To the Mountain Rescuers:

Moved enough to tell a story…. 01/01/01

The night was cold, cold enough to worry about someone staying out all night. It was last night, but it was a “last night” that you can all relate to. The pager and email pager rumbled off the next scenario. Yet another search….., but this time, a search that wouldn’t be cancelled in the usual 10 minutes. I sped through the darkness of the canyon. A canyon without other vehicles, it was a holiday and getting late. A mountain lion leaped across the road; the trip was already worth it.

The task was simple as it always is, play the game of find the victim. The implementation was not quite as easy. The teams checked the many possibilities. I was just one of the team. Searching one area in a vast wilderness. My image of Shorey was only in my head; an image of her sitting somewhere in the blackness, or perhaps walking aimlessly without a headlamp, alive, or perhaps going through the final stages of hypothermia, or perhaps having a beer in Neopolitans with all of us searching for a ghost. I didn’t know, but I knew that I wouldn’t want to spend the night out here, wondering if I would survive the night.

The area was heavily wooded with a blanket of snow. Our area, the 1^st mile of the Sourdough Trail, and all of the social paths. We took the first social trail. We never returned to the Sourdough Trail. One path, splitting, coming back together, splitting again, not coming back, splitting again, splitting again. I thought we were going west, Tim looked at his compass…. We were going east! I took out my compass. I wondered how someone could get lost? It didn’t take long to figure that one out. We were all lost directionally, but at least new the way back with our vast amounts of flagging and mental images of the trails we were taking.

I yelled out into the night, “Shorey……..” the usual emptiness….. The quiet was complete, especially as my already tired radio batteries slowly froze away! We continued on, following path after path. “Shorey…..” Tim, a hundred feet away, but totally out of view, yelled out again, “Shorey ……….” “here”. I was hearing things again. “Shorey……..” ”here”, it was a faint whisper, but it was still there. It must have been Jim or Willard who were nearby yelling back as it usually is. “Shorey …….” “here”. No, too high pitched. I ran closer. “Shorey…..” “here”, a little louder.

I wish you were all there to hear the sweetest sound I have ever heard. I wish you were all there for your face to light up with joy, like mine did. I wish you were all there to be able to dodge the trees as you ran closer and closer to the sound of response. I wish you were all there to see Shorey sitting on some bark under an evergreen tree with pine boughs covering her legs. I wish you were all there to see her tears of joy or perhaps tears of relief ending her time in the darkness.

This can only be done as a team. You are all awesome people. Keep on searching…..