Commentary: Death in the Woods

May 30, 2014
First published June 21, 2013

We found him on the third day of the search. We'd known that a happy ending was going to be unlikely. He'd been overdue for several days before his family even realized he was missing, as he'd been alone at his hunting camp.

He was at the bottom of the ravine, in the creek, a mile away from where the police had found his truck. He was over 80, so we couldn't be sure whether the fracture or the fall came first; but it seemed improbable he'd fallen all the way down the slope. More likely he'd crawled, intending to use the stream as a travel route to the road. I'd used it myself, to evacuate my team when the call had come over the radio he'd been found.

The cold water had probably put him out of his pain, but also did him in.

I've often said that I'd rather topple down a ravine than die in bed of some progressive disease. Maybe give some honest crows one last meal, on me. I suppose I still feel that way; but after some 20 years of doing volunteer search and rescue, I don't have many illusions about what dying in the woods would be like. Sometimes, it's grueling and painful, and it's awfully obvious that the search subject didn't want to go, was fighting to save himself.

I won't sugar coat one fact: I don't always like the people we look for. Too many of them do willful, stupid, even bad things I never would, and bring trouble on themselves. But our hunter was not one of these. I could put myself in his place, knew I'd have chosen the same escape route he did, would have failed and died in exactly the same way. That certainly brings it home.

Then there was the turkey hunter, some years back. A team found him slumped backward over a log, his shotgun lying next to him, unloaded, the turkey he'd bagged in the game pouch underneath him. The heart attack had probably come so suddenly that he was gone almost the moment he became aware of it. He went out quickly, at a happy moment when he'd gotten his bird and was enjoying the outdoors. Maybe thinking about Thanksgiving. My favorite holiday.

If I did get to choose, it wouldn't be a bad way to go.

But I guess that's just the point. None of us gets to choose—even when we get what we ask for. When I go—hopefully not for some long while—I'd still rather depart from the woods I love than from a hospital bed. As for the rest, like all of us, I'll just have to hope for the best.