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."

Only fifty yards to go; I was almost there.

I blinked as the wind swirled down the trail, powdering everything with snow. Looming above me was 10,485-foot Tuolumne Peak. It appeared ghostly; gray-white against white. So close. So deceptively close.

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.

Memories of Lorely ~ November 5, 1998

David Heiller

The phone rang at 4:45 a.m. I picked it up and answered before I was really awake. If I had been awake, I would have known to be prepared. But I wasn’t prepared for the news. No one ever is.

My grandma, my mom,
my great-grandma and me.

All my sleepiness disappeared in an instant as Cindy’s voice washed over me. Her mother had died. She was gone, David, gone. I held her in my arms and she died.

We talked for a short time. I can’t remember what we said. We didn’t need to say much. We just needed to be connected, even if it was through a telephone wire.

Her brother was there. The minister was coming. They had to tell Nancy, Cindy’s sister. I told Cindy how sorry I was. That didn’t seem like the right thing to say. It didn’t seem like enough.

After I hung up the phone, I lay in the dark for a few minutes. I didn’t want to move. I knew if I moved the calm would break and the storm would hit.

And it did when I sat up and the minutes passed and the reality settled on me like the world on Atlas that my mother-in-law, Lorely Olson, had died.

Sobs wracked me. I said I was sorry to Lorely. I said it in the dark, and maybe she heard me on her upward flight.

Lorely and I didn’t agree on a lot of things. We didn’t have much in common. Little things she did would bug me. There were bigger issues that irked me even more.

She had been sick for three years, and I knew I sometimes withheld my love for her, and now the shame of that hit me good and hard.

Randy and Mom, 
she loved to laugh, and he got her going!

But sitting on the edge of the bed, I felt her forgiveness. That fit her character perfectly. She had a lot of forgiveness in her. Right then and there it gave me hope that maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe I could learn some lessons from her.

One came crystal clear right then and there: how much I loved my wife, and needed her.

The next 90 minutes passed more slowly than any I can recall. I didn’t want to call anyone, wake them up, inconvenience them. Why make someone else miserable?

That wouldn’t have happened, of course. In fact, just the opposite is the case.

My mother was a wonderful grandma.

But I knew I would have to tell the kids, and I dreaded it. They both get wake up calls at 6:30, and I let them sleep till then, partly because I didn’t want them to have any more minutes of sorrow than necessary, but mainly because I didn’t know how to tell them.

They loved Lorely the way only a grandma can be loved and she loved them back, big time. They gave her so much joy, from the time they were little, through walks at Banning Park, in hand-made Valentines, with Christmas grins as they opened her piles of gifts.

They knew she was dying, just like I did, and I knew their pain would be as shocking and deep as mine. Probably more.

Noah was first. I told him and he took the news the way I took the news of my sister’s death when I was his age, 15, back in 1969: calmly, quietly, head down, alone in a precise sorrow, and I thought, I’m a lot like you.

With Mollie the tears sprang out in an instant, and I knew that would happen too, because that’s who she is, and that’s a part of me too.

The important thing was that we were together. We needed that.

We ate breakfast. Mollie called Cindy and cried some more. Noah didn’t want to talk to her. Then they got on the school bus and I went to work.

I don’t know all the stages of grief. I don’t like to analyze things like that. But they are probably all layered inside of me right now, and still forming like a crust of cooling earth.

Malika and Grandma

Thankfulness to finally hold Cindy. Joy at seeing her sister and brother and his family. Gratitude for all the calls and words and hugs of support. Amazement too, at the strength these things carried.

My sorrow is changing shape. The sobs and moans are gone. So is the sharp guilt of how I let her down. Now it’s just a hollow, almost disbelieving feeling that she is really, truly gone.

I cleaned out the car on Sunday night. It was filled with boxes of treasures. Our wedding picture, with Lorely proudly smiling in the back row. She always seemed to be smiling in pictures. I never noticed that before.

A picture of Noah and Mollie hugging, back when they were little and liked each other. I loved that picture. Lorely had too.

A photo of Mollie holding a huge potato, of Noah standing in a hollow tree trunk. They had hung on Lorely’s walls for 11 years.

A picture of Mollie twirling in a white dress that Lorely had made. Pictures we had given her, that made us happy and made her happy.

I picked up candy wrappers that Lorely had left in the car. It was one of those little things about her that bugged me. Now my impatience seemed silly. I’d give her that habit, and all the others, to have her back again.

But she can’t come back, and everyone said that it’s good how it happened. Even Lorely’s doctor told Cindy that. The cancer was real bad. He didn’t think it would happen so fast. But it was the best thing possible, he said, and so did many other people.

And she died in Cindy’s arms. I can think of worse ways to go.

I had a date on Friday night ~ November 18, 1993

David Heiller

David and Malika

I had a date on Friday night.

It wasn’t with my wife.

It was another woman

Important in my life.

We didn’t try to sneak and hide

We’re honest, her and me.

I took her to the movies

For all the world to see.

I didn’t try to hide her

I don’t think that was wrong

I don’t think we were cheatin’

Like in some country song.

I wore the fancy dress shirt

That she gave to me last year.

She wanted me to wear it,

And I did it just for her.

“Free Willy” was the movie.

We drove some 30 miles.

The folks there looked us over

And tried to hide their smiles.

I bought her pop and licorice,

A box of popcorn, too.

We ate them in the darkness

Like couples often do.

And when the movie started

She curled up next to me.

I put my arm around her

Not caring who would see.

Some kids who sat behind us

Were talking lots, and loud.

I told them to be quiet

Three times, which made me proud.

I figured that my girlfriend

Would think me quite the man.

You see, I tried to win her heart.

I guess that was the plan.

And when the movie ended

We sat till all had gone,

Singing to the music.

We both enjoyed the song.

Then we left the theater.

The rain had turned to ice.

I held her hand to steady her.

Her dainty hand felt nice.

I opened the car door for her.

She smiled and glided in,

Straightened out her skirt just so,

And gave me a big grin.

“It wasn’t a bad date,” she said.

“But we didn’t kiss and stuff.”

“No,” I tried to hide my smile,

But she could see my bluff.

We shared a bag of candy

And headed for my place

And in the darkness of the car

She looked into my face

And told me that she loved me.

I said I loved her too.

Then we rode in silence

Like couples often do.

When we got home she crawled in bed

I kissed her a good night,

Said “See you in the morning,

Don’t let the bed bugs bite,”

Then went into my bedroom.

There waiting was my wife.

She’s an understanding woman.

The true love in my life.

Just like my little daughter

Who spends her life with me,

My special date last Friday night

For all the world to see.

‘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.