gray clouds were moving swiftly toward me from the south. “They’re hurrying to make life a little harder,” I thought. “Ten miles, another blizzard and a week of food. Who’s going to win?”

A movement ahead snapped me out of my reflections. For one or two seconds, nothing registered. Then, for the first time in 26 days, I recognized a human being, gliding along a hundred yards ahead.

I didn’t scream crazily at the cross-country skier. I yelled loudly yet calmly, and at my same pace slowly made it to where the man stood watching me. A “Speed Limit, 40” sign just to his left told me I had finally found the closed Tioga Road.

“I’ve been stuck in the mountains for three weeks,” I said. “I need some help.”

“You’ve been out there, like that,” he asked, scrutinizing my snow-shoeless feet and sock-covered hands, “for three weeks?” He couldn’t believe his eyes. Nor could I. In an instant all had changed, and I was in touch with humanity and civilization again. Chuck Cochran handed me a fresh orange, and I realized my ordeal was ending.

A summer Search and Rescue employee of Yosemite, Chuck was skiing to Tuolumne Meadows to visit two young ranger friends. With the aid of Tom and Carolyn, two more friends who were skiing an hour behind him, we made it to a bathroom at the east end of Tanaya Lake by mid-afternoon. While Chuck and Tom went on to the ranger station to radio park headquarters in Yosemite Valley, Carolyn heated freeze-dried food and hot jello for me on their white-gas stove. Later that afternoon Tom and one ranger returned and checked my hands and feet for frostbite, thinking I might be an emergency case.

The ranger whistled when he saw the blisters on my heels. I couldn’t feel anything in my feet, but the blisters, black and the size of half-dollars, were ugly enough to make me wince. Yet no sign of frostbite showed on my toes, and there was only a touch of black on the tips of four fingers.

The next morning a helicopter flew in to pick me up, and I waved goodbye to my rescuers. Ten minutes later I stepped onto a grassy field in Yosemite Valley. What a contrast! Twenty days of deep snow, then 10 minutes later, bare ground all around!

A gruff, gray-haired ranger drove me to Lewis Memorial Hospital. Looking angry, he said nothing until we arrived there. Then, as nurses started fussing over my blisters and skinny body, he told me what I already knew, that I was a very lucky young man.

“Every spring we haul three or four people just like you out of the mountains.” He didn’t have to go much further. He could see I’d learned the lesson the hard way.

My body temperature had dropped two degrees; and at 145 pounds, my six-foot frame was 40 pounds lighter than a month before. Amazingly, there were no lasting injuries. I was all right except for the painful blisters.

Nearly everybody—nurses, family, reporters—marveled at my story and my strength. But I take credit for only part of the survival: keeping a clear, level head that enabled me to make the right decisions. For the rest, I credit some other Force, one which some call Fortune and others call God.