TarHeelMom
Cathlete
Hi folks -
I am on a dial-up connection that keeps dropping so I hope I can stay online long enough to type and send this. I want to tell you all about a terrifying experience my husband and I just lived through (DebbieH referred to this in her post 'KathyS and all"). Notice the title of this post -- everything is okay now, don't worry. But it's been very, very hard and honestly, like being dropped headfirst into a Lifetime Original Movie.
Our 17-year-old son Alex, who you guys have heard me rant and rave about, is in Oregon trekking the Pacific Crest Trail for three weeks, on a teen leadership and wilderness skills trip organized through the North Carolina camp where he was a summer camper for years (and where our younger son Evan, 14, is now at camp.) We got a call at 10:30 on Thursday night from the camp director informing us that Alex had been missing from his expedition group since 9:30 a.m. Pacific time. He had last been seen leaving the campsite for a quick latrine break before the group broke camp in the morning. The latrine had been established near a scenic lookout -- a precipice -- and at the time that we were contacted, the search and rescue teams still had not been able to verify that Alex hadn't had a catastrophic fall (and I'm speaking in euphemisms here because I can't even write the words to tell you what you all know could have been the outcome).
Alex's expedition group had missed him quickly and had searched for a while for him, of course unsuccessfully. They had then sent a team out to the nearest ranger station for help, but this was an eight-mile hike. So by the time the Forest Service had been able to mobilize search and rescue with the Sheriff's office, get the searchers into the site, contact the camp in NC and have the camp call us, hours had passed.
I don't need to tell any of you who have children how we felt. I think I have died a thousand tiny emotional deaths in the past three days. The long and short of it is that Alex was missing for 32 hours but was found and is healthy and fine.
In that 32 hours Ken and I spent a long night at the airport trying to get onto a flight, flew to Portland (the longest 5 hours of my life -- but helped by the fact that the pilot radioed Oregon for an update -- no news but the search had been intensified -- and the flight attendants had a group prayer for Alex), then we drove 90 minutes to the Linn County Sheriff's office where the search and rescue operation was headquartered. This was a first-rate, seamless, crack operation, and words can't even express how compassionate and wonderful the whole S&R team was to us. We met with the Sheriff for a briefing and a wonderful deputy sheriff was immediately assigned, basically, as our chaplain: to reassure us constantly and take care of us. By the time we arrived in Linn County there were three groups on foot searching for Alex, one group on horseback and a Blackhawk helicopter dispatched by the Civil Air Patrol. The "war room" honestly looked like something out of a movie. It was, if anything, the most terrifying moment so far, to see that room and have the reality of this just bludgeon us over the head. Everyone kept telling us that they had a 100% success record finding teen hikers AND finding them alive. This was some comfort, but it didn't help the part of me that was picturing my son hurt, or worse, or terrified, and the part of me that knew he'd spent a night in the chilly Oregon wilderness alone and lost. We were also told that it could take several days to find him. That was an inconceivable idea to us, that we could exist in that kind of fear and pain and uncertainty for much longer.
Thank the good Lord we didn't have to. After a while the deputy sheriff had taken us (at the sheriff's insistence) to get something to drink and eat (we were protesting but I know we looked like POWs at that point), and we had aimlessly driven around for a bit while she showed us the motels availlable and made soothing small talk. I kept breaking into tears and what I can only describe as these spasms of aching that would double me over. We were sitting in her car outside this restaurant while I tried to compose myself enough to go inside and sip on some tea. The sheriff called Ken's cell phone and said "Ken, tell Kathy to take a deep breath and you go and have a good lunch. We've got him and he's fine."
I thought by that time that I had cried every ounce of moisture out of my body already, but when I heard those words I cried like I've never wept in my life. It felt like waves of thankfulness coming up from my feet. Kenny was crying and the deputy was crying and we were all hugging and saying prayers of thanks.
It was another couple of hours before we saw Alex, because the rangers first took him to their station for a checkup and to see his expedition group. I wasn't there, but we're told that it was an incredibly moving scene -- teenagers hugging and crying and laughing all at the same time. When they finally brought him back to the sheriff's office, believe me, there was a similar scene -- of course Ken and I were weeping and hugging him, and there were cheers and hugs and huge grins from the whole team of wonderful people from the search and rescue operation.
And how was he, you might ask? Astoundingly fine and calm. Sunburned, hungry, a little scraped up and covered in bug bites, but otherwise just a little taken aback by all the hullaballoo and vaguely embarrassed, I think, by it all. He was startled to see Kenny and me and the two incredible administrators that his NC camp had sent out with us (I forgot to mention that, and it's important -- this camp stepped up to the plate for us in EVERY way, just stupendously and professionally, beginning with dispatching these two terrific folks to accompany us on the plane and make car rental arrangements, etc.) Alex was glad to be out of the woods, ready for a meal and a shower, but ready for all the commotion to stop and to get right back onto the expedition.
Remarkably, Alex says that he never allowed himself to panic. He got lost so quickly and so easily that it's quite amazing and caused the camp leaders to implement immediately some new "buddy" latrine rules -- because, basically, here's what happened: he went to the latrine and tried to hurry back, knowing that camp was packing up to move on. Let's say he should have run at a 90-degree angle from the latrine -- well, he ran at an 80-degree angle, and in minutes he was so far off track and deeply into the woods that he didn't hear his campmates yelling for him or blowing their whistles -- and they didn't hear him. This all happened in the space of a very few minutes, maybe 10. That is all it took.
I must say, I would not have handled myself as calmly as my teenager did. His calm and sensible reaction to being lost is awesome to me. Once he realized he was lost, Alex spent the first day climbing up and down to various lookout points in an attempt to reorient himself. He said that when he felt hungry and felt "his energy was getting low" (I translate that as: the beginnings of despair or panic) he would just lay down and take a quick nap, and when he awakened he'd feel "like he'd had a meal" (I read that as: recharged and refreshed). Amazing coping mechanism, huh? He reminded himself that as long as he was careful not to get injured, he could be fine for many days without food as long as he drank water. So he drank plenty of water from one of the many clear streams (the Sheriff had told us that this water is very pure, and Alex's expedition had, in fact, been filling canteens from these streams). He was even careful to drink, as he said, "like a deer" -- face first -- so that he didn't use his dirty hands. When it began to get dark he scouted out a place to sleep in the shelter of a pile of rocks, out of the breeze. He used some evergreen branches to block the breeze even more and says that he made himself lie down and sleep until daybreak. We were all very lucky weather-wise: there had been two weeks of unseasonably warm, dry weather which broke the day he was found. The night he spent in the woods it was dry, cloudless, and the temp only dropped to 58 degrees. (The following night it was much, much cooler and damper.) There was also a huge full moon, so he says it wasn't "too" dark. At daybreak he got up and started to search for signs of a route out of the woods "to civilization", as he says, having decided that he wasn't having any success at finding his way back to camp. He figured that the search operation was probably just starting and that he had to plan on maybe a few -- or MANY days -- before he was found. He thought about Tom Hanks in "Castaway" (I am not making up one word of this!) and how Tom made a fire by rubbing two sticks together. He says he figured he could eventually figure out how to do that and -- and I swear -- if necessary catch and roast a chipmunk. (Thank goodness for Chip and Dale it didn't come to that. ;-)) About midday he found a road that he decided was an old logging trail, because there were downed timbers and branches and rusty logging company signage. He wasn't sure that it would lead anywhere, but he figured it would be seen from a helicopter. So he dragged the biggest branches he could carry into the road to spell out the word "HELP" so that it could be seen from the air. Then he carried rocks into the road and made a huge arrow pointing down the road, and then dropped his bandana on the HELP sign so that if his sign was found the searchers would know it was he who'd made it. He then gathered some branches to shelter himself for the night for later, and he lit out walking on the road in the direction the arrow pointed. He said he thought he would explore where the road went for a while and then, if necessary, double back before dark and bed down beside his HELP sign. After a few miles he literally walked head-on into a search and rescue vehicle. The ranger driving it said he stuck his head out the window and said "Are you Alex?" and Al said "Yes, I am, and I'm VERY glad to see YOU!" Unbeknownst to Alex, he had discovered the road back to the trailhead. He estimates that he covered 10 to 15 miles on foot during his lost time.
We took him to get a massive amount of fast food, a hot shower and clean clothes, and then we spent the rest of the day de-briefing -- many talks among Alex and the adults, among the teens, among the adults, etc. The camp leaders spent a long time evaluating how the kids were feeling about continuing with their trip, and having Alex along (they wanted to go on, but they didn't want to go without him), and how we and Alex felt about it. This was a non-issue to him: he was going back on the trail, and how could we even suggest otherwise?? Ultimately we decided to let him go -- very emotionally tough for us since all we wanted to do was chain him to our ankles.
But we let him go. I believe it was the right thing to do, for all of us, although I confess I was pretty miserable off and on for a few hours thinking about going home without my boy. Alex and his best friend who is with him on the expedition (whose mom has told us her son was VERY distraught) spent the night with us in our motel room, and I alternated between deep exhausted sleep and waking up to tiptoe over and just touch his scruffy face while he slept. Oh, did that feel great!
Ken and I said goodbye to the teen group on Saturday afternoon, and then we drove an hour south to spend the rest of the day with one of Ken's college roommates (of course we'd been in touch with them right away and they'd been following this anxiously.) This couple made such a fuss over us -- a beautiful meal, wonderful wine, and a long wonderful hike in the woods that restored our love for the beauty of Oregon. It was so healing and so loving of them. We felt like ourselves again. That night we drove a few hours back to Portland, stayed in an airport hotel and flew home yesterday, getting in around 9 last night. Our Mountain Man will be flying home on the 16th.
There are bright spots in everything, I personally believe, and in this case we learned that our son is truly, truly remarkably resilient and courageous. We encountered kind, caring, supportive, amazingly professional and effective people from our son's camp, from the search and rescue teams from the U.S. Forest Service, from the Sheriff's offices of three Oregon counties, from the Civil Air Patrol, and from Delta Airlines. Even the security person at the airport, who asked us what was wrong as we staggered through her X-ray machine at 3 a.m. on Thursday night, and on hearing me say "My son is lost in the Cascade Mountains" just wrapped me up in a bear hug and told me God would wrap my son in a bubble of His love and take care of him. And the young man at the Hertz counter in Portland, who frantically tried to expedite our paperwork (and get us a huge discount because that's all he could think of to do for us). And Ken's roommate and his wife in Oregon, who I'd never met but who folded us up into the loveliest day of hugs and laughs and friendship. Our dear friends here at home, who were at our house in under five minutes Thursday night after we got the call, who held us up, reassured us, offered to go to Oregon with us, packed our bag, made our travel arrangements, drove us to the airport and took care of our little dog. And certainly our son's expedition group, who clearly cared deeply for him, fought off their own panic and searched for him for hours, waited up all night for word of his safety and then welcomed him back with all their hearts.
So, Educated Crowd, that's where I've been, physically and mentally and emotionally, and I've never been so glad to be hanging out in front of my computer with NOTHING more urgent to do! Yours truly hasn't worked out in a few days ;-) but it's too fabulous just to do the most routine things like make up the bed and linger over coffee. We are off to see a movie and then when we get back I think I'll do IMAX 2 or Rhythmic Step -- something that makes me grin while I sweat.
Hug your kids, everybody, and Happy Fourth of Juy a little late!
http://www.click-smilies.de/sammlung0903/sport/sport-smiley-003.gif Kathy S. http://www.click-smilies.de/sammlung0903/spezial/spudniks/spudniklifter.gif
I am on a dial-up connection that keeps dropping so I hope I can stay online long enough to type and send this. I want to tell you all about a terrifying experience my husband and I just lived through (DebbieH referred to this in her post 'KathyS and all"). Notice the title of this post -- everything is okay now, don't worry. But it's been very, very hard and honestly, like being dropped headfirst into a Lifetime Original Movie.
Our 17-year-old son Alex, who you guys have heard me rant and rave about, is in Oregon trekking the Pacific Crest Trail for three weeks, on a teen leadership and wilderness skills trip organized through the North Carolina camp where he was a summer camper for years (and where our younger son Evan, 14, is now at camp.) We got a call at 10:30 on Thursday night from the camp director informing us that Alex had been missing from his expedition group since 9:30 a.m. Pacific time. He had last been seen leaving the campsite for a quick latrine break before the group broke camp in the morning. The latrine had been established near a scenic lookout -- a precipice -- and at the time that we were contacted, the search and rescue teams still had not been able to verify that Alex hadn't had a catastrophic fall (and I'm speaking in euphemisms here because I can't even write the words to tell you what you all know could have been the outcome).
Alex's expedition group had missed him quickly and had searched for a while for him, of course unsuccessfully. They had then sent a team out to the nearest ranger station for help, but this was an eight-mile hike. So by the time the Forest Service had been able to mobilize search and rescue with the Sheriff's office, get the searchers into the site, contact the camp in NC and have the camp call us, hours had passed.
I don't need to tell any of you who have children how we felt. I think I have died a thousand tiny emotional deaths in the past three days. The long and short of it is that Alex was missing for 32 hours but was found and is healthy and fine.
In that 32 hours Ken and I spent a long night at the airport trying to get onto a flight, flew to Portland (the longest 5 hours of my life -- but helped by the fact that the pilot radioed Oregon for an update -- no news but the search had been intensified -- and the flight attendants had a group prayer for Alex), then we drove 90 minutes to the Linn County Sheriff's office where the search and rescue operation was headquartered. This was a first-rate, seamless, crack operation, and words can't even express how compassionate and wonderful the whole S&R team was to us. We met with the Sheriff for a briefing and a wonderful deputy sheriff was immediately assigned, basically, as our chaplain: to reassure us constantly and take care of us. By the time we arrived in Linn County there were three groups on foot searching for Alex, one group on horseback and a Blackhawk helicopter dispatched by the Civil Air Patrol. The "war room" honestly looked like something out of a movie. It was, if anything, the most terrifying moment so far, to see that room and have the reality of this just bludgeon us over the head. Everyone kept telling us that they had a 100% success record finding teen hikers AND finding them alive. This was some comfort, but it didn't help the part of me that was picturing my son hurt, or worse, or terrified, and the part of me that knew he'd spent a night in the chilly Oregon wilderness alone and lost. We were also told that it could take several days to find him. That was an inconceivable idea to us, that we could exist in that kind of fear and pain and uncertainty for much longer.
Thank the good Lord we didn't have to. After a while the deputy sheriff had taken us (at the sheriff's insistence) to get something to drink and eat (we were protesting but I know we looked like POWs at that point), and we had aimlessly driven around for a bit while she showed us the motels availlable and made soothing small talk. I kept breaking into tears and what I can only describe as these spasms of aching that would double me over. We were sitting in her car outside this restaurant while I tried to compose myself enough to go inside and sip on some tea. The sheriff called Ken's cell phone and said "Ken, tell Kathy to take a deep breath and you go and have a good lunch. We've got him and he's fine."
I thought by that time that I had cried every ounce of moisture out of my body already, but when I heard those words I cried like I've never wept in my life. It felt like waves of thankfulness coming up from my feet. Kenny was crying and the deputy was crying and we were all hugging and saying prayers of thanks.
It was another couple of hours before we saw Alex, because the rangers first took him to their station for a checkup and to see his expedition group. I wasn't there, but we're told that it was an incredibly moving scene -- teenagers hugging and crying and laughing all at the same time. When they finally brought him back to the sheriff's office, believe me, there was a similar scene -- of course Ken and I were weeping and hugging him, and there were cheers and hugs and huge grins from the whole team of wonderful people from the search and rescue operation.
And how was he, you might ask? Astoundingly fine and calm. Sunburned, hungry, a little scraped up and covered in bug bites, but otherwise just a little taken aback by all the hullaballoo and vaguely embarrassed, I think, by it all. He was startled to see Kenny and me and the two incredible administrators that his NC camp had sent out with us (I forgot to mention that, and it's important -- this camp stepped up to the plate for us in EVERY way, just stupendously and professionally, beginning with dispatching these two terrific folks to accompany us on the plane and make car rental arrangements, etc.) Alex was glad to be out of the woods, ready for a meal and a shower, but ready for all the commotion to stop and to get right back onto the expedition.
Remarkably, Alex says that he never allowed himself to panic. He got lost so quickly and so easily that it's quite amazing and caused the camp leaders to implement immediately some new "buddy" latrine rules -- because, basically, here's what happened: he went to the latrine and tried to hurry back, knowing that camp was packing up to move on. Let's say he should have run at a 90-degree angle from the latrine -- well, he ran at an 80-degree angle, and in minutes he was so far off track and deeply into the woods that he didn't hear his campmates yelling for him or blowing their whistles -- and they didn't hear him. This all happened in the space of a very few minutes, maybe 10. That is all it took.
I must say, I would not have handled myself as calmly as my teenager did. His calm and sensible reaction to being lost is awesome to me. Once he realized he was lost, Alex spent the first day climbing up and down to various lookout points in an attempt to reorient himself. He said that when he felt hungry and felt "his energy was getting low" (I translate that as: the beginnings of despair or panic) he would just lay down and take a quick nap, and when he awakened he'd feel "like he'd had a meal" (I read that as: recharged and refreshed). Amazing coping mechanism, huh? He reminded himself that as long as he was careful not to get injured, he could be fine for many days without food as long as he drank water. So he drank plenty of water from one of the many clear streams (the Sheriff had told us that this water is very pure, and Alex's expedition had, in fact, been filling canteens from these streams). He was even careful to drink, as he said, "like a deer" -- face first -- so that he didn't use his dirty hands. When it began to get dark he scouted out a place to sleep in the shelter of a pile of rocks, out of the breeze. He used some evergreen branches to block the breeze even more and says that he made himself lie down and sleep until daybreak. We were all very lucky weather-wise: there had been two weeks of unseasonably warm, dry weather which broke the day he was found. The night he spent in the woods it was dry, cloudless, and the temp only dropped to 58 degrees. (The following night it was much, much cooler and damper.) There was also a huge full moon, so he says it wasn't "too" dark. At daybreak he got up and started to search for signs of a route out of the woods "to civilization", as he says, having decided that he wasn't having any success at finding his way back to camp. He figured that the search operation was probably just starting and that he had to plan on maybe a few -- or MANY days -- before he was found. He thought about Tom Hanks in "Castaway" (I am not making up one word of this!) and how Tom made a fire by rubbing two sticks together. He says he figured he could eventually figure out how to do that and -- and I swear -- if necessary catch and roast a chipmunk. (Thank goodness for Chip and Dale it didn't come to that. ;-)) About midday he found a road that he decided was an old logging trail, because there were downed timbers and branches and rusty logging company signage. He wasn't sure that it would lead anywhere, but he figured it would be seen from a helicopter. So he dragged the biggest branches he could carry into the road to spell out the word "HELP" so that it could be seen from the air. Then he carried rocks into the road and made a huge arrow pointing down the road, and then dropped his bandana on the HELP sign so that if his sign was found the searchers would know it was he who'd made it. He then gathered some branches to shelter himself for the night for later, and he lit out walking on the road in the direction the arrow pointed. He said he thought he would explore where the road went for a while and then, if necessary, double back before dark and bed down beside his HELP sign. After a few miles he literally walked head-on into a search and rescue vehicle. The ranger driving it said he stuck his head out the window and said "Are you Alex?" and Al said "Yes, I am, and I'm VERY glad to see YOU!" Unbeknownst to Alex, he had discovered the road back to the trailhead. He estimates that he covered 10 to 15 miles on foot during his lost time.
We took him to get a massive amount of fast food, a hot shower and clean clothes, and then we spent the rest of the day de-briefing -- many talks among Alex and the adults, among the teens, among the adults, etc. The camp leaders spent a long time evaluating how the kids were feeling about continuing with their trip, and having Alex along (they wanted to go on, but they didn't want to go without him), and how we and Alex felt about it. This was a non-issue to him: he was going back on the trail, and how could we even suggest otherwise?? Ultimately we decided to let him go -- very emotionally tough for us since all we wanted to do was chain him to our ankles.
But we let him go. I believe it was the right thing to do, for all of us, although I confess I was pretty miserable off and on for a few hours thinking about going home without my boy. Alex and his best friend who is with him on the expedition (whose mom has told us her son was VERY distraught) spent the night with us in our motel room, and I alternated between deep exhausted sleep and waking up to tiptoe over and just touch his scruffy face while he slept. Oh, did that feel great!Ken and I said goodbye to the teen group on Saturday afternoon, and then we drove an hour south to spend the rest of the day with one of Ken's college roommates (of course we'd been in touch with them right away and they'd been following this anxiously.) This couple made such a fuss over us -- a beautiful meal, wonderful wine, and a long wonderful hike in the woods that restored our love for the beauty of Oregon. It was so healing and so loving of them. We felt like ourselves again. That night we drove a few hours back to Portland, stayed in an airport hotel and flew home yesterday, getting in around 9 last night. Our Mountain Man will be flying home on the 16th.
There are bright spots in everything, I personally believe, and in this case we learned that our son is truly, truly remarkably resilient and courageous. We encountered kind, caring, supportive, amazingly professional and effective people from our son's camp, from the search and rescue teams from the U.S. Forest Service, from the Sheriff's offices of three Oregon counties, from the Civil Air Patrol, and from Delta Airlines. Even the security person at the airport, who asked us what was wrong as we staggered through her X-ray machine at 3 a.m. on Thursday night, and on hearing me say "My son is lost in the Cascade Mountains" just wrapped me up in a bear hug and told me God would wrap my son in a bubble of His love and take care of him. And the young man at the Hertz counter in Portland, who frantically tried to expedite our paperwork (and get us a huge discount because that's all he could think of to do for us
). And Ken's roommate and his wife in Oregon, who I'd never met but who folded us up into the loveliest day of hugs and laughs and friendship. Our dear friends here at home, who were at our house in under five minutes Thursday night after we got the call, who held us up, reassured us, offered to go to Oregon with us, packed our bag, made our travel arrangements, drove us to the airport and took care of our little dog. And certainly our son's expedition group, who clearly cared deeply for him, fought off their own panic and searched for him for hours, waited up all night for word of his safety and then welcomed him back with all their hearts.So, Educated Crowd, that's where I've been, physically and mentally and emotionally, and I've never been so glad to be hanging out in front of my computer with NOTHING more urgent to do! Yours truly hasn't worked out in a few days ;-) but it's too fabulous just to do the most routine things like make up the bed and linger over coffee. We are off to see a movie and then when we get back I think I'll do IMAX 2 or Rhythmic Step -- something that makes me grin while I sweat.
Hug your kids, everybody, and Happy Fourth of Juy a little late!
http://www.click-smilies.de/sammlung0903/sport/sport-smiley-003.gif Kathy S. http://www.click-smilies.de/sammlung0903/spezial/spudniks/spudniklifter.gif
