Well, thats just depressing.
The haunting note, dated Aug. 6, 2013, was written on a torn-out page from a journal.
“When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry. It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me — no matter how many years from now. Please find it in your heart to mail the contents of this bag to one of them.”
The bag included a cellphone and the journal.
Geraldine Largay wrote the plaintive message to her family nearly two weeks after she went missing while hiking the Appalachian Trail in Western Maine, according to the official file on her disappearance released Wednesday by the Maine Warden Service.
It appears that Largay, who was 66 and lived in Tennessee, survived for nearly four weeks after she was reported missing and three weeks after authorities had given up the search, which was one of the largest in Maine Warden Service history.
It sounds like, other than a bad sense of direction, that this chick had a pretty good head on her shoulders. I’ve no idea of what her gear list comprised, but the article almost makes it sound like she was unable to build a fire. Rough story. When I’m off in the boonies I always take a couple handflares along. Great for signalling, sure, but also an awesome way to get a fire going. Then again, I also take compass and map along as well and try to establish some baselines in case I do decide to step off the trail.
Sad story. Tough to lose your wife, tougher to lose her in such an anguishing way.
Truly sad. In the thick Maine woods a compass would have been handy for sure. Even so, with this trail so well used, how do you stray so far from it? Strange.
This was sad – and also helpful. I’m not going to feel silly for carrying a compass any more. We’ve gotten turned around in our own woods before. That panicky feeling of not knowing exactly where you are is no fun. In our woods we’ll eventually see an area we recognize, or run into a fence, house, or road. But the wilderness is a different matter.