My favorite author is Jack London. His style of writing paints a very vivid picture in my mind. As I read his stories, it feels like I’m right there in the middle of it. One of his most well-known works is titled To Build A Fire. This is the opening paragraph of that story.
Day had dawned cold and gray when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail. He climbed the high earth-bank where a little-traveled trail led east through the pine forest. It was a high bank, and he paused to breathe at the top. He excused the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o’clock in the morning. There was no sun or promise of sun, although there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day. However, there seemed to be an indescribable darkness over the face of things. That was because the sun was absent from the sky. This fact did not worry the man. He was not alarmed by the lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun.
There’s something about the quiet, dark, biting cold of northern Canada that really fascinates me. I’ve lived in cold climates, but nothing like that. When the outside temperature gets to be well below zero, the constant thought is just what you have to do in order to survive.
My guest today is David. He and his partner in this adventure, Scott, dreamed of spending time in those conditions. But what they encountered just in the first few days had them – from one hour to the next – wondering, what else could go wrong?
Video of David and Scott returning to cabin site in 2014:
Website about David and Scott’s experience:
David’s book, Paradise Creek: A True Story of Adventure and Survival –
https://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Creek-Adventure-Canadian-Wilderness-ebook/dp/B08KTXZ4S6/ref=sr_1_1
David’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidrscott/
Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/225
Scott’s podcast: https://notrealart.com/
Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.
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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):
My favorite author is Jack London. His style of writing paints a very vivid picture in my mind. As I read his stories, it feels like I’m right there in the middle of it. One of his most well-known works is titled To Build A Fire. This is the opening paragraph of that story.
Day had dawned cold and gray when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail. He climbed the high earth-bank where a little-traveled trail led east through the pine forest. It was a high bank, and he paused to breathe at the top. He excused the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o’clock in the morning. There was no sun or promise of sun, although there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day. However, there seemed to be an indescribable darkness over the face of things. That was because the sun was absent from the sky. This fact did not worry the man. He was not alarmed by the lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun.
There’s something about the quiet, dark, biting cold of northern Canada that really fascinates me. I’ve lived in cold climates, but nothing like that. When the outside temperature gets to be well below zero, the constant thought is just what you have to do in order to survive.
My guest today is David. He and his partner in this adventure, Scott, dreamed of spending time in those conditions. But what they encountered just in the first few days had them – from one hour to the next – wondering, what else could go wrong?
Scott
This whole story just really fascinates me. When did this type of adventure first become a dream of yours?
David
Well, when I was very young, growing up here in northwest Indiana, my mom and dad made the decision to get rid of the family TV. So, for about 13 years, I grew up without a television.
Scott
What kind of child abuse is that?
David
I know. Right. Exactly. My friends– it was such a novelty. They just thought I was crazy and, of course, I was frustrated with this. At first, I was too little to really kind of understand, but I began to do other things and one of those things was just going into the woods and I spent all of my time outdoors doing what kids do – building forts, climbing trees, et cetera. There were two things that happened probably around the time I was 12 or 13 that really changed how I viewed my relationship with this wild place. One of them was reading a book called My Side of the Mountain, and it’s funny. The more I listen to podcasts about stories like this, the more I find that’s a common theme. It’s a story about a kid who runs away and lives in the Catskill Mountains, and I wanted to be this character. It just fascinated me.
The other thing was I found an arrowhead in a field kind of next to this woods and the idea that the last person that touched this was probably most likely a Native American. Here I am picking this thing up and it just had a profound impact on me. I began reading everything I could find on how these people lived, what skills they used to kind of stay alive, and also discovering they had, I guess, a deeper kind of spiritual connection to the wild. It was around this time that I really started to dream about putting these skills to the test and experiencing this type of lifestyle. I dreamt about it so much that I actually wrote a story when I was in middle school about running away and living in a log cabin in the middle of Canada, and it’s just kind of odd that that transpired the way it did. That’s kind of where this whole thing began.
Scott
Who would’ve thought that just getting rid of the family TV would be such a – I mean, for you – literally life-changing experience.
David
Yeah. I’m going to attribute it to that. Now, who’s to say, but I think there’s a pretty good chance I wasn’t sitting there in front of that just kind of zoning out.
Scott
We need to do a little bit of setup on this trip. Tell us who Dr. Forgey is and his cabin.
David
Sure. Dr. Forgey, or Doc, as everyone loves to call him, is a physician here in the area, but he’s also an entrepreneur of the highest order. He was obviously very interested in the outdoors and he paired that interest with his love of practicing medicine. So, he began writing books on wilderness medicine, on hypothermia, on how to care for people in very remote places, which really, at the time, back in the early 70s, there wasn’t a lot written about this. Now, it’s very common. There’s all kinds of courses and things like that. One of the things that he ended up deciding to do after taking a couple of trips into Northern Canada was to build his own log cabin, and he began doing that in the early 70s – again, 1974. This cabin is about 120 miles from the nearest town, which is Churchill, Manitoba. To get there – just to give you an idea of distance – we drove 15 hours to Winnipeg, then we took a train for about 23 hours to Thompson, and then you fly a bush plane for about an hour and a half to get to this location. So you’re way out in the middle of nowhere.
Scott
Remote is a big understatement.
David
Definitely.
Scott
How did you meet with Doc and figure out, “Okay, let’s go to this cabin”?
David
Sure. Great question. Well, I mentioned Doc was an entrepreneur and he, at the same time, founded and started a camping store called Indiana Camp Supply. One of the things that was interesting about this camping store was they were really renowned for their medical kits and things like that. Prior to going to the cabin – this was 1989-ish – I went into this camping store, I was getting ready to work for the SCA, the Student Conservation Association out, in Wyoming. I went in there to buy some gear and the guy behind the counter was Scott Power, who was working there temporarily. He began telling me about a trip he was planning for, which was to fly– he was heading to this cabin. They had a big trip planned in 1989 to go up there with the Wilderness Education Association. So he was telling me about his trip, I was telling him about mine, and that was that.
Well, when I came home, I ended up getting a job at this camping store, and Doc came strolling in and he wasn’t running it at the time. When he walked in, the owner of the store said, “Yeah, that’s Doc. That’s the guy who built the cabin.” I walked up to him, I extended my hand, and I didn’t even say my name. I said, “I have to go to this place.” And he said, “Well, we’ll see what we can do to get you up there.” Really, that’s kind of how this whole story began.
Scott
And your partner in this adventure was Scott – the guy that was working at the store?
David
Indeed, yeah. The interesting thing about Scott was that trip that he took in 1989 was the very first time he ever spent in a tent. It was his very first camping experience. While he was there, he told Doc, “I want to come back here and stay for a year.” I’m sure there was a bit of naivety in that “reflex” without really knowing what he was getting into. However, when we were both up there, he really took to the task and ended up coming, out of that experience, really an expert outdoorsman, and I’m always fascinated and amazed that somebody could do that. I had been kind of gearing myself up for this my whole life, and this was a new experience for him, but that’s his personality. He’s very much all in, extrovert, let’s go, let’s do it. So it was a very good meeting, a very good matchup.
Scott
It seems like you almost have to have a personality like that, like, “Yeah, let’s do it. We can do this.” But you also have to balance it with– I mean, there are life threatening conditions at times. So you’ve got to have a balance of that, right?
David
Yeah, definitely.
Scott
So you’re planning to go to this cabin. Did you think about bringing some kind of radio or some kind of communication just in case of an emergency?
David
Well, it’s a great question. There was a lot of debate about that. We did not, and the reason we didn’t was because it’s almost– in some sense, even if you have a radio, your odds up there of being able to connect with someone with some plane flying over, because the radios at the time really didn’t have the reach like a satellite phone or anything like that. Maybe those existed at the time – I’m sure they did – but we couldn’t afford something like that. But having something like that– I think our feeling was it would be a bit like having an unloaded gun, where maybe you think, “Oh, I’m safe because I have this, and therefore I can push things a little bit because I’ve got this to fall back on.” Really, the odds of being able to connect with someone, and even if you connect with them, the odds of them being able to send in a flight to get you out– I mean, that’s hit or miss. It just depends on the conditions, the time of year. For example, if you were to do that during the spring thaw, you’d probably be in big trouble because there’s just no place a plane can land.
Scott
Yeah, I can see that. You really have to be in the mindset that, “Yep, we are completely on our own. We have to just get it right the first time.” I know you brought some supplies with you. If you only ate the food that you brought, how long would that have lasted?
David
Well, it’s important to keep in mind that we scheduled three different kinds of resupplies. Dr. Forgey was going to be flying in every quarter to just bring us more food and supplies. Really, we brought an excess of the staples, I guess, if you will – flour, salt, sugar, all the basics. Then, on top of that, a lot of freeze dried food, some canned food, non-perishables and things of that nature, but mostly a pretty starchy diet. So, supplementing that with additional protein that we could either fish or hunt was going to be a big part of this.
Scott
The journey to get to the cabin to start with– first, it was a drive to Winnipeg, but what was each segment? How were you going to get there?
David
I think it was a 15-hour drive from Chicago to Winnipeg. The next day, it was a train ride that was about a little over 23 hours, I think, to get to Thompson. Then, from there, it was a flight. Now, keep in mind, we’re starting this adventure in January, and one of the primary reasons for doing that was because, when we fly in, we’re landing on a lake that’s about three miles from the cabin. Really up to that point, it was the only place that bush pilots would land comfortably. So we’ve got a 3-mile muskeg crossing and we’ve got 2000 pounds or 1800 pounds of gear. So being able to pull that across with sleds was going to be substantially easier. The muskeg up there– if you can imagine, if you’re walking on it in the summer, it’s like walking on a water bed, so it’s very difficult. So having the sleds was going to make that significantly easier.
Scott
Okay. So you land on the lake and you’re three miles away. You unloaded everything. Actually, I remember you said you couldn’t– and I know this because I’ve read your book and we’ll talk about the book in a minute. You couldn’t fly until the temperature warmed up to -40 degrees.
David
Yeah. It was right around that range. -40, -30, something like that. In fact, when we arrived at the airport there, the crew was around this bush plane. It was a single engine to Havilland Otter, and they had like a portable John Deere heater that they were aiming at the hydraulics of the skis that were attached to this. So that gives you an idea that it’s pretty cold up here.
Scott
So it warmed up a little bit. As you’re flying, you kind of flew over to where the cabin was. Right? Did you see it from the plane?
David
Absolutely, yeah. We wanted to make sure that it was there and that it at least appeared structurally sound. There were no big holes in the roof or anything like that. So we did several low passes over the cabin before flying, then onto what we call landing lake, which is an appropriate name. So we definitely checked it out from the air to make sure everything was at least in as good a shape as it could be.
Scott
And this is January, dead of winter. Of course, everything is covered with snow, right?
David
Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. You can only tell so much from the air but you could definitely tell if the roof was caved in or something like that, but everything appeared sound, at least as far as we could tell from the air. So we were good to go. We finally took off. We, again, took off a little later than we had originally planned just because it was so terribly cold. I want to say that we landed there probably around 10 or 11 o’clock in the morning. Another thing to keep in mind is we’re so far north that we’re experiencing, I would say, a good 17 or 18 hours of darkness in the winter, and we knew this, going in. In fact, we kind of planned this date at a time when we knew there was going to be a full moon. So we’d kind of taken that into account as well. So we were kind of expecting that, by the time we reached the cabin, it was probably going to be dark anyway.
Scott
You landed and you had to unload. You had to unload pretty quickly because the pilot was concerned about the plane’s engine freezing if they stayed too long.
David
Yeah, he gave us about 10 minutes to get our gear out because he shut the engine off and we hastily threw all of our gear out. The fact that we had kind of a time limit was probably a good thing because it didn’t really give you time to think. It was like, “Just get everything out and let’s move on.” And before I knew it, we’re standing there surrounded by all this gear. The pilot is in his seat in the plane with his door open and he stared at us for quite a while because he knew– I mean he lives up there. He knows what this environment is like. He gave us a good look just to make sure, like, “These crazy Americans. Are you sure you want to do this?” And we waved goodbye. He shut the door and he taxied and took off. This moment of watching that plane fly away, for me anyway, was really a profound moment of this whole experience. We stood and watched that plane until it disappeared and we listened to the engine until we couldn’t hear it anymore and, the whole time, we’re getting cold. When you could no longer hear the engine of that plane, the silence was really something I’d never experienced. We’re so accustomed to noise and the silence up there is almost annoying. You almost have to get used to it in a way. I like to say the silence was deafening. Like, it’s just a weird thing that you can’t get used to.
Scott
The way you phrased it in the book, you said, “Quite suddenly, there was only the vast great white quiet of the north.”
David
Yeah.
Scott
I think that’s a great way to put it. How quickly did you start to feel the effects of that extreme cold, and what was the temperature right then? Do you remember?
David
We believe that it was probably around 35 below, somewhere in that neck of the woods. If you creep past 20 below, it’s just cold. I mean, it doesn’t matter if it’s 20 below or 50 below. Yes, you can certainly encounter extreme differences, but cold is cold and, not knowing what those temperatures were like, both of us had pretty much every scrap of winter gear that we had. It’s funny looking at those pictures because we had, like, full balaclavas and the whole nine yard face masks and everything. Of course, after about 20 steps into the trees, we’re starting to peel layers back because you’re exerting so much work that it definitely is a contrast to the cold.
Scott
We’re going to have pictures of this in the episode notes, so people can see this. What you had ahead of you now was what you looked at as a short three hour hike in snowshoes to get to the cabin. Can you just take us through what happened?
David
Sure. Yeah. So, our next task is really to break this snowshoe trail from the lake to the cabin. The only way to do this, because the terrain is so dense with these spruce trees, is using a compass. We knew the correct azimuth from the lake to the cabin. All we had to do was ensure that we were staying on course, break the snowshoe trail, and by nightfall we would be enjoying a nice dinner and some hot chocolate. It took about, I don’t know, 10 steps into the tree line. At first I thought maybe the snow just really drifted right on at the edge of this lake, but it turned out the snow was incredibly deep to start with, and snow in those conditions is like powdered sugar. It doesn’t necessarily pack. So, we pretty quickly realized these snowshoes that we had were more modern with the aluminum frame and much narrower than, say, a traditional snowshoe. We were essentially kind of punching into the snow. So you’re almost doing twice as much work and we realized pretty quickly this was not going to be a short three hour hike.
Scott
I’m picturing– I mean, as you take each step, the snow that’s around your shoe falls on top of the shoe. So as you lift that foot, you’re picking up that extra snow as well each time. It’s like doing double the work.
David
Exactly. It did help a bit but, also, for the reasons you mentioned, it just added more work. And keep in mind too, that morning, when we were getting ready to go, we sat down for breakfast. We can’t really eat a full breakfast because your nerves are just firing off. We did have water, of course, and we did our best to insulate that from the cold. Probably, halfway through this hike, we realized that water had frozen. So we’d had very little to drink and we’re outputting a tremendous amount of energy. So things are getting a little intense.
Scott
You had mentioned the word “muskeg” I’m not sure how many people realize what that actually is. Frozen muskeg – it’s kind of a waterlogged vegetation, sort of?
David
Exactly, yeah. It’s a little hard to describe. But yeah, I mean, just vast amounts of, kind of moss-covered earth that is essentially growing on top of– it’s referred to as a swamp. I mean, it’s a muskeg swamp, so walking on that is really quite challenging. We were making progress. It was more difficult than we anticipated the entire time. After a while, we just start looking for the river because the river is in a very shallow valley and you can see it once you kind of reach a certain point. We’ve now been hiking for 4 hours, so we’re an hour over our estimated time. All of a sudden, I hear Scott say, “Oh my, there it is. There’s the river.” Sure enough, you could see this kind of a silver vein down in the valley, and it was at this point, I remember Doc had mentioned to me, like, “Well, when you can see the river, you’re about halfway there.”
Scott
Oh, what a–
David
Yeah. It felt very much like when Lewis and Clark first peaked over the Rockies thinking that they were just going to see the Pacific Ocean on the other side, and it was just nothing but more mountains. I mean, it was a bit of a blow and, all of a sudden, it’s like, “Oh, this is getting difficult.”
Scott
Yeah. When you planned on a three hour hike and now you’ve been going four hours and now you just suddenly realize you’re maybe halfway there.
David
Exactly, yeah. It’s already getting dark and we still have another four hours left to go.
Scott
Now you had a full moon, so that was in your favor. Did you have flashlights or headlamps?
David
No. I don’t even know if those were a thing back in the early 90s, I can’t recall, but no, we didn’t. Most of the lighting I guess that we had was going to be for the inside of the cabin, like Coleman lanterns and things like that.
Scott
So after three more hours, now you’re on the river bank?
David
Yep.
Scott
Okay.
David
We landed on the river bank. We do have a map, of course, of the area – a pretty detailed map. The river bank that we landed on was this big sweeping bend in the river. Of course, the cabin itself is located on a big sweeping bend of the river. I’d never been there. Scott had been there two years or a few years earlier. So as far as we were concerned, this is the place. So we’re like, “The cabin can’t be that far,” so we just started looking. We’re kind of weaving in and out of the trees and an hour goes by and we have no cabin. Then, another hour goes by and, now, things are getting grim. A) we don’t have a cabin. B) we’re exhausted from this ridiculous hike. Very little to eat, very little to drink, and the temperatures are dropping still. We continued to search for that two hour time period. So we hiked eight hours.
We’ve been searching now for two and, suddenly, we realize, like, “We need to do something.” It’s that moment when you hear these stories and when someone says, “It was at that moment that I realized like we’re in trouble.” The only real option that we had– we didn’t bring a tent across with us because we were headed for a cabin. So why would we do that? Most of the food that we brought required extra cooking and things like that. So, the decision made at that moment was to build some type of shelter. A snow shelter was out of the option just because it takes way too long to pack, so we built a simple kind of A-frame lean type of shelter with a ridge pole resting up against its tree, and then spruce kind of forming the roof of this structure. We’re trying to do this again with, like, zero energy. We’re feeling like the early stages of hypothermia are starting to kind of set in because we’re no longer putting out all of that energy. So we built this thing and, frankly, the shelter itself, I don’t think, could have protected anyone or anything. It was really quite miserable. But I do think the action that we took to build that shelter was beneficial in that we were taking some action. We were moving, we were doing something.
So once we had this poorly constructed shelter up, we laid a bunch of pine boughs on the floor of this. We opened up one of our sleeping bags flat, and then we each climbed into the other sleeping bag. So two of us stuffed into this one sleeping bag and we pulled the open one around us, and we just hugged each other to kind of share what little heat we had. Suddenly, you realize like, “This is really serious. I mean, this is a serious situation.”
Scott
Not exactly how you planned the first night sleeping that night.
David
No. I didn’t want to be laying there spooning my partner in the– that was not part of the equation at all.
Scott
And how old were you guys right then?
David
I was 19 and Scott was 20. And so we’re kids, essentially.
Scott
Yeah. I can picture people hearing this. They must be thinking these are kids who have no idea what they’re doing.
David
Yeah. Well, I get a lot of that from time to time. And to be fair and not to toot my own horn, so to speak, but I definitely was prepared for this. I wasn’t experienced in that exact environment, but I’d gone through a couple of, like, Tom Brown Survival schools. I, again, spent all of my time in the outdoors, so I had a really solid skill set. I was comfortable with what I knew. The funny thing is, I think the outdoors, mother nature in general, always has a way– you could be the most skilled, you could have the best gear, but Mother Nature is Mother nature, and the slightest mistake or something, you’ll pay for it, and that’s what we were doing at that moment in time.
Scott
Yeah. There’s no forgiveness out there. So you guys got settled into this sleeping bag together. Was there a conversation? Were you guys nervous? Like, “I hope we survive the night.”
David
Our conversation consisted of– about every half hour, one would ask the other, “Are you okay?” And then you’d say, “Yeah, I’m okay. Are you okay?” “Yeah, I’m okay.” And I kept complaining about my feet. My toes felt like they were on fire, so I’d taken off my boots and I began kind of wringing my toes and my hands as best I could inside this bag, just to try to kind of keep them flexible, keep the blood flow moving. I asked Scott, “Are your feet bothering you?” He said, “No, not at all.” And that’s how the night went. I think another thing that was interesting to me was that it was an incredibly beautiful landscape. It’s just in the moonlight. It was stunning.
But it was also silent, as I mentioned. So, occasionally, you could hear trees popping in the distance from that extreme cold. I guess the sap expands and this can happen. The other sound that I remember was the sound of my breath when I exhaled. You could hear it freeze when it hit the air. It sounded like when you spray a Windex bottle, it hissed. So every time you exhale, it was this little hiss of noise and it’s just your breath crystallizing, essentially, in that air. So it was just surreal. It was very bizarre.
Scott
Did you sleep at all during the night? When you woke up, was there a relief that you had at least survived that night?
David
I think there were pockets of sleep – obviously not very sound sleep, but there were pockets of sleep. Both of us were just like kids the night before Christmas, just can’t wait to get up, just waiting for the sun. When the sun finally started to peak over the horizon, it was a big motivator. We were also elated by the fact that, like, “Okay, all right, we’re okay. All we’ve got to do is regroup and let’s figure this out and we’ll be fine.” That morning, I had a horrible time trying to get my boots back on. I had Mukluks, which are very much more flexible, almost like moccasins, but they’re obviously more insulated and they were just frozen solid. So, trying to cram my foot in there took a long time.
Once we kind of got up, we decided to look again for the cabin in daylight. We searched for about an hour that morning and realized, like, we’re not finding it, so we need to go back to the lake to where all of our gear and supplies are and just regroup. Luckily, because we’d broken that snowshoe trail the day before, our trip back took about half as long as our trip in just because we’d beat this trail down really good.
Once we got back to the lake, we ended up setting up– it’s called an expedition tent. It’s a canvas eureka style tent that has a kerosene stove and the whole nine yards. The problem was the elbow for this stove pipe we knew was at the cabin, or we’d been told was at the cabin. But here again, why would we be using this tent and this stove prior to using the cabin itself? So we did the best thing we could. We fashioned something out of, I think, aluminum foil. We did what we had to do and that resourcefulness, I think, was a huge lesson throughout this whole experience because whatever you bring in, that’s what you got. And if you don’t have it, you don’t have it. So we kind of rigged this thing up and we got the tent set up, we got inside, and we started this stove.
Scott
And this is heated or fueled by kerosene?
David
Yeah, yep. A little tiny drip kerosene stove. All of a sudden, you could just start to feel kind of the fingers of warmth kind of creeping in a little bit, and that was exciting. So now we fill up a pot full of snow and put it on the stove. Right about the time that snow was turning into slush – the only liquid form of water for 120 miles – I heard Scott yell, “Fire!” And looking up that section of the stove pipe that we rigged ended up catching the top part of our tent on fire. I mean, this is where you’re like, “Oh my God, these guys have no idea what they’re doing.” We were kind of victims of circumstance at that point. I put my kind of heavy mitts on and essentially slapped the stove out of the tent. Scott used something to put the– there was a little bit of flame on the door of the tent, so he got that taken care of. In those brief few seconds, that slushy water was frozen solid so, once again, we’ve got nothing to drink.
I think the only thing keeping us warm at this point is just anger. We’re just pissed off. We’ve done all this work. We have planned 2 years in advance for this trip and, really, we put in the work and things are just unraveling at breakneck speed. We’re angry and we kind of hunker down in our bags. We’re at least somewhat protected in this tent. However, that night, a pretty bad storm whipped up and we’re exposed. We set this thing up right where we dropped it, so we’re essentially on the lake. We’re getting battered by the wind and it essentially kind of knocked this tent partially down. I mean, it was awful, and we didn’t even care. We’re exhausted and we just kind of suffered through that.
Scott
Yeah. So now you have night number two outside. I mean, I just imagine you thinking, “What else could happen?”
David
Well, yeah. I think you probably knew well enough not to say it can’t get any worse than this, but I think we’re both thinking and maybe hoping this is as bad as it’s going to be.
Scott
I can only think as a podcaster. If I’m going through something like this, I would already be thinking, “Man, all we have to do is get through this and I’m going to have such a great story to tell people.”
David
Sure, yeah. I think the other important factor was, when you’re 19 or 20 years old, you’re certainly a bit naive and you’re also kind of invincible. If I were to find myself in that situation now, I’d probably just die there on the side of the lake because– you also have a lot more information where you realize the odds of kind of making it through something like this, you have a lot more data stuffed into your head. When you’re 19, you’re just like, “Ah, it’s really cold and I’m uncomfortable.” But yeah, whatever. I’m making it sound trivial, which we weren’t treating it like that. Clearly, this was a serious situation. We were well aware of that fact.
Scott:
So you spent another night, you woke up and so it’s time to search for the cabin again.
David
Exactly, yeah. So this time, knowing kind of what we ran into that first night, we loaded the sleds and we packed a much more modern tent, if you will – kind of a geodesic dome style tent. We also packed one burner – like, backpacking stove and some white gas – and more food, and off we went back to the river. By the time we reached the river, we didn’t even bother searching that night. We were very cold, we were very exhausted, obviously hungry and dehydrated.
So the goal was just, “Let’s set the tent up and let’s try to get some warmth and fuel in us.” But here, of course, lies another problem. Those tents– I don’t know if you’ve ever set up one of those dome style tents, but they have these kinds of flexible fiberglass poles that can collapse down. So each pole is, like, eight individual sections of eight lengths that are held together with, like, a shock cord that runs in between them. People that go camping will be very familiar with this. The problem is, at 40 below or whatever, when you extend, when you stretch that shock cord, the elasticity just disappears. It doesn’t want to pull itself back. So, now we have to cut each one of these pieces of shock cord out from each one of these sections of poles. To do that, you can’t wear heavy mitts and handle a pocket knife, obviously, so you take your gloves off, you cut both ends of the shock cord, and then move on to the next section. There’s like 50 of these cuts that we have to make. So you get maybe three of them cut out and then you’ve got to put your mitts back on because your hands just don’t function when it’s that cold. They just do not work.
Scott
Right. You had no stove right now for any source of heat.
David
Exactly. Finally, we got all of these things cut out. By now, once we had the tent set up, I can remember watching as Scott was climbing into the tent and I asked him some questions. He turned and looked at me and his appearance really struck me in that he appeared really gaunt, almost bluish clearly. He did not look good at all. Then, I thought, “Well, I must look exactly the same. This is bad.” So we dive into this tent and we close the door, we load some white gas into our one burner stove. At those temperatures, you’ve got to be really careful because that fuel is essentially super cooled, so spilling that on your hand or on exposed skin could really do some damage there. We finally got this stove fired up. The second that thing was lit, the inside of this tent almost, like, inflated with all of that hot air. I mean, it was instantly warm.
Scott
That must have been, like, luxurious.
David
It was the greatest feeling in the world. All of a sudden, we could start removing some of this heavy gear and start melting snow for water and preparing some food and, yeah, that evening was almost a celebration because we realized, like, “Hey, we have a system here and it’s not pretty, but it works. So long as our fuel holds out, we should be in good shape.” So we were pretty excited. I remember climbing into my sleeping bag that night. This is kind of an interesting, funny side story. I think both of us were wearing hats and probably gloves and we were buried in these bags. I awakened in the middle of the night and I had to go to the bathroom. Normally, if you’re just going number one, you’d have some kind of a container handy so that you’re not having to go– well, we didn’t really have that. So, I get up and I’ve really got to go.
Scott
That means you had to leave the warmth of the tent?
David
Leave the warmth of my bag. The tent at that point was just as cold as it was outside. I mean, the second that, stove goes out, it’s instantly cold, but we’re pretty warm in our bags and we had food and water. I had to go really bad. So, first, I have to psych myself up. I have to jump out of my bag. I don’t want to do this at all. So I jump out of my bag, I grab the zipper of the tent to open the door, and I realize that the zipper is welded shut with a bead of ice from our breath, from all of the condensation from our breath, absolutely welded shut with ice. I’m desperately trying to pull on the zipper, and it’s just not going anywhere. Meanwhile, I’m getting colder and colder. Finally, I end up breaking this free and getting to take care of business but, yeah, almost got hypothermia just trying to go to the bathroom that night. So it was pretty bad.
Scott
Okay, so you figured out how to pee.
David
(Chuckle)
Scott
You know the next question that’s coming.
David
Oh, sure. Yeah, of course. Well, at that point, we hadn’t really had to go.
Scott
Well, you hadn’t eaten anything much, right?
David
Yeah, we hadn’t eaten anything. Now, this next day that I’m about to dive into was my first foray, my first experience with taking a dump at 40 below. So yeah, that comes with all of its own little challenges.
Scott
What are the challenges of that? I mean, what do you have to consider?
David
Well, I think just speed, essentially. You’re not reading a magazine or looking at your iPhone. You want that business done as quickly as possible and, frankly, yes, it’s uncomfortable, but not terrible. I mean, it’s one of those things that the thought of it just sounds miserable but, yet, it’s another one of those things that, when you get into that environment, it’s like you just kind of acclimatize and it becomes everyday life.
Scott
You do what you got to do.
David
Yep. You do what you got to do.
Scott
Okay. So you made it through that night, and I understand you slept a little bit later that morning.
David
Yeah. The exhaustion, the stress, the frustration, all of those things, I think, just kind of bubbled up to the surface and we were wiped out. We’re in this comfortable, warm place, so it’s like we’re going to take advantage of this at least briefly because this was really the first time we’d found any level of comfort. As I mentioned before, I was complaining about my feet when we were in that bivouac shelter that we built, and he said he had no issues. Now, Scott didn’t take his Mukluks off, and if you can imagine– I mean, he’d just done all of this work, exported all of these calories, and his feet were sweating in these Mukluks and he left them on in the sleeping bag. So, when we awakened this morning, he called my name. I was shuffling through some gear or something and I turned around, he was holding his leg up and his entire foot was just a deep blue color, and we both clearly realized that he had suffered some pretty bad frostbite on that foot and, luckily, it wasn’t severe enough. It was in such a state that it could be saved. The extremity could be saved so long as no further damage was done to it. If he freezes that any further, he’s going to lose that foot. So now, we have a two-man team that’s now cut down to a one man team.
Scott
I wanted to hear from Scott on what went through his mind when he realized he had frostbite. Here’s Scott.
Scott P
When I first saw the frostbite on my right foot, I have to admit that it was a very kind of surreal, odd moment because, for the first time in my life, I didn’t recognize my own right foot. It did not look the same. My left foot was fine, but my right foot, the toes, my big toe, my heel, they were black and blue and purple and swollen and clearly frostbitten. In that moment, it was a very surreal, confusing moment. It was not what I was expecting to see because I was unaware of any pain or discomfort in my right foot up until that time. So seeing it was very much kind of a shock and very unexpected. Once I came to grips with what was going on, I was quite frankly angry with myself, angry that I had put not just my life, but David’s life in jeopardy as well because, suddenly, a two-man team is cut down to one man and because I can’t leave the tent. I can’t go outside at 50 below 0 because I have frostbite. Don’t want to risk refreezing.
So I was angry at myself for being so reckless and irresponsible at myself for jeopardizing the trip, but grateful because I had this amazing partner, David, to go get the first aid kit and help me deal with this thing, and grateful that Dr. Forgey, our kind of patron and underwriter of the trip, the owner of ICS Books at the time, had trained us so well. Doc Forgey is known as the. Father of Wilderness Medicine, and he had trained us so well. So we were prepared for these kinds of things. When you’re 20 years old, you think you’re invincible. Then, when you realize you’re not invincible, it’s a real shock to the system. Finally, you get to that point of acceptance where you just say, “Okay, well, I just got to deal with this. The only way forward is forward.” You just don’t panic. You breathe, you think through, you rely on your training and you do what you can do and hope for the best. So, it was definitely one of those moments where I realized that I was vulnerable and reckless and I was just angry with myself, I think, more than anything,
David
Scott has no choice really, but to stay in the tent. So this obviously changed our plans for the day. Instead of searching for the cabin, I told Scott, “Well, I’m going to go back to the lake. I’m going to get the medical kit. I’m going to get extra food and I’ll bring that back. And once again, we can try to regroup and figure out what our next steps are going to be.” I know, if I were Scott, the thought of being trapped, having to stay in a tent would definitely be disheartening, and I know it frustrated him. He wanted to clearly help and participate in this, but risking that would’ve been a very bad idea. So this was the only choice really that we had.
Scott
You went back to the lake to get a medical kit and you also had Doc’s book on Wilderness Medicine.
David
Yeah, there’s a great line in Doc’s book where he talks about, and I’m going to butcher this name. A famous explorer, Peter Freuchen – I think it’s how you pronounce that – suffered frostbite and made the decision to hike out of his situation despite how bad it was. So, he was just refreezing this extremity and the last line that Doc had written about this little story was, “He lost his leg, but it saved his life.” So I thought,” I’m not going to let Scott see that story. We’re just going to that one off to the side. I came back, I got the medical kit, more food, and hiked back to the river where Scott was. We were both very thrilled to see each other safe and sound because, keep in mind too, Churchill, which is 120 miles from us, is known as the polar bear capital of the world. While we’re too far inland, I think, for that to be a concern. It’s still there. There’s always potential and there’s also lots of black bears and things like that. So, you’re always traveling with a firearm just to make sure that you’re as protected, I guess, as you can be. I don’t know if they had things like bear spray back then – I’m not sure if they did – but we certainly didn’t have any.
Scott
Right. Well, aside from just animals, you guys are separated. You’re hiking back to the lake. He’s by himself in the tent. If you fall and break a leg or something, you’ll never see each other again and you’ll die separately and nobody knows. So, yeah, I can imagine being reunited when you come back – that’s got to be encouraging.
David
Yeah, it was definitely a weird, kind of a surprising thing to get a sense of our emotions whenever we would kind of connect like that because, yeah, you worry about the other person and not just for their sake, but your own sake because you both kind of depend on each other. You need that team to kind of pull this off.
Scott
And now you spend a fourth night in that tent back by the river. You’re going to set out searching for the cabin again. But did you have any thoughts on why haven’t we found this thing yet? I mean, you’ve got maps. You figure, “Okay, where is it?”
David
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the frustration and, of course, your mind trying to– keep your mind in check too because your mind starts playing tricks on you. Your mind starts telling you maybe what you flew over wasn’t what you thought. All of these things, they just creep in, so you’ve got to fight those kinds of mental demons a little bit. There’s definitely frustration, but there was also excitement because it’s like, okay, we believed that we had ended up downstream from the cabin. So our feeling was, the following day, I’m going to be able to go out, hike upstream a mile or so, and we’re going to find it and everything’s going to be great. The next morning, I awoke pretty early, had a good breakfast and, once again, I said goodbye to Scott in the tent, and I set off and I hiked maybe about a mile upstream.
I noticed on the bank of the river some really huge spruce trees. Most of the trees that grow up there are pretty stunted just because of the extremes, and these were massive spruce trees. And I thought, “I’m going to do the only thing I can, and that is I’m going to climb one of these and get a bird’s eye view and see if I can either spot the cabin or some landmarks that give me an indication of where things are.” This is tricky just because spruce trees, first off, are not easy to climb at all. And I’m climbing with all of this kind of winter gear on and let alone the danger of doing this. So I kind of took these things into account and thought, “Well, there’s not much else I can do because I’m still not finding this cabin.” So I start kind of weaving my way up these limbs. The limbs of a spruce tree, they’re just very tangled. They’re very scratchy. It’s just not pretty. It’s not a pleasant climbing experience.
But I did manage to get up above the other trees and kind of take a look around and survey things, and I noticed just upstream, from where I was, there was this small lake, for lack of a better word – I would say it’s more of a pond – and I thought, “Well, no one ever mentioned a lake. No one ever said anything about a lake around the cabin. If I can find this on the map, then certainly I’ll be able to find where we are in relation to the cabin.” I climbed out of this tree. And by the way, this was the first time I answered Nature’s call – had a number two there. So that was my first experience with that and you definitely feel the cold at that point.
Scott
Your territory was marked there.
David
Yeah, exactly. I made my way back to the tent and, by now, it’s dark. I could just see this kind of illuminated bubble there on the side of the river bank. I climbed in and, of course, Scott’s first question was, “Did you find it?” I said, “I didn’t find it, but I think I may have a good clue that’s going to point the way.” We immediately opened the map and we looked and, sure enough– luckily, we had a pretty detailed map. I’m surprised this thing was even on it. Sure enough, there it was, this little dot of water. Based on that, it told us that we were actually a mile upstream from where the cabin was. So the enthusiasm that night was very high. We were very excited. We were convinced., not a hundred percent certain because maybe that was something else, but we were fairly convinced we were on the right track. Ate a good meal that night, got plenty of sleep.
Scott
And this was night number five.
David
Night number five, exactly. And again, the temperatures are still hovering in that 30 below range, somewhere in that neighborhood.
Scott
And how was Scott doing with his frostbite at this point?
David
Again, this is a testament to Scott’s attitude. I think other people may have been much more panicked or concerned, but Scott was very levelheaded. He just embraced the fact that this happened. It wasn’t like there was any pain because it’s essentially frozen, but the mental anguish of having this injury and what it meant for the rest of the trip, I think that’s something you have to deal with. Scott did an amazing job of kind of managing and accepting the fact that, “Hey, it’s what it is and just going to have to live with it.”
Scott
So that morning, you headed out with a pretty good degree of confidence.
David
I was very excited to get out. I set off and started hiking downstream. One of the first things I noticed as I kind of rounded this bend, there was another area where there was a section of really tall trees. I remember Doc telling stories of building this cabin, and he said, “Yeah, about half a mile upstream, we cut some of the really big logs for the cabin.” They wanted to cut trees away from the cabin site. I look and I’m like, “Oh, there’s this incredible stand of trees.” Like, if I was building a cabin, those are the trees that I would go after. This is a perfect spot. So I’m feeling like, okay, and maybe this was just my brain trying to send the right signals but, either way, it puts some spring in my step. I keep hiking downstream and I’m constantly surveying and panning the river bank to see if I could spot anything unnatural or anything that looks manmade.
When I got about a mile away from where our tent was, through the trees, I noticed just a straight level line of snow perpendicular to the trees, about 15 feet off the ground. Clearly, there’s nothing out there in the woods that is straight and level like that. And I’m like, “Well, this is definitely worth exploring.” So I hiked up into the trees. The cabin itself maybe sits 40 yards away from the river, maybe a little more. So I hike up into the trees and I see a mound of snow. On one side, just peeking under the eaves, I see this wall of logs. This thing is buried in snow. There’s several feet of snow just surrounding it. It would be so easy to miss but, clearly, there it was, and my first reaction was clearly for our safety, like, “Okay, we found it. We’re going to be okay. Now, we can finally get this adventure started.” When I walked into the cabin, which I did cautiously because, given the terrible circumstances that we’d found ourselves in, I’m like, “Who knows, maybe I’ll open the door and there’ll just be a bear in there or something.” So I entered cautiously.
The cabin– just to give the audience kind of an idea is it consists of, like, three sections. There’s the main cabin, which the interior dimensions are pretty small, maybe 12 by 12. That structure has a loft where we could sleep directly. On the south end of the cabin is a room that we call the south wing, which is almost like a breezeway where you can remove gear and you could use it for storage. So you enter through the door of the south wing, and then there’s another door immediately to your right that goes into the main cabin. I entered the south wing and I’m standing now in the main cabin and I’m just looking around. This was where I had my second thought, and that was like, “Holy cow. This was the thing that I dreamt about. This was that thing. This is the exact thing that I dreamt about and, here, I’m standing in the middle of it. Yes, the circumstances are not great, but I somehow managed to manifest this.” It was powerful. It was really a bizarre kind of moment. I just looked through things quickly to make sure everything was in good order and everything seemed relatively sound.
I did just, again, a real quick once over because, by now, it’s already getting dark and I was eager to tell Scott the good news as I was heading back. Just the excitement of this was almost– I was moving a lot faster. I wasn’t quite running, but I was certainly moving pretty fast. So by the time I get to the tent, I’m sucking in all this ice cold air, which is very dangerous, and I could hardly breathe when Scott opened the tent door. But finally I managed to say, “Yeah, I found it. This is going to work. Finally.” So we were both clearly very excited
Scott
And I wanted to hear from Scott what his reaction was when he learned that David had found the cabin. Once again, here’s Scott.
Scott P
When I realized the cabin had been found, I felt a huge sigh of relief. We had been baffled and confused about where the cabin was for several days, especially since we had been there before in the summer and we had flown over it earlier in the plane and we knew that we were in the neighborhood. But when you’re in vast, pristine wilderness in the middle of the winter at 50 below, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack. So when Dave found the cabin, obviously, a huge sigh of relief. But also, interestingly, we were, by that time, so comfortable in our winter camping situation that we weren’t in any rush at that point to just get back and get back to the cabin. We stayed another night and decided to move in a very thoughtful, sort of calm way the next day because we were, at that point, pretty settled in into our campsite there at 40 below. So it was a huge sigh of relief and excitement. Also, we were extremely grateful, of course.
David
But at this point, again, it’s too late for us to pack everything up and head back to the cabin. So, we just decided to spend another night there in the tent. One interesting thing was when we first set up that tent– I forgot to mention this. Again, another resourcefulness note. We didn’t have any silverware, so we’re making this freeze dried food and we’ve got nothing really to eat it with. Scott had almost, like, a pocket type of a flashlight, almost like a tchotchke kind of thing that you get from a company that has its logo and stuff on it. So we took cover off of this flashlight and that’s what we kind of had to use as our spoon because it’s all we could do. The food was too hot to scoop up with your hands, so we just used that and made the best of it.
Scott
All of this happened and you weren’t even there quite a week yet. How long were you at the cabin overall?
David
Well, the trip that we planned for was a year-long stay. We finally moved into the cabin. An interesting note. Scott, for about the first 10 days, stayed indoors, I think, for good reason. He was concerned about his foot. He was concerned about doing further damage to it. But once we reach the cabin, you almost have your lifeline there. It’s a safe place. So long as you weren’t doing anything ridiculous there, there really was no risk of him refreezing that, and there was no way that he was going to just spend the rest of his time trapped in the cabin. So he finally started venturing out.
Scott
That was smart, really on his part.
David
Yeah. So we stayed at the cabin for those first four months and, during that time, really took advantage of everything winter has to offer up there in terms of, kind of, exploring the area and really enjoying the power of winter in the Subarctic. In April, Dr. Forgey flew in to resupply us. Of course, when he heard the story of that first week, you could just see his eyes getting just wider the more we talked about it because he’s an expert, for example, on hypothermia cold weather injuries. He is doing all the calculations in his head – no food, no water, extreme exhaustion, et cetera, et cetera. So you could just see him almost in fear, “Holy cow, I’m so glad you guys lived through this.”
He said he knew immediately when he looked at Scott’s foot. He’s like, “I knew immediately that I had to take you out. You guys did an incredible job taking care of this. It was so good.” In fact, when Scott flew home, he had to get a skin graft on this to get it repaired. Luckily, all of the color had returned to his foot, except for that big toe. That big toe was just too damaged. The surgeon said, “You did such a good job taking care of this. We don’t have to really do much prep. We can just get it taken care of right now.”
Unfortunately, we had to fly out for two months. We missed the thaw, which we were both really sad that we didn’t get to see because that’s a very powerful time of the year. But we came back in June and then spent the next six months there from June to January. Again, the goal was a year. We had to take that two months out of it though just to get Scott’s toe repaired and there were concerns coming back in too because, yes, he had his toe repaired, he got his skin graft on it, but now you still have to really be careful. If you bang that or stub it or do something, all that work could be lost. So he had to really protect that toe and be cautious with it for the remainder of our trip.
Scott
Lots more things happened during that time. And you wrote a book about this shortly after you guys got back, and it’s called Paradise Creek, A true Story of Adventure and Survival. And it’s available on Amazon. I read it, and it’s a quick read. But man, I could not put it down. That’s great, especially when you’re talking about your first week in particular. But after that, I mean, you guys actually built a whole second cabin.
David
Yeah.
Scott
Why did you do that?
David
The primary reason was we’ve got plenty of time. Why not? This sounds like a great project. The importance of staying active, of having things to do, is your best protection against boredom. Once boredom creeps in, that’s where all the monsters are, right? In your brain, you start believing that, “Oh my God, everyone back home is progressing with their lives and moving on to great things, and I’m just here in the woods doing nothing.” So you have to fight that. So building the cabins is a great project. What we didn’t realize was this added benefit where we’re living in a 12 by 12 box. Tensions can get a little tight, to say the very least. Luckily, Scott and I are pretty easygoing people. But even so, living in those conditions, it can get– so we now had this second cabin. So if tensions get a little strained, I’m going to head up to the other cabin and hang out for a week, and you would just do that. Then, you would get bored with your own company, like, “I got to talk to somebody. I’m going crazy.” And then you’d go back and it really was a huge benefit to have a summer and a winter home, I guess, if you will, and use them that way. That second cabin was built on a feeder stream that was near, where I climbed the tree and spotted the lake. So that feeder stream is what we ended up calling Paradise Creek.
Scott
In the book, you have so many details of what happened each day. Did you keep a journal while you were there?
David:
I did, but I was too young, I think, to really understand the value and the importance of keeping an accurate journal. Mine was full of fluff and 19-year-old thoughts. It just really wasn’t a solid account. Scott did a much better job keeping an accurate kind of day by day account. In fact, there were a couple times where I reached out to him to say, “Hey, did this happen on this day?” when I was writing the book. I really wish I would’ve done a much better job of keeping accurate documentation or journal about that. Yeah, definitely.
Scott
Right, yeah. Because I’m sure, at this point, there are probably things that happened that you’ve forgotten. If you had a detailed journal, you’d know about those.
David
The funny thing about that place is the things that you remember are all of the great things, all of the beautiful things, the beautiful experiences. So you kind of get amnesia when it comes to the bad things about it. When you come home, you’re like, “Oh, I want to go back to this place.” Then, you go up there, you’re like, “Oh, I forgot how difficult and miserable this can be.”
Scott
All these bugs.
David
Yeah. The bugs or the cold or whatever the case, you just forget that. I think it’s just a very human thing. You just remember all those great moments.
Scott
I know you and Scott still keep in touch. How big a factor is it that you have this as a shared experience?
David
It’s critical. Initially, my goal was to do this alone. When I was dreaming about this, that’s what I saw in my head. There were a couple of times where I would go off or Scott would go off camping by himself. As I just mentioned, it’s only a matter of a few days where you really get bored with your own company and the ability to return from such a profound life-changing experience, the ability to call someone and say, “Hey, remember this? Or remember that?” It would be so sad if you couldn’t do that. It would be tragic, I think. If you didn’t have that shared experience, it made it so much better.
Scott
Yeah. Because no one else is going to really understand what it was like just by your description, but you guys were there.
David
Exactly. Yeah, definitely.
Scott
Have you been back to the cabin?
David
I have. I think I’ve made maybe five trips back. Two of those have been with Scott. The last trip back was in 2014. You’re not 19 years old anymore, and so you really realize how hard it is. When you’re 19 and you’re in the peak physical shape of your life, like, you could do some of those things and going up there 45 or whatever was a lot of work.
Scott
And the cabin’s not there anymore.
David
No. Another difficult aspect of this was that. We were up there in 2014. One of the added challenges was the fact that we had known that both of the cabins were lost to a forest fire in 2007. So this was kind of our final hurrah up there. We flew 120 miles upstream, and the goal was to canoe down to where the cabins were located. So, not only was it physically challenging, you have the added emotional challenges of seeing this cabin that you so dearly love just ash. I mean, so much so– for example, the Paradise Creek cabin that would be built, we hung a set of moose antlers over the door. When I found the location of where the front door was, you could see this white outline of those moose antlers. They must have just turned ash in the air and fallen. You could see the shape of moose antlers, but it was ash that had just dropped. It was really strange. Yeah, a very difficult and tragic thing to see, but I’m glad we did it.
Scott
As an aside, just as my own curiosity, have you watched the TV show alone? If you have seen that, do you see, like, some of the obvious mistakes that some of these people make when they’re on that, like, reality show?
David
First, I love that show just for obvious reasons, and I try not to be too judgmental about what I’m seeing only because I understand– the one thing that I really love to watch is the people that have the bravado and the macho attitude of like, “I’m never going to punch out”, “I’m definitely going to win this thing,” or “I’m in it for the money.” Those people usually punch out immediately. They’re gone pretty quick. Again, I try not to get overly judgmental because it’s so easy to criticize when you’re sitting on your couch.
Scott
Well, of course, yeah.
David
And people like to say things like, “Oh, I know exactly what I would do if I was attacked by a bear.” It’s like, no, you really don’t, until you’re standing there looking one of those creatures in the eyes. You may know what to do, but you don’t really know how you’re going to react. So I try not to get too critical because I understand. When you’re in the middle of it, things are just different.
Scott
Yeah. And it’s such a different experience. I mean, I can picture people that are contestants on that show, if they could look at your experience and say, “Well, of course they could last forever. They had 1500 pounds worth of gear. I had to choose a list of 10 things that I could bring with me. That’s all I get.” But on the other hand, you could look at them and say, “Yeah, when you get tired and want to quit, it’s one radio call and you’re coming and you’re rescued.” So, it’s just a very different thing.
David
Well, here too, I mean, again, is the added benefit of having another person with you. Had I gone up there on my own, I don’t think I would’ve been able to stay a full year on my own. There are certainly a lot of people that can do that sort of thing and it’s not like I’m a social butterfly. It would’ve been hollow. I think it just wouldn’t have had as much meaning, certainly.
Scott
What’s your incentive for getting this story out there?
David
I have always tried to think of ways to share the story. When I first came home, I started doing a lot of slide presentations – if that lets you know how long ago this was – to various schools and different organizations, and I always enjoyed hearing from people that said, “God, I wish I could do something like that,” or “I had a chance to do something like that and I didn’t do it.” I love hearing what people think about this. It’s because there’s a lot to think about. I think it forces people to think, like, “God, I wonder if I could do something like that.” It doesn’t matter if you’re an outdoors person or not. It’s the type of story I think that just maybe makes you reflect on that and wonder if that’s something that you could do, and I enjoy sharing it if it inspires people in any way, shape or form. Again, I always think of that book, “My Side of the Mountain”, and what a huge impact that had on me. I mean, it spoke to me. And if this story can inspire anyone to maybe not necessarily live in a log cabin but do something maybe off the beaten path a little bit, then I’m happy with that.
Scott
Well, it’s incredible. We’ll have links to your book and lots of pictures that you sent me of your adventure so people can go and check that out. I would imagine it’s very likely that you’ve inspired some people, maybe, not to go spend a year in 40 degree below zero weather, but just to go camping for the weekend or something, get away from electronics and all that.
David
Right. Yeah. I hope so. I hope so.
Scott
I don’t know… there’s something kind of attractive about this idea of being away from EVERYTHING for a year… maybe even a little magical about it. But those cold temps, that makes me really hesitate. It just HURTS to be that cold! I love hearing about it though. You can see pictures of David and Scott’s adventure in the episode notes at WhatWasThatLike.com/225
And if there’s a question that you would have asked David, that I didn’t think of, you can ask him directly because he’s in the Facebook group, like lots of our previous guests. We have more than 9000 people in the group right now, and new people are coming in every single day. We have lots of great discussions in there and we’d love to have you join us – WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook
And guess what – later this month I’ll be in the Dallas – Ft Worth area, and we’re having another Podcast Listener Meetup. So it will be you and me and some other What Was That Like listeners, just hanging out, maybe having a drink, just getting to know each other. I would seriously love to meet you! All the details are in the Facebook group, but if you’re not on Facebook, just email me and I’ll fill you in. Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com
Voice mail
Hi Scott. My name is Corsette. I cannot remember how I stumbled across your podcast, but man, am I glad I did. I am hooked. I am binge listening, but not in order. I’m just going around and listening to whatever I pick out for the hour. Today is Sunday. On Friday, I listened to episode 216: Rachel rescued her children, where Rachel’s car overheated and eventually caught on fire and you know how the story goes. But as I was listening to the story, I was like, “Man, it’s been years since I’ve seen the car actually overheat and catch on fire. Man, I just don’t know if that still happened.”
Well, yesterday, Saturday, I’m going to the store and in a four-way traffic stop. A young lady’s car was overheating. There was a smoke spill out of the engine. The hood was down. She had gotten out of the car. People were just flying by her. I did a U-turn because of your podcast. Luckily, she did not have any kids in the car. She was a young girl. By the time I got to her, she was already on the phone to 911 and she was calling her dad, and I stayed with her until the fire department showed up, which only took about five minutes. She was good and calm and level-headed, and I just told her, “I’ll stay with you until the fire department comes.”
The fire department came. I said, “Okay, young lady. I am leaving now.” She said, “Thank you for stopping.” And I went on running my errand at the store. I stayed in the store for about 20 minutes. On the way back, the car was gone. She was gone. The fire department was gone. So, apparently, they got everything taken care of. But it was just so funny and ironic that, on Friday, I listened to that episode and then, on Saturday, I saw someone’s car overheat. But had I not listened to your episode, that episode, I may not have even stopped. So thank you. I am loving this podcast.
Scott
If you liked this episode, you might like the episode where I talked with Woniya, who was one of the contestants on season 6 of Alone. That was episode 75, titled “Woniya was alone in the Arctic”.
Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.
And now it’s time for the Listener Story. Every main episode ends with an audio story, sent in by a listener. If you’d like to hear your story here on the podcast, record it on your phone, like 5-10 minutes, and email it to Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.
This listener talks about experiencing seizures.
Stay safe, and we’ll see you next time.
(Listener Story)
Here’s my story. I was living in Scottsdale, Arizona, and this would’ve been about 2008. A friend of mine asked me to drive her to the airport pretty early, so I did that. When I got back to my apartment, I decided, “You know what? I could probably get a little more sleep since it was so early in the morning before I had to go to work.” I worked in sales and, every morning, at 9:00 AM, the sales team had a morning meeting and work was really close to where I live. On a good day, it was about a 5-minute drive and, on a bad day, it was about seven minutes. So, I always left at about 8:50. I was always on time. I’m always punctual really for just about everything.
The next thing I know, I’m being awakened by a call from a friend who was asking me where the hell I was since it was 9 and I wasn’t there. So I hopped out of bed. I figured I just overslept, which is very unusual for me. I hopped in the shower, I got ready, and I drove over to work as fast as I could. I didn’t really stop to evaluate how I was feeling. I was just trying to hustle to get to work. Now if you miss the morning meeting, you weren’t given any sales leads for that day unless there were extra. I remember being pretty pissed because it was September 30th – it was the last day of the month. I needed to get to a certain bonus level, which now looked like I wasn’t going to make it, so I was kind of bummed.
I went into the employee lounge, I sat down and, at that point, I realized I was feeling a little bit off. I remember one of my friends walking in and asking me, “JK, are you all right?” That’s what they called me. “JK, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Later on, she told me that I really didn’t answer her. I just kind of looked at her in a daze. At that point I decided to lie down on the couch and maybe rest a little bit. The next thing I know, I wake up, I’m on a gurney, I’m being wheeled out of the building. My friends told me I had a seizure. The paramedics put me into the ambulance and off I went to the hospital. I have no family history. I have no medical conditions that would necessarily lead to a seizure. That’s when I found out that 80% of people who have seizures will never know the reason why. unless you hit your head or have a bad accident, something obvious or otherwise, you may never know why.
They did an MRI, They did an EEG, which is where they attach all those wires to your head and they didn’t find anything. They released me a few hours later with an appointment to see a neurologist in Arizona. They suspend your license for three months when you have a seizure, so I ended up heavily relying on my friends. Of course, there weren’t any Ubers back then. I got home. It was really weird because I found my apartment pretty messed up. There was a huge dent in the door to my bedroom and I found blood on the corner of my bed and on the shower curtain, and I’m like, “What the hell happened here?” It looked like a small crime scene.
I ended up having about a total of 8 seizures over the next 2 years, and most of them happened at work. I would wake up in the arms of my friends on the floor. They all took very good care of me. I was grateful for that. I always told them, “Just hold me steady whenever that happens, but whatever you do, don’t call the ambulance because there’s nothing they can do anyway. And the ride to the hospital and the ambulance cost about $800, which is something I learned the hard way.” It was funny, they all ended up calling me Twitch just for fun, which I appreciated. It was just like I said, for fun.
At this point, no one knew why I was having seizures, even the neurologist. Everyone speculated it was largely emotionally driven. I was going through a divorce at the time and it was pretty brutal. So one of my last seizures happened the week after my license was reinstated. And by this time, I’m on medication trying to see which ones work. The doctor and I thought we found the right one as it had been a while since my last seizure.
I was driving home from work in a new car. I almost always drove with the sunroof open but, that day, it was raining, so the sunroof was closed. I was first in line waiting at a red light, about to cross a major six lane road, and it was about 5:00 PM so it was pretty busy. Again, the next thing I knew, I was waking up in an ambulance and I remember saying out loud, “No, not again.” I was told I was in a car accident. Apparently while waiting at the red light, I had a seizure and gunned it across the intersection on that red light. My car ricocheted off the back of another car on the other side of the intersection. So, thankfully, there was no contact with any car in the intersection itself. It’s kind of a miracle. I bounced off that car right into a light pole. The car was totaled and the light itself at the top of the pole sort of wiggled, I was told, and then dropped down onto the top of my car. So I just thank God that the sunroof was closed. Otherwise, the outcome of this may have been a lot different.
So I’m lying in bed at the hospital and an officer walks in and proceeds to issue me a ticket for failing to control my vehicle. I said, “Well, no shit. I couldn’t control my vehicle. I had a seizure.” He wouldn’t budge though. So he actually gave me the ticket. I was determined to get out of the hospital as quickly as possible because my sales team was having a quarterly award party at a local casino. I was getting an award and I couldn’t not be there. So I walked out of the hospital two hours later, got in a cab, and I went to the party. Everyone was like, “How are you even here?” I said, “As usual, there’s nothing they can do.”
Ironically, after about another year, I got a $1,600 bill from the city to repair the light – talk about insult to injury. So now it’s 15 years later. I haven’t had a seizure since we found the right medication. After about two years, I’m no longer considered an epileptic. Looking back, I can say that I’m so grateful for my friends and even more grateful that I didn’t hurt anyone in that accident or any time at all for that matter. I’m sure that’s something that would’ve required years of therapy to get over, had that happened. Now looking back, when people asked me how I survived that accident, I simply replied with one sentence, “Simply Divine Intervention and Mercedes-Benz.”