Lost in the Wild

by Cary Griffith

  It takes Dan half a second to know there is nothing he can do about his friends, his parents’ worry, or the others who may very soon be looking for him. First, he has to take care of himself. He has a plan, and it’s a good one. He will walk out under his own power. But he is only partially comforted by the thought. Finally, he pulls his shorts over his head and tries to quiet his mind. It’s a worrisome night.

  At 9:15 PM, Doug Hirdler is sitting near the phone, a place he hasn’t moved from for most of the evening. He is wondering how he can convince Constable McGill to let them assist in the Stephens search and rescue. His crews know that country. They have portaged Bell Lake plenty of times and are very familiar with the Man Chain. He’s feeling frustrated when the phone rings for the last time that evening.

  It is Jim Stephens, Dan’s father. Jim is back home in Monroe, Georgia. Every room in the house is filled with boxes. He and his wife, Mary Ann, Dan’s mom, are in the middle of a move from Monroe to Fayetteville. When Hirdler first called—8:40 PM, Jim jotted on a note pad as soon as he got off the phone—they had been hip-deep in the innumerable details of packing up a household that had been years in the making. They were stunned.

  But Jim Stephens served twenty-four years in the Army, with time in Vietnam. He knows about government response, knows it can sometimes be dubious, ill-considered, and incomplete. He has also seen the opposite. This time Hirdler hears it in his voice. Any previous consideration of packing, moving, attending to the vagaries of household transport, have fallen like so much chaff. Jim Stephens is more than over his moment of stunned silence. Now he is focused one-hundred-percent on the mission at hand: finding and rescuing his son.

  For the second time that evening sharp questions fly over the line.

  “Who’s in charge?”

  “Was his group still out there?”

  “Why didn’t anyone hang back?”

  “If you’ve known about this since 5:30, why in hell did it take so long to call the police?”

  Jim Stephens continues grilling Doug Hirdler on their search and rescue efforts, wondering why so little is being done, wondering about his son and how they plan to find him. He wants to make sure everything that can be done is being done.

  Hirdler answers with as much candor and support as he can muster, but it has already been a long day, and the affable officer is grim at the prospect that it is just starting. To Jim Stephens’s final question, he wishes he had a better answer. It is one Stephens asks after getting a full sense of where everyone’s at in the search for his son—Hirdler, the Sommers Canoe Base, the rangers, and the OPP.

  “Is anyone even looking for him?” Stephens wants to know.

  Hirdler pauses and swallows. “Not just yet,” he manages. “It’s night, tough to fly in, and they wouldn’t be able to see anyone if they did. But they’re on it,” he offers—shallow solace, he knows, given the facts.

  A frustrated expletive fires back on the line.

  After a long pause he offers Jim Stephens the only hope he has. “Morning,” Hirdler manages, low and faint.

  A thousand miles away in Monroe, Georgia, Dan’s mother hovers over her husband’s shoulder. Mary Ann is waiting for some good news. She is waiting to hear her son has been found. Instead she can barely pick up Hirdler’s voice over her husband’s ear, and his faint effort to console.

  “Morning,” she hears Hirdler repeat. “We should know a lot more then.”

  Jim Stephens is not satisfied with Hirdler’s answer, and tells him so unambiguously.

  It is a sentiment Doug Hirdler understands. He nods behind the phone and tells them as soon as he hears anything they will be the first to know. But when he hangs up he wonders if Dan Stephens is okay. He hopes for the best—knows the young guide, expects him to survive. But the truth is, he doesn’t know.

  Doug Hirdler has spent his life working in the Boundary Waters and Quetico woods. He knows in wilderness unexpected things happen. He is hoping the young guide got lost, but it doesn’t add up. He suspects there was something else, and he hopes like hell the kid’s okay.

  He has tried to assure Dan’s mom and dad, but he shares their concern. For now, all they can do is sit, wait, and pray.

  15

  Lake County Search & Rescue

  Northeast of the Pow Wow Trail, Friday, October 26, 2001

  Before first light, Lake County Deputy Nick Milkovich cruises through the small town of Ely, heading toward the U.S. Forest Service’s hangar on Shagawa Lake.

  Late last night he received a call from Joe Linneman. After the usual banter over the 11:00 PM harassment upsetting the comfort of Nick’s home, he listened to his friend and fellow officer. He took down the information about Jason Rasmussen, noting the car in the trailhead parking lot. Nick told Joe he’d be in the skies by first light, providing he could commandeer a pilot and a plane. Given the day’s snowfall, its flawless white background, and tomorrow’s weather forecast—clear, cold, and calm—Nick suspected Jason Rasmussen would be sipping one of those fancy coffee drinks at Ely’s Northern Grounds Café by noon.

  Milkovich has been working as a Section 30 Lake County deputy for over twenty-five years. He knows the pilots. He knows their routine. He could requisition a plane properly, going through Forest Service HQ in Grand Marais, completing the proper forms and getting the requisite sign-offs and head nods. But the bureaucratic fine points would set his air search back a day. With lost persons, Nick knows, time is critical—particularly in weather like this. So he chooses the more expeditious method, the one with which he’s most familiar. He pulls up to the hangar at dawn and knocks on their door.

  In the early morning light Jason Rasmussen crawls out of his narrow home, stretches, and starts to stomp, trying to return circulation to his feet and toes. It is cold, but clear. The air is crisp and he can hear a long way off—though on this morning there is only silence. The snow has muted everything with a heavy blanket and creatures far and wide are resting beneath it.

  He guesses there is a foot of snow on the ground. At this point, Jason has no idea of the extent of the storm, the exact snow depth, or the distance it reaches. In another quirky twist, Jason’s hollowed-out tree sits in the heart of a mile-wide band of these remote woods where the fall was heaviest. His orange tent, which sits less than a half-mile away on the bare rise above the water, was also situated in the storm’s path. Its sides sag under the heavy accumulation. More importantly, you couldn’t have done a better job of covering every inch of his orange tent fly if you were spraying it on with a paint gun. Jason would have to be right on top of the igloo-like lump before recognizing it as an anomaly in the landscape—possibly his tent, more likely a boulder. From the air, it’s invisible.

  Just five miles southwest, Jason’s car sits in the trailhead parking lot in less than twelve inches of snow. Further south, there is less.

  Jason stays out long enough to stomp his feet and restore some circulation and feeling to his numb toes. He knows the temperature has dropped. Ultimately, the biting cold drives him back into his narrow shelter, where he can better preserve heat and wait for his rescue.

  He feels certain that today he’ll be found. He knows by now his parents will have called the sheriff’s office. He knows they will be out looking for him. Maybe they’ll send planes. Today he feels confident that—in spite of the snowfall—they will spot him from the air, or call to him from the surrounding forest. He crawls back into his tree, pulls the limbs over his head, and tries to doze.

  The U.S. Forest Service hangar sits on the edge of Shagawa Lake, near the Ely city dock and swimming beach. From here the Forest Service operates its northern air fleet—three vintage red-and-white DeHavilland Beaver planes. The planes have been in operation since the 1950s. Milko-vich knows if you give any of the three pilots half a chance, they’ll wax poetic about their planes, how cheap they are to operate
, and how perfect they are for keeping tabs on a canoe wilderness area.

  In summer they are rigged as float planes, in winter, outfitted with skis. The three pilots—Wayne Ericson, Dean Lee, and Pat Loe—divide their time between fire spotting, wildlife telemetry tracking, search and rescue, and medevacs.

  Because air resources are scarce, the Forest Service has an informal loan agreement with the region’s county governments. County sheriffs are the point of first contact for search and rescue. Depending upon the nature of the case, the sheriffs have a wide net of government and volunteer resources on which to call. Today Deputy Milkovich is the point man in the search for Jason Rasmussen.

  The Lake County deputies are given plenty of leeway for managing their own investigations. On the sheriff’s website the deputy’s page notes simply, “All of the deputies do their own investigations as well as performing various civil duties as assigned by the sheriff.” In fact, the only reason Milkovich would ever contact Sheriff Steve Peterson regarding an investigation is if he needed more resources. But because Milkovich knows the area and the immediate resources, he has taken matters firmly in hand.

  On this morning, Pat Loe answers Nick’s early morning knock. Within the first hour of sunlight Pat has the engine revved and is ready to take off over Shagawa’s still, unfrozen waters. The area’s lakes are on the verge of freezing, but the pilots are still two to four weeks from replacing the Beaver’s floats with skis.

  The northern Minnesota branch of the Forest Service is one of few in the country with its own planes. The three DeHavillands are loud taking off, loud in the air, and conspicuous. This isn’t an advantage for wildlife spotting, but it is helpful in search and rescue.

  Nick Milkovich has flown on enough search and rescue missions to suspect this one will be over in a matter of hours, if not minutes. The Pow Wow Trail is a quick fifteen-minute fly-in from the Shagawa hangar. While they cover it, they revel in the conditions. A cloudless sky. The air crisp and settled. Their vertical flying column ranges from a low of four to five hundred feet to a high of four to five thousand feet, depending upon the nature of their search. Today, regardless of their elevation, they will be able to see anything that moves. If Jason is out there, and if he’s whole, they’ll find him.

  They are hoping he lights a fire. If he does, they will follow the pillar of smoke like a homing beacon. Barring a fire, they are hoping he is on the move, or has the common sense to carve a big S-O-S in the snow, providing he can find a big enough opening.

  Nick Milkovich has been in these woods long enough to have hiked over most of its acreage, and plenty of the area surrounding it. And he knows something about the area’s history and its plethora of abandoned trails.

  Twenty-five years ago, Milkovich was broken into his present position by an old deputy named Martin Carlson. Carlson remembered the days when the small logging community of Forest Center sat smack-dab in the middle of the current Pow Wow Trailhead parking lot. The Forest Service has done an excellent job erasing all traces of the old town. But there was a time, Milkovich remembers, when the small community had businesses, a small logging train station, and logging roads that spun out from Forest Center like spokes on a wheel, connecting a series of makeshift logging camps set up all over the woods around the village.

  Milkovich knows some of the oldsters who worked in Forest Center, before the Forest Service re-claimed the land. They’ve told him stories, and during the first year he was working, Martin Carlson showed him around.

  Now Deputy Milkovich and Pat Loe turn over the area and examine the parking lot from a few hundred feet. They locate Jason’s car, Joe Linneman’s tire tracks, and the footprints from his late-night perambulation around the vehicle. They use the spot to plot a course that starts taking them in a straight line up the two-mile trail to where the Pow Wow circular path begins.

  First they do a complete circuit of the twenty-six-mile oval track. Because of the weather and perfect snowfall most of the track is a clear white line through the woods. Much of the Pow Wow Trail and many of the old logging roads are relatively clear from the air.

  From this height, with binoculars, they can easily discern wolf tracks. In the past they’ve even seen lynx in the snow, pouncing on snowshoe hares, forest voles, or field mice. They’ve seen plenty of deer, but not many in this area. But the Pow Wow, they know, is moose country. The bogs and swamps of the region make it ideal for the solitary, horse-sized creatures. They marvel at the numbers they fly over. But there is no sign of a solitary hiker, his tracks, or his orange tent.

  Milkovich knows the natural boundaries around the Pow Wow Trail. They are marked by long water or high ridges, or both. Beyond the western side of the trail rises a high ridge and rough country. That area is also littered with the detritus from the 1999 blowdown. The deputy has struggled through those areas on foot, and it is virtually impassable. Few people would trouble themselves crawling over and under so many fallen trees.

  Arrow Lake lies three or four miles to the east of the trail. That entire area is covered over by beaver ponds, bogs, and swamps. Milkovich would be surprised if Jason was anywhere east of the trail. Just to double-check, not more than an hour after they have been up over the trail, they fly out beyond the east side of the Pow Wow, their eyes scanning bogs, swamps, beaver ponds, and occasional islands of pine.

  Around 9:30 AM, Jason is roused out of his tree by a low, far-off drone. It sounds like a plane. He has been dozing, off and on. Now he is suddenly awake. He is pretty certain it’s the sound of a plane. He pushes off the top branches of his hovel and quickly wiggles out.

  The sound grows louder. The plane—it is definitely a plane, now he’s certain of it—is coming closer. It veers in from the west-southwest. He hears its approach. The drone rises in volume over the trees. He doesn’t know what to do. He tries to move to the most open spot, but the cover around his tree is thick. He moves ten paces from the fallen log, and then he sees it—a small red-and-white plane with floats. It comes up fast, and Jason jumps up and down, waving in the middle of his narrow opening.

  The plane passes over without a sign. Jason reaches down to the orange lanyard around his neck and pulls out his whistle. He starts blowing. He blows frantically, waving—though the plane is moving away, starting to disappear. In a matter of seconds it pushes east and disappears over the treetops. He listens as the drone whines down like a dying insect.

  He whistles again. The piercing signal shrieks over the woods. He blows off and on for at least another minute. Then he stops, his heart pumping and breathing heavy. The view of the plane gave him a sudden rush of hope. Jason knows the plane cannot hear him, but the plane, he assumes, must be accompanied by ground searches. To hear his whistle they would have to be close, probably within a mile. But they must be out, already combing the trail and the woods around it. And by his own estimation he is near Pose Lake. The small lake is close—so if searchers come up the trail and make noise he will hear it.

  After a minute he repeats his efforts with the whistle and then stops and listens. Nothing. Still, the sight of the plane stirs his optimism, and he hopes it will be back for another foray.

  The pilot and deputy swing east over the long north-south boundary of Arrow Lake but see nothing. There are one or two stray moose east of the lake, struggling over the snowy terrain. But otherwise, nothing.

  Jason could have strayed north, but in just two to three miles his path would be blocked by the massive Lake Insula and its connecting waterways. Still, they wing northward up to Insula and along its ragged southern shoreline. Nothing.

  Every twenty to twenty-five minutes, Milkovich or Loe is in touch with Lake County dispatch or the Forest Service hangar. Throughout the morning they give periodic updates of their progress—or lack thereof. Twice they return to the hangar to re-fuel. But the Pow Wow is only fifteen minutes from Shagawa, and it takes less than forty-five minutes before th
ey are back up over the area, resuming their grid search. Other than the wildlife, the woods appear empty.

  After their initial circumnavigation of the trail and their review of the natural boundaries east, north, and west, Pat Loe lays out a grid—minding Milkovich’s designated borders. For this initial grid, Milkovich and Loe agree. The smart money is on the area inside the large oval trail. Both of them believe it would be the most obvious place to run astray.

  They spend the first half of the day covering the ground from a high elevation, looking for smoke or some other sign. Over the course of the day they lose track of the number of moose they see.

  By early afternoon they are flying lower—under one thousand feet, crisscrossing the trail’s center and pushing out beyond the trail on all sides. They hope the closer look will yield a better examination of the ground. But by this time both men believe they should have found him. They should have seen his tent, or—if he moved at all—seen his tracks, or caught him struggling through the snow.

  Three more times throughout the day Jason hears the plane’s steady, low drone. Once it swings south, but almost out of ear shot. Another time it passes south, but just barely, coming in closer. Both times Jason waves and dances on his small clearing of snow. He picks up his orange whistle and blows.

  Once, the plane passes further north, but too far to be seen. In the hopes of extending his reach, he picks up a long spruce bough from the side of the hollowed-out tree—one he used earlier for insulation. Now he waves the tree branch high overhead, waving it back and forth like a deep green flag.

  After the plane starts to recede Jason blows his whistle and yells. Maybe the on-ground searchers are close, he thinks. And the effort to signal them comforts him. More importantly, hearing the plane search all day has been reassuring. If he is not found today, then tomorrow.

  Part of him worries about how long air searches will continue. But for now, he places that anxiety aside. He knows they are going to find him. He is certain it will be soon. Though they haven’t given him any indications, he secretly wonders if the plane may have spotted him and is even now signaling his coordinates to the ground searchers. He tries to keep himself from too much idle dreaming, but it is quiet in the snowy woods, and he has time.