DRAMA Lost in the Desert
The author was looking forward to a day of hiking with her husband in a beautiful wilderness area. Four days later, she found herself starving, dangerously dehydrated – and alone
MY LOVE AFFAIR with the Chihuahuan Desert of western Texas began in 1996, during my time as a reporter at the Odessa American. The Big Bend – named for a sharp turn in the Rio Grande River – was part of my coverage area. I loved the silence, the night sky so dark and clear, the constant surprise of finding small, brilliant blooms scattered along the desert floor. My husband, Rick McFarland, a photographer, loved the area as much as I did – we were married in 2001 on a trail in Big Bend National Park.
Twelve years later, we returned for a hike on the trails of the Fresno West Rim in neighbouring Big Bend Ranch State Park, nicknamed ‘ The Other Side of Nowhere’. The 8-km round trip to the West Rim Overlook was supposed to offer beautiful views of the Solitario ‘flatirons’, steeply inclined and inverted V-shaped rocks. If you hike past the overlook, the trail, which passes an abandoned ranch, should take a full day.
DAY 1: FORGING A NEW PATH
At 10.15am on Wednesday October 2, Rick and I pulled in to the parking area, which was a kilometre away from the start of the trail. The temperature was 22°C and would peak at around 33°C. We grabbed two canteens and eight bottles of water from the cooler, and we stuffed muesli bars and bananas into my bumbag. Pink blooms dotted the desert floor. This might become my new favourite trail, I thought.
When we began the descent into Fresno Canyon, the trail turned steep and rocky. Each step required me to plant my wooden hiking stick in front of me to brace myself. I skidded and slid, swearing all the way down.
At the bottom of the canyon, we followed a four-wheel drive track alongside the dry bed of Fresno Creek and eventually found the ranch. A Jeep was parked outside the front, and we collapsed in its shade. We’d each guzzled three bottles of water already. Then we drank deeply from our canteens.
“I think we should wait for these people to come back and ask for a ride,” I said. “I don’t think I can climb back up what we just came down. And we’re running out of water.”
It was nearly 1.30pm, almost the hottest part of the day. It had taken us a long time to descend into the canyon. Going up would take longer. We might run out of daylight before getting back. Rick studied our map. “It looks like we’ve made it almost halfway around the loop,” he said. “We could just keep going.”
Over the next several hours, the sun beat down unmercifully. We stopped frequently, often sprawling on our backs and turning the canteens up and shaking them to get the last drops. We stuck our tongues inside the bottles and licked the interiors.
It seemed we were walking forever. The cairns – piles of stones used as
trail markers – kept disappearing, obscured by vegetation. Backtracking and searching for the trail burned time and energy. It also required us to forge our own paths through cacti.
And then we came to a dead end: the edge of a canyon. “Oh my God,” I said. It was 8pm. We’d hiked nearly 14km and got nowhere. “Help!” Rick yelled, startling me. I joined him. “Help! We’re lost! We need water!”
There was no answer but our own voices echoing off the canyon walls.
Rick took out his phone. No signal. The phone, however, did provide enough light to scan the overlook. Rick worried about wildlife. Mountain lions. Snakes. Coyotes. He found a rocky patch of ground, and we lay down.
“It’s going to get cold,” he said. Shorts and light shirts were all that we had on, so we entwined our legs and
lay chest to chest to share body heat. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.
DAY 2: HOPE
Dawn. It had been 13 hours since we had drunk the last of our water. Rick and I trekked 500 metres to the last rock cairn we’d seen the night before, which led to the Mexicano Falls Overlook. “So that’s what happened,” he said. “We followed the markers to the overlook instead of staying on the trail.” According to the map, we had 8km to go to get back to our SUV.
We hiked steadily for a while, and I began to feel a little more upbeat – until we lost the trail markers again. We backtracked and crisscrossed our path countless times in search of hidden cairns. Dozens of arroyos, or ravines, forced us to clamber up steep hills only to skid down and face yet another ascent.
“When will this stop?” I shouted. “Never,” Rick muttered, ploughing through yet another prickly bush.
“We’ve got to get back to the kids,” we told each other, our voices hoarse from lack of water. Amanda, ten, and Ethan, eight, were at home in North Little Rock with my parents.
We hiked for another four hours. At 2pm and 33°C, I insisted that we find shade.
As it happens, I’d once read a book called Death in Big Bend in which a woman survived the desert heat because she took shade in the afternoon and walked at night. I saw a rock formation that offered a patch of shade big enough for both of us. A moment later, a bright green prickly pear cactus caught my eye. They put cactus juice in margaritas. Surely there’d be something to drink in there.
After wresting away two cactus pads, I used Rick’s knife to slice the bottom off one and sucked liquid out of it. Then I pulled it apart and ate the pulp. Its tiny, hairlike needles embedded in my tongue, cheeks and lips. I didn’t care. A mouthful of needles couldn’t compete with my thirst.
“That’s disgusting,” Rick said, spitting out the pulp.
“Don’t spit! We need all the water that’s still in us.”
We lay down in the rock’s shade. Every so often, I pinched my skin and it stayed folded, a sign of severe dehydration. My lips were cracked, and my tongue felt thick and useless.
“Babe, I’m worried that we’re not going to make it,” I said, hoping he would contradict me. “Me too,” Rick mumbled. Hours later, when the sun began its slow descent, Rick stood. “We need to get going,” he said.
As we staggered along the trail, Rick spotted something in the canyon below: cottonwood trees. In a desert, cottonwoods mean water. He took off at a near run.
“Water!” Rick yelled. He crossed a dry streambed and disappeared into the cluster of cottonwoods.
“Bring it to me!” I begged, struggling over a rock.
I found Rick crouched over a tiny triangular spring hidden beneath a large limestone rock. He filled my canteen with water, and I guzzled it.
Darkness descended. We would have to spend another cold night on the ground. But we were too giddy over the water to care.
DAY 3: SEPARATION
“We have to get back on the trail,” Rick said after we’d woken up.
Though the spring had undoubtedly saved our lives, I knew he was right. It was too small to provide enough water for the two of us, and we felt weak from hunger. No-one knew we were out here. No-one was looking for us. We had to keep going.
We refilled our canteens, then climbed out of the canyon. As we did, we found the trail. And then, just as
on the previous two days, we lost it.
“Damn it!” Rick shouted. “I know the way! My truck” – he pointed with his hiking stick – “is THAT WAY! We are done with the damn markers.”
And with that, we abandoned the trail for good. Rick knew if we headed that way, we would eventually stumble across the trail we had set out on two days earlier. And he was right. We did reach the trail. But neither of us recognised it. We crossed it and kept going.
Rick kept a close eye on the time. We had until 2pm to find the start of the trail. Otherwise, we would have to stop and take shelter from the sun.
At 12.30pm, I spotted a small mesquite tree in a narrow ravine. I dragged myself over and sat in its shade. “I’m done,” I said. “I’m just holding you back.”
Rick wrestled with his choices. He couldn’t imagine leaving me behind to fend for myself. At the same time, he believed he could summon help.
“I will wait for you,” I told him. “I can hang on.”
Rick had two swallows of water left in his canteen, and he poured one into mine.
“I love you,” he said, clasping my hands.
“I love you, too.”
“Want anything when I come back?” he joked. “Yeah, two waters and a beer.” Soon after he left, I drank the last of my water.
IT WAS EVENING – and the oppressive heat had lessened a bit. Even so, Rick, as I would learn later, was near the end of his endurance. He hadn’t eaten for days. He’d hiked all day with only one swallow of water in his canteen to keep him going. And still, there was no indication that he was even headed in the right direction. It would be so easy to give up, so easy to welcome death rather than keep fighting it. He could just stay right where he was and go to sleep. But then Rick thought of me lying helplessly underneath a mesquite tree. If he died, I died, too.
Then a glimmer in the distance caught his eye. A truck. It was parked at a parking area next to the start of the trail. That meant our SUV waited just a kilometre down the road.
An hour and a half later, Rick roared up to the park’s headquarters, blaring his horn and yelling. His erratic driving caught the eye of the assistant park superintendent, David Dotter.
“My wife and I were lost in the desert,” Rick yelled. “She’s still out there.”
RICK THOUGHT OF ME LYING HELPLESSLY UNDERNEATH A MESQUITE TREE. IF HE DIED, I DIED, TOO
THE THRUM OF a helicopter roused me from a fitful sleep. A searchlight blazed from the chopper, cutting through the darkness. A wave of euphoria swept over me.
“Rick!” I yelled. Then, inexplicably: “Mummy! Daddy! Please, help me!”
Too weak to stand, I used my hands and feet to crab-walk up a small incline. “I’m here!” I yelled. “I’m here!”
In the end, it didn’t matter. The helicopter’s spotlight never illuminated the deep ravine in which I lay.
DAY 4: ALONE
When my wedding ring fell off my shrivelled finger, I listlessly groped the twigs and rocks within reach. Nothing. The desert had already taken so much from me. Now it had my ring, too. And as the heat intensified, so did the hallucinations. One cast me in the role of babysitter. Our neighbours asked me to take care of their son, who had developed a physical disability. In reality, the son was me, struggling to move arms and legs that no longer worked.
My physical condition continued to deteriorate. Fluid leaked from my body as my kidneys, heart, liver and lungs suffered from the varying extremes of heat and cold, as well as from exertion and severe dehydration. Organ by organ, my body was shutting down.
Rick, now rested, was back on the trail with two dozen rescuers.
They spent the day trying to retrace the path back to where we had separated the day before. Rick looked for landmarks, in particular a pair of boulders near the mesquite tree where he had left me. But nothing looked familiar, and Rick grew increasingly frustrated. Where is she? Why can’t I remember?
DAY 5: THE LAST DAY
By 6am on Sunday, the number of searchers had grown to nearly 40.
Most feared this would be a body recovery, not a rescue. No-one wanted Rick to see my remains. So when the teams left, Dotter persuaded him to stay at HQ with him.
As the searchers wended their way through the desert, volunteers Shawn Hohnstreiter and Andy Anthony repeatedly called out for me. Meanwhile, state park police officer Fernie Rincon and game warden Isaac Ruiz scrambled down into a deep valley. In the distance, they could hear Hohnstreiter and his team shouting, “Cathy, can you hear us?” “Help!” I yelled out. Rincon turned to Ruiz. “Help me!” Following my cries, Rincon and Ruiz ran to a precipice and peered into the ravine. “We’ve got her!” Rincon shouted as they clambered down. “She’s alive!”
When they reached me, I was shivering, feral- looking, and babbling about how Rick and I had gotten married at Big Bend National Park 12 years earlier. Rincon managed to interrupt. “Do you know your name?”
His question brought me to my senses.
“Cathy,” I croaked. “Is my husband OK?”
“He’s why we’re here.”
AT UNIVERSITY Medical Center of El Paso, doctors told me I was only a few hours from death when the searchers found me. I was in acute renal failure. My heart, lungs and liver were damaged. I was diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis, a condition in which muscle fibres disintegrate and dump cell contents into the bloodstream, often causing kidney damage. My temperature fluctuated wildly. Cactus spines protruded from all over my body.
I was a mess. But I felt a wave of relief the moment Rick arrived at the hospital. When Rick prepared to leave for the night, a nurse asked if he wanted to take any of my valuables with him. “Maybe her wedding ring,” Rick said. Then he noticed my stricken expression.
“It fell off my finger, and I couldn’t find it,” I told him.
Rick clasped my hands long and hard, just as he had in the desert when I’d told him to leave me. The desert had taken my ring. But it hadn’t claimed us.