Surviving The Sierras 5a3854

ISBN: 9781483503431

Chapter 1

The Flight

The buzz of voices penetrated my scattered thoughts as I noticed a woman rocking back and forth holding her stomach, the woman next to her looked towards heaven, while holding her hands together. I began to freak so I watched my mom closely to gage her fear level. She seemed okay. Fortunately, my little sisters, Crystal and Sarah, weren’t aware of my terror yet. Just then the plane began to plummet. The plane spun, and so did my brain, preventing me from focusing on anything. The noise bounced in my ears, and the murmur of prayers became overwhelming.

I screamed, “Mommy! We should be praying!”

Grabbing each other’s hands we prayed, “Dear Lord, we ask for your protection. Please put a ring of guardian angels around us and keep us safe. Please keep us together, Lord. If it is our time to meet you, please let us go together or keep us safe together. We love You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Closing our eyes we clasped each other’s hands. The force of the dive pushed Mom and Sarah back into their chairs. The last thing I was feeling helpless as my body, restrained by the seat belt, pressed heavily against the thin straps and my arms unable to move. “Oh, please don’t break!”

Tall, eerie pine trees with broken, fractured limbs littered the hillside. Snow covered canopies stood between heaven and me. My hands groped my body

discovering I was still buckled into my seat next to Crystal. I quickly inspected her, roughly shaking her because she wasn’t moving yet.

Crystal, regained consciousness and slowly opened her eyes, “Jessica, wu wu what happened? Where are Mom-m-my and Sarah? I’m s-s-scared.”

“Stop crying!” I yelled, being overly harsh, unnerved by her stuttering. Hearing us, Mom came running with torn pants flapping, and her long blonde hair messed up and falling out of her ponytail.

“Jessica, Crystal… Oh thank you, Lord. Thank you.” She was on her knees throwing her arms around us as she buried her face in our laps. Sobbing hysterically, she rubbed her face on one of us then the other. I could see our plane behind her, but she kept blocking me so I couldn’t get a good look. Without an explanation Mom told us to stay put and she would be right back. We waited and waited for her to come back. Shivering, I unbuckled myself and then Crystal so we could get up and do jumping jacks to get our circulation flowing again. In stunned disbelief, I stared at the mangled piece of metal that was once our plane. The bottom of the plane, where the cargo was kept, was either flattened or torn off and the wings were nowhere to be seen. The plane was almost completely camouflaged with snow.

After what seemed like an eternity, Mom came back with Sarah. At six years old Sarah was tall and lean for her age. Her fair skin was a novelty in our family but with her blue eyes, freckles, and silky strawberry blonde hair, she was elegant even at her young age. She looked so tiny trudging next to Mom in the deep powder, confusion written all over her face. How did we escape this without a scratch? God must have a reason for keeping us alive. Our seats had been sucked out of the emergency exit, and landed a few yards apart as if gentle hands had lifted us out of the plane and tenderly placed us under a tree.

“Jessica, help me put this seat upside down on top of yours. We can make a little tunnel to stay warm in.” Jessica, at ten years old, is as strong as a horse. Even though she is two years younger than I am, she is almost as strong, but my determination and unwillingness to give in always make me the victor!

The bitter cold air stung my lungs making it difficult to speak. We must have been unconscious for quite a while judging by the amount of snow that had already fallen. Mom went back to the plane to check for survivors.

“None, ” she said flatly. Even though it was snowing, there was enough light to still see so she went back into the plane for blankets and jackets from the enger section of the plane. We piled everything on top of us and snuggled together for warmth. For once, there was no kicking and fighting. We needed each other for warmth and to stay alive through the freezing night temperatures. Mom didn’t sleep at all that night. I felt her touch me to check the temperature of my skin. She slipped her hands over our cheeks and hands and pulled jackets over us. The night was long and by morning we were stiff and cranky. I tried to stand up but crumpled to the ground, my legs were weak from being folded up all night.

The next day we hiked downhill through the snow, hoping it would lead to civilization. After about a mile we found a meadow with a light covering of snow and a wide stream racing down the mountain.

“Go get all the wood you can find on the ground and make a pile right here. I’m going back to the plane to get supplies.” She marched off before we had time to argue, and came back dragging a blanket full of jackets, blankets, and surprisingly, one of our suitcases. We couldn’t wait to change our shoes. Our feet were numb and tingling and we didn’t think they were ever going to warm up. Sarah was barely whining, so I could tell she was really miserable.

Mom pulled matches out of her pocket and said, “OK guys, let’s not make the same mistake that guy in Jack London’s story did.”

“What Mom, what did he do?”

“He lit a fire underneath a tree laden with snow and it fell right on his fire and put it out!”

I helped Mom light a fire away from the trees so we didn’t have to worry about that. There was nothing to sit on so we stood and rotated our bodies like a chicken on a rotisserie, the heat slowly seeped through our clothing and warmed our bones. Mom gave Crystal and Sarah instructions to keep the fire going and mom and I went back to grab our seats and drag them back. We also managed to put the other two suitcases on top of the seats so we didn’t have to make a third trip for them. It was the longest mile I’ve ever done. And I had to do it twice!

Keeping warm was tiring, every few minutes I had to jump up and down for exercise. My pockets were full of snacks the stewardess’ gave me, so I managed to stave off any hunger pangs. That night was not much better than the night before. Putting the seats together again, we managed to create a cocoon inside with blankets and jackets. It was a little warmer but very cramped for four people. We needed each other’s body heat to stay warm. I felt Mom’s hands caress my body as she tested my temperature throughout the night. My mind kept repeating, “Will we make it through this?”

Chapter 2

Survival

I woke up to a beautiful, sunny day. I was so utterly and completely exhausted from trying to stay alive, I had slept long enough for the sun to be floating above the treetops. I felt rested enough to face another day of problem solving! The scenery was astounding, a pink glow reflected off the snow from the ball of fire in the sky. The snow looked like a blanket of shimmering diamonds and was so bright I could barely stand it. We rummaged through our suitcases to find sunglasses so we could see. I soaked in my surroundings until I realized how hungry I was.

Mom made another trek to the plane and came back with a coffeepot and some cups.

“This time I really scored!” Mom said as she opened her pockets to reveal cans of soda, soup, and packages of crackers and peanuts. We attacked Mom like a swarm of angry bees. She couldn’t have pushed us off if she were ten feet tall. We fell to our knees in the snow and ripped open the packages of peanuts and crackers. Mom had found an old-fashioned can opener and attempted to open a can of soup with it. It wasn’t like the electric-can opener she had at home. She punctured the top of the can but I could tell it was difficult to turn the handle. Eventually, she opened it and scooped it into our mouths with her fingers.

“You guys are like my baby birds. Aren’t you glad I don’t have to eat it first and then spit it into your mouths!” We started chirping like baby birds and chuckled. We split two sodas between the four of us, the sugar immediately hit our blood streams and revitalized us.

“Well guys, I think its time we started making a cabin for us! Let’s pretend we’re on an adventure!” Her positive attitude demonstrated what she always told us that half the battle was having a good attitude! We learned to tackle everything as if we knew we would be successful.

Mom announced, “I’m going back to the supply cabinet, you know I mean the plane, right? This time I’m going to get things that may have fallen out of suitcases.”

Someone was actually taking home a bunch of tools. I imagined a young man flying home after visiting his parents for Christmas and receiving oodles of tools for Christmas presents. Fortunately for us, that young man got just what we needed. I pictured him in heaven, cheering us on, and being happy he was able to help us out.

Mom brought back a hand saw, an ax, a hammer, a set of screwdrivers, and more jackets. We began picking out trees that we were going to use for our cabin. They were all about six inches wide, fairly small and easy to cut.

“Well, there’s no time like the present!” Mom said with a smile. “Let’s begin. We’ll make this one small, like a small tent.” We used the brush that we cut off the trees to layer the bottom of the room. It was easy to notch the trees so they could be stacked without much of a space between them. We made the room just high enough for us to move around without hitting our heads. We had to crawl in a small hole at the end. We cut a couple small logs to stack on top of each other to use as a door, so our body heat would stay inside the room, and the cold out!

By dinnertime we were starving so Mom cooked soup for dinner using the

coffeepot. After the sun went down, the chill began to set in. She washed the coffeepot out in the stream and used it to heat some water. She poured a little bit of soda in the hot water and we pretended we were having hot chocolate. The floor of our room was now layered with brush and the outside of the room was covered with brush also. By nightfall, I was so tired, I could barely grunt as I crawled into our nest and soundly fell asleep.

The next day Mom had a more elaborate plan. We had slept relatively comfortably inside our room but there was a slight breeze coming through. We had to come up with a way to keep the cold air from coming in.

Mom pulled me aside, “We need to keep busy to keep our minds off of the plane crash so I have an idea. Let’s make this our bedroom and we can build a small cabin.”

I sat on a plush sheepskin rug and stared at a beautiful rock fireplace. The large log home was lit with electric candle wall sconces displaying our family portraits on the wall. The long wrap around porch invited me to stroll along the length of the house and look at the stars. Each log was nicely shaped, cleaned, and varnished. Then I looked at the forest and snapped back to reality. We could do it. Maybe not like my fantasy, but we could make another room surrounding the one we had just made. That one had only taken a day.

Mom said, “this time let’s see if we can make a fireplace. The Indians used to have fires inside their tee pees. We can figure this out.” Mom paused before going on, “At the very least, we will learn by trial and error, just like everything we do!”

“Oh brother, Mom, you sound like you’re back in the schoolroom again,” I said, and watched Crystal and Sarah put their heads together and laugh.

We sat on our seats next to the fire, mesmerized by the sound of the stream. The food Mom had brought back with her from her last supply run was beginning to get low. We were getting sick of our peanut and cracker breakfast but it was keeping us alive. It was another beautiful tranquil day. If we were camping out with a return date in mind, this would have been fun. We wore our ski outfits during the day to keep the dampness off of us. When we crawled back into our room we had to leave our outer layer of clothing at the foot of the bed so the moisture didn’t seep through and chill us during the night. We used two jackets to sleep in. Tying a knot in the sleeves of the jackets, we put our legs into them and zipped them up. For the top half of our body we simply wore another jacket the way we were supposed to. The jackets we slept in were big enough to cover our hands and the two jackets were doubled up around our middles. On top of us we had layers and layers of blankets and jackets. We hadn’t slept in our room through a snowstorm yet. Maybe we would be able to build the cabin before having to do that.

As we sat looking at the stream I moved into action, “Hey Mom, look at these rocks! We can use these for a fire pit just like the one we had in Tahoe.”

“Jessica! That’s a great idea! Crystal and Sarah, you start gathering rocks about this size.” Mom held up a rock about the size of a baseball. We discussed the details of the fireplace and the plan evolved into a real live fireplace with a chimney. We dug a hole using the claw of the hammer and our hands so we could experiment with some mud and sand concoctions. We were trying to make mortar for the chimney, and if we could figure out the right recipe we could use it between the logs on our cabin. We placed a few rocks with the mixture in between and built a small wall for testing.

While we were waiting for the mixture to dry, Crystal and Sarah continued gathering rocks, and Mom and I began cutting small trees. Crystal and Sarah sang contemporary Christian songs from church while they worked – or should I say played. Mom and I were able to cut down about fifteen small trees that were

about eight inches wide. We calculated how many we would need to make it tall enough so Mom could stand up. We decided we wanted the walls about seventy inches tall so that meant we needed about nine trees for each wall.

Hunger forced us to take a break. Mom cooked some soup in the coffeepot and gave us some soda to share. Eventually, our tummies were full or at least our tummies thought they were full. Mom was already dropping weight. We sat around our fire and Mom started drilling Crystal on her multiplication tables.

“Just because we’re stranded doesn’t mean you are getting out of schoolwork.”

“Shh,” Crystal said. “What’s that noise?” There was a low rumbling noise off in the distance. We stood up with our eyes wide open. I cupped my ears to figure out which direction the sound was coming from.

Chapter 3

Planning Ahead

I started running westward but Mom yelled, “Stay here in the opening. If we go into the forest we’ll never be found!”

We started screaming and waving bright jackets in the air. Every once in a while we stopped to listen.

“I can’t hear it anymore, Mommy, can you?” Crystal looked at Mom for an answer.

Mom replied with a bewildered look on her face, “I can’t either, I wonder why they didn’t come just a little bit farther. I wonder if our plane was off course.” We returned to our jobs hoping that another search plane would come soon. Later, we sat down still shocked that the plane didn’t come all the way over to us. Mom started rambling about something, but none of us were paying attention. I began to wonder about what my dad would be doing right at this moment. Would he be crying? Did he think we were dead?

“What do you think Dad thinks about our crash?”

Mom whispered, “Daddy knows we are alive. He knows we are resourceful and that I will take care of you.” She continued, “And, if I know your daddy he is doing everything he can to find us. He might charter a plane or hike up this

mountain all by himself. Your daddy knows we are alive.” Our spirits were lifted by Mom’s pep talk. We looked over at Mom to see her gazing up at the sky. The clouds were moving in and the temperature was dropping.

Mom needed to go back to the plane again for some more supplies and joked about being a pack mule. This time she suggested that we all go, and we could wait nearby. We stood huddled together watching her footsteps disappear. After a couple minutes that seemed like an eternity, we decided we needed something to distract us.

“Hey let’s play patty cake and see how fast we can do it.” Crystal suggested as we began slapping each other’s hands.

“Sarah, quit mes! Let’s slow down until you get it right.”

Crystal kept looking at me and then toward the plane. She was trying not to express her concern in front of Sarah. We soon tired of patty cake and started another hand game. “Bubble gum, bubble gum, in a dish. How many pieces do you wish?” After several rounds of ‘Bubble gum’ we started ‘Inka Binka bottle of Ink.’

Crystal’s voice quivered as she said, “Jessica, Mom is taking too long. What if something happened to her? I think we should go check.”

“She told us to wait here.”

“What if she tripped and broke her leg. She could be lying somewhere waiting for us to come find her.” We were so caught up in convincing each other, when we turned around to look at the plane, Mom was already halfway back to us. She came back with some more food, soda and a first aid kit. She also had tea, coffee, creamer and sugar packets, and some packages of cookies. Mom was also hiding something in her hands.

“FRUIT!” We each munched down an apple as soon as she handed them over.

Mom went back in and it seemed to take forever for her to get back. She went through more suitcases and found more food gifts and some sheets.

“Mom! We don’t need sheets here!” Crystal, Sarah and I started cracking up.

“We aren’t building a luxury cabin, you know!” I squealed.

Mom couldn’t keep the amusement from her voice as she answered, “I know, I know, but we may be able to use those sheets for something. Let’s start getting back.” We arrived back at our camp just before nightfall.

“We need to pray for the nice weather to last long enough for us to finish the cabin. I’m worried about not being able to stay warm in a storm.”

That night we slept well and woke up before sun up. We stepped outside to watch the beautiful golden ball of fire rise over the horizon. We enjoyed the clear crisp morning as the fire warmed our hands and Mom heated up some water for

tea. As we dipped our cookies in tea, Crystal and Sarah discussed that they would continue gathering rocks, and Mom and I needed to finish getting the trees. We decided where the door in our cabin would go and where the fireplace should be. We would build the walls and then put mortar between the logs. There had to be space between our bedroom and the outside wall so we could store wood just in case we were snowed in for a while. Mom said she couldn’t a storm lasting more than four days when we lived in Tahoe so we had to make sure we had food and wood for four days at all times. To make the roof we decided the wall with the chimney should be really high and then stagger the logs down so that it looked like a lean-to.

“Okay guys, do you get it? I’m sure we can slap that up in no time.” Mom continued without waiting for an answer.

Crystal said with her usual enthusiasm, “I know we can do it. Come on Sarah we can be partners. This is going to be fun.”

Chapter 4

The Cabin

“Now that we all understand our plan, let’s get to work. By the end of the day we should have all the trees we need.” We guessed we had enough rocks to do the fireplace and chimney. We began by placing the rocks in a large “C” shape. The back of the “C” would be on the outside of the cabin. The opening in the ‘C’ would be the opening of the fireplace on the inside of the cabin. We buttered the rocks with mortar before placing them on top of each other. Each layer had to be hanging over the top by just a little so that they would eventually come together to make an igloo shape without the door. As we built the front part of the fireplace, every rock seemed to make the structure stronger. We had stumbled on the perfect engineering design.

“Come on, Let’s get to work cutting notches into the logs just like we did for our bedroom. We can stack the logs, taking turns from one side of the cabin to the other.” We stopped for dinner.

“Somehow we should be able to use those sheets to catch fish. Do you guys have any ideas? I know you’re getting sick of soup.” Mom said slyly. Then she broke down and had a good old-fashioned belly laugh. We couldn’t contain ourselves either. All four of us were holding our stomachs, bending over, and cutting loose. We laughed until tears streamed down our faces. We calmed down and became serious again. Even though we were exhausted, Mom wanted to get at least another hour of work in before we went to bed. It was very cold and our ski gloves were not keeping us warm. We couldn’t do the mortar anymore because we needed bare hands to cram the mortar between the logs. We continued stacking the logs while we could see from the light of the fire. We went to bed with our arms and backs killing us after making tremendous progress.

“Mommy, are we going to see Daddy again? I really miss him. I miss dancing on his feet, and when he swings me up on to his shoulders. I wish he could come pick us up now,” Sarah said softly.

“I know, baby. I miss him terribly. I’m sure he’s trying to find us right this minute. We’d better get some sleep now. I’ve been working so hard my muscles are killing me. Are you warm enough?”

“I’m so tired I couldn’t care a less.”

“Good night, my sweet angels.”

“Good night, Mommy.”

When I woke up, almost two feet of snow had fallen during the night. In order to get out of our room, we had to pull some snow in and then push some snow forward. The top of our room was covered in snow. We used branches to knock the snow off our room. It wasn’t very windy but there was a quiet and steady snowfall. We tried to work through the snowstorm but Sarah was not up to this challenge. Her nose was running and she kept flopping down in the snow. Mom decided we needed to light a fire.

We all grabbed a branch in the shape of a fan. We held it up over where Mom was lighting the fire and tried to keep the snow from falling on the tender flames.

“Mom, it feels so good to work hard. I feel really proud of myself,” Crystal said.

“Ya, now you know why I help mom out so much. You should try it more often,” I said.

“Uh huh, I think we could do a lot of things I never knew we could do.”

“Mom, from now on, all three of us are going to be better helpers, just wait and see.” Crystal finished.

“Well, I’ll make sure I ask you guys for more help from now on.”

Finally, the fire got big enough that we didn’t need to protect it quite so diligently. Mom put some large rocks in the fire to heat them up. When our dinner was heated, we brought the hot rocks and the coffeepot into our room. We balanced the coffeepot on three of the hot rocks and put the others in a circle. We sat in a circle around our heater and played games and drank our heated soda water. We could barely see each other because we shut the door to keep the heat in.

Crystal chanted, “I’m thinking of a number between one and twenty what could it be?” We started out small so Sarah would focus on the game. After a while we were sick of playing thinking games. We slipped under our blankets while Mom went back out to the fire to get some more rocks that she had put in the center of the fire. They were so hot she had to use sticks as tongs. She barely managed to carry them over to the room and dropped them just inside the door. Using a stick she pushed them over to surround our beds with them.

Finally, Mom climbed in her bed and started telling us a story, “Once upon a time there were three little bunnies. One was white, one was gray, and one was brown…”

We woke up to a beautiful sunny day. We had slept until the sun was high in the sky so we had to light our fire again. Mom was very careful with our matches so she made sure she was able to get the fire lit with the first match. She had stacks of dead pine needles and magazines from the plane that she kept handy to light just in case it took a while for the wood to light up. Mom loved playing with fires. Ever since I can Mom has enjoyed sitting by fires, especially outside.

“Mommy, can we have coffee too?” Sarah asked.

“No, I think drinking tea is a big enough step for you,” frowning down at Sarah, “Besides, you wouldn’t like it.”

Crystal answered with a smile on her face, “We would with sugar in it.”

“No need to start coffee yet.” Mom was standing firm for now, but maybe another day she would give in.

“Mommy, are there any bears here?” Sarah’s voice dripped with suspicion.

“Well, there are, honey, but they are hibernating right now.”

“What’s that?”

“They go to sleep for the whole winter.”

Sarah was comforted by that piece of information and went about her assignment.

We finished building the cabin by lunchtime. Even the roof was on. We spent the whole afternoon pressing mortar into the cracks. Mom was really pushing us because she was worrying about how long this weather would last.

We made only one change to the design of our cabin. We changed the door to a small step through window. We had learned from our bedroom that we should allow some room for snowfall. Sarah had a great imagination and she had come up with an idea to make coat hooks inside the walls. We cut off small branches and inserted them inside the cracks between the logs before pushing the mortar in the cracks.

It had turned out to be quite a nice little cabin. Finishing the chimney was now a priority. We had to use the same technique at the top of the chimney of placing the rocks on top of each other with a little bit of the rock hanging over the one beneath it. The chimney was curved very slightly at the top so snow couldn’t fall directly on the fire and put it out. The draft would still suck the smoke out of the fireplace but snow couldn’t fall right on top of the fire.

Chapter 5

Is it Over?

“I am S-O S-I-C-K of soup. What else can we make? Umm…Mom, I’ve got it! I just figured out how to use the sheets to catch fish! Let’s try it so we can have fish for dinner!”

My stomach demanded something else to eat. Everyone looked alarmed. I grabbed one of the sheets and cut slits to create a makeshift net. The water could slip through without ripping the sheet and we would have time to grab the fish. I looked at my Mom’s face and saw a look of surprised satisfaction.

“Yes, I knew you could figure something out!”

If I didn’t know how strongly my mom felt about good nutrition, I would wonder if she fed us soup until we figured out how to catch fish! We grabbed the sheet and ran over to a couple boulders protruding out of the stream. They were about three feet apart with water gushing between them. We rolled up our sleeves and stuck our hands in the freezing water and kept one end of the sheet held down beneath the water and one hand at the top of the water. We caught four goodsized fish right off the bat. We sprinted back to the fire and I started picking out sticks to fry the fish over the fire. Mom went back to the stream and cleaned the fish. We toasted them like marshmallows. Our mouths watered at the smell as we feasted on fish and drank hot water with a little soda added for flavor. We were stuffed, and boy, did it feel good.

I said smugly, “Mom, I didn’t know you were a gourmet cook!”

“Ohhh you didn’t. Well, now you know. I won’t mention the fact that you were starving and completely sick of soup!”

We all chuckled. Our family joke was that whenever we smelled something burning, we would say, “Mom’s cooking again!” Mom wasn’t doing too bad cooking over an open fire. Our menu had expanded. We could have soup, fish, crackers, cookies, and peanuts. Our drinks menu consisted of tea, soda, hot water, and coffee. Considering our predicament we were pretty well set. Before we cleaned up, we caught another twelve fish. We stuck them deep in the snow beside our cabin and then Mom grabbed some of the scrap wood left over from our cabin and dragged it inside. We cleaned up after ourselves and went into our cabin and lit our first fire in our new fireplace. We made a big deal out of it!

“Okay, girls. Let’s fix ourselves some tea on our first fire in our brand new F-IR-E-P-L-A-C-E!” We started dancing around again doing our favorite chant, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, we’re really, really good! Uh-huh, uh-huh, we’re really, really good!”

Crystal, at ten years old, enjoyed collecting facts. She wanted to know how long we had been stuck here. We spent almost half an hour trying to figure out how many days since our plane crashed.

We counted this as our eighth night. I grabbed the ax and cut eight notches in the bottom log while saying, “Let’s make this part of our nightly routine. Every evening we can have our hot drink, put a notch in this log, then say our prayers and go to bed.”

At that moment we started to appreciate our accomplishments. We looked around the cabin smugly. Now that we had finished the cabin, we couldn’t believe it was our very own handy work.

Mom joked, “Are you sure we didn’t hire a contractor to build this for us?”

I marched around acting like a man. “I’m sorry missy, I don’t think I can build that for you in three days. I think that’ll take three months. And that’s if the weather holds up. Oh, and whatever you think it will cost, just double it!”

Crystal and Sarah laughed. Mom simply shook her head. We went to bed with the fire lit and the door to our room open. We were sleeping in luxury.

Mom got up early and rekindled the fire before the sun came up. She was concentrating on something and didn’t even notice me. She turned around with a concerned look on her face and then quickly wiped it off.

“Mom, what’s wrong? Are you worried about something?”

“Oh no, Jessica. I was just trying to think of games we could play until we are found. When the weather is nice we can play catch. We can also sharpen some sticks to make spears and try to hit trees with them. There are a lot of things we can do.”

“Mom, I was thinking. You know how when you put green leaves on a fire it makes a lot of smoke. Maybe next time we hear a plane we should put a bunch

of green pine needles on the fire and make smoke signals. What do you think?”

“You are sooo smart! That’s a great idea! We should try to keep two fires going. One inside and one outside. That’s going to be a lot of work. We’ll have to take turns keeping them both going.” Crystal and Sarah ed in our conversation. Crystal piped up, “I was thinking about the squirrels at our house. Even in the winter they drop pieces of pinecones on us because they’re eating the pine nuts out. Let’s gather some pine cones and see if we can figure out what they’re eating!”

“Crystal, that’s a great idea! That’ll help with a few vitamins we haven’t been getting. I’m sure there’s something else around here we could be eating! Let’s keep thinking, but right now it’s time to eat breakfast.”

We went outside to find pinecones. After gathering a huge pile we took them back to the cabin. With our gloved hands we tried to take the petals off the pinecones so we could extract the pine nuts. It wasn’t easy for us.

“Too bad we’re not squirrels. Let’s try hitting them with the hammer.”

We went back outside and started a game of baseball. I pitched a pinecone to Mom and she hit it with a branch. She had to run around a tree about twenty yards away and then return to her base. We spent the rest of the morning playing. Sarah and Crystal got pretty good at hitting the pinecones. We had to trade for a new one after a couple hits because they were getting so smashed.

We stopped for lunch of soup and crackers. Mom wanted to fill the back part of our cabin with wood. We had already eaten the fish we had stored in the snow so

we caught some more for storage. After we were done with our work we sharpened some sticks and decided to try our hand at spear throwing. We grabbed a ball of snow and threw it at a tree trunk. The snow splattered on the tree making a target for us. It was easy to sharpen the sticks so we had quite a stack of them. We each stood at different places to reach the target. Of course, Sarah was the closest, then Crystal, then me, and then Mom. The points on the sticks didn’t penetrate the tree very well so we changed our game. We made a square out of four sticks on the ground. It was difficult learning how to lob the stick up in the air to get it to fall in exactly the right spot.

We were in the middle of our game when we heard another plane. We ran and threw green pine needles on the fire. It was so thick I was afraid we were going to put the fire out. We never saw the plane, but we heard it zooming around as if they were looking for something.

“Mommy, did they see our smoke,” Sarah cried.

Crystal responded, “I guess we won’t know if they saw our smoke until someone comes to get us, right Mommy?”

“If they saw us we should know within a couple days, right Mom?” I said.

“Ya. I’m sure if they saw us, they would be back in a couple days.”

Chapter 6

Driver’s Seat

A couple days came and went. We were still there three weeks later, surviving four more storms. During snowstorms, we sat around our fireplace drinking tea.

Mom said, “We’ve been here over a month. I think it’s time we started thinking about walking out. What do you guys think?”

“Walking out?” Crystal hollered. How can we do that? We don’t know which way to go!”

“We’ve heard two planes. Neither one of them were on this side of the mountain. I think we need to climb back up the mountain, get over the top, and then go down. There must be a flight path over there and we can try to attract some attention. If we follow the stream we will always have food and water. We can fill my back pack and drag our suitcases.”

“What will we do if we get caught in a storm?” I asked cautiously.

“We’ll have to figure that one out, Jessica,” Mom said. “Our suitcases are really big, maybe we can construct a shelter out of them.”

The storm lasted two more days. In the meantime we were getting sick of staying in our cabin. Mom was writing things in the ground making Sarah practice reading and drilling us on mental math. We were getting claustrophobic. We had all lost weight. Mom was the only one who could afford to lose a few pounds. Crystal, Sarah, and I were getting really skinny. It hadn’t affected our energy level yet, but we were lucky we didn’t have a mirror!

That night we woke up in the middle of the night listening to some weird yapping noises.

“They’re just coyotes, we have them at our house, too. They sometimes yelp and sound like they’re in pain, and they sometimes bark and howl.”

I couldn’t figure out of they were celebrating after a kill, or if they were trying to entice some poor critter over to play, only so it could become their next meal. Either way, it was a frightening sound.

We were unable to shake the foreboding atmosphere that was hanging over us. The eerie noises the coyotes were making prevented us from falling back to sleep. We lay awake singing songs that filled us with love and confidence. We were now sure that we needed to take the next step in our journey. We needed to walk out.

We slept in late because we were up for so many hours singing. We began experimenting with our suitcases. We tried tying them around our waist to see if we could drag them through the snow. It wasn’t that we needed everything we had come with, but we did want to make sure we had extra clothes for warmth and perhaps we could figure out some way to put the suitcases over us if we needed extra protection. I dragged a branch over to the center of the room and propped a suitcase up with it.

“What do you think, Mom? We could use these as tents and if it snows we can put a couple jackets over them.”

“Sure, that’ll work. Okay, we’re talking worst-case scenario again. The worst case would be if we had to stay up all night doing exercises to stay warm. We’ve gone without sleep before. We’ll just pretend its New Year’s Eve! We need to get up early and make as much progress as possible. We want to get as far as possible before the weather turns.”

Crystal interjected, “We should catch some fish and cook it today then when we get hungry we can eat it. That way we won’t have to get our net wet and our arms freezing cold.”

“Good idea, Crystal! We should also get as many pine nuts together as possible and stuff them in our pockets. We’ll have to take our sleeping bags, our coffee pot and cups, and maybe we should carry a little bit of kindling and magazines to make sure we can light a fire.”

With our plan in place, we began organizing our suitcases and completing our shopping list. Mom and I waited until dinnertime to catch the extra fish we were going to cook for the trip.

I asked, “Are you sure we need twelve? …I guess it can’t hurt anything to have extra, can it? That would be one each for three days.”

“Ya, I’m satisfied with our supplies so lets go to bed.”

Early the next morning, Mom woke us.

“Come on guys…get up. We’re leaving!”

Chapter 7

Coyotes

“Bye cabin,” Sarah said. “See you s’mother day.” We were feeling very insecure about leaving our nest. Every twenty yards we stopped, looked at our house and caught our breath. We followed the stream up hill. Every once in a while we had to deviate from our path because of steep rocks and obstacles. We wound around and always made it back to our stream. We felt safe next to it, after all it had fed us for almost six weeks!

Sarah was having a hard time climbing uphill. She complained a lot so Mom had to hold her hand and practically drag her. We stopped for lunch and made a fire. We warmed ourselves around the fire for about half an hour and drank tea.

When we were ready to set off, Sarah refused to budge. She threw a tantrum like she hadn’t thrown in months. Sarah weighed forty-one pounds when we left home, but she now probably only weighed thirty-five. Mom designed a sack out of a jacket for Sarah to sit in and she tied it onto her back. Mom carried Sarah and dragged a suitcase up the mountain.

“Jessica, I can’t believe how much this walking stick helps me, thank you!”

We each grabbed one.

“Mom, I keep getting this spooky feeling that someone is watching us.”

“I know, I’m getting the same feeling.”

We continued walking trying to ignore our instincts.

Crystal squealed, “Mommy, I feel like something is going to eat me!”

We turned around and saw two coyotes stalking us. We eyed them, daring them to make a move on us. They were huge. They looked like Alaskan wolves.

We hiked sideways up the mountain, keeping an eye on the coyotes. They followed us with hungry eyes waiting for us to make a wrong move.

We had almost reached the summit by the time the sun went down. We didn’t dare travel in the dark. We were afraid of twisted ankles, broken bones, and coyotes. We searched for a tree well to dig a tunnel in.

“Mom, what about this one?” I said.

“Let’s see if we can find one that is a little deeper, if not we’ll come back to this one.”

We continued looking but found nothing better than the one I had spotted. Mom got out the ax and the hammer and we started digging out a little tunnel.

Mom joked, “You guys have had practice doing this kind of thing before haven’t you!”

We started laughing. It was only a few months ago that we got in big trouble for digging a tunnel into the side of our brand new driveway after Mom and Dad paid over a thousand dollars for the bulldozer work.

Crystal and I finished the tunnel while Mom cut off some dead brush, making a huge pile of firewood. Mom went back to the trees and cut green branches off. We layered them on the bottom of our tunnel. Mom and I grabbed a couple of long sticks and started shaking the snow off the lower level of trees. We layered the jackets and blankets to make the warmest bed we could. It was getting so cold our zippers were freezing onto our chins. Mom lit a fire at the base of the tree.

Crystal inquired, “Mom, what about that Jack London story you told us about?”

“We shook the snow off of the bottom layer of branches and I’m hoping that if any snow falls from the higher branches the lower branches will deflect it away from us. If it doesn’t, I’ll light another fire. I have a good stockpile of wood over there and I put a jacket over it. I’m willing to take the risk to have the fire close to our cave.”

Mom left us alone for a few minutes while she gathered some rocks to put in the fire. We liked snuggling with the hot rocks and it was the best way for us to keep warm.

“What was that?” We stared wide-eyed at each other. We peeked out into the darkness. We could just barely see Mom’s silhouette in the moonlight. She had a large stick in her hand and she was jabbing at something. She was making angry guttural noises with her voice.

The creature turned and looked at us. Through the darkness we could see red eyes and long white teeth.

“Mommy!” Sarah cried.

I looked around for some way to help her. I considered grabbing a rock to conk it over the head, or throwing it to see if the coyote would chase it but just then Crystal whispered, “She’s coming.”

Mom said, “The coyotes are still here. I think it’s time we prayed again. Dear Father, we have felt your angels protecting us, and we ask you again to please put a hedge of angels around us and protect us tonight and on the rest of our journey home. Amen.”

We looked out of the cave and saw a half-dozen pair of red eyes peering at us. We fell silent with terror. Mom gave us a convincing look that everything would be okay.

“We have plenty of wood here to keep the fire going, and if the movies are right, wild animals don’t like fire.”

It was quite a different picture than when I envisioned J. T., our faithful dog, laying in front of the fire at home. But we believed her. In all the movies people could ward off wild animals with burning torches. She had also brought the spears we had made and told us that if one got close enough even Sarah could pierce a coyote’s neck.

I shuddered, “Mom, that’s too much information. You should have stopped at the movie part!” Mom tucked us in and began a bedtime story.

“Once upon a time there were three beautiful roses. One was yellow, one was red, and one was peach colored. They were the most beautiful flowers in the garden…” Mom loved to tell stories that we could identify with in some way. The pleasing images from the story calmed us down and sleep soon followed.

Mom stayed up all night feeding the fire and surrounding us with warm rocks. She had to get up and do jumping jacks a few times to get the circulation going in her legs. Her fear for the coyotes was equal to her fear of falling asleep. She had no problem staying awake. What choice did she have?

Chapter 8

Mountain Lion

At dawn Mom woke us and fed us warm fish and pine nuts. We drank hot water out of the coffee pot. We were running low on tea bags so we saved them for our lunch break. We packed our bags and began our hike. Sarah was fresh and able to make it through the first half of the day. We got over the summit and a little way down the other side when we stopped for lunch.

At the top of the mountain we had to walk around a small alpine lake before heading down the other side. The clear blue lake water was as smooth as a sheet of glass. Along the perimeter haggard worn trees stood defiantly after enduring years of brutal temperatures and anticipating the lovely spring weather once again. Under any other circumstance we would have stayed there for the whole day, but we were eager to continue our hike so we could get off this mountain. We lit a fire and caught fresh fish since we were so close to the stream. There were two perfect boulders protruding from the stream so Mom and I grabbed a side of the sheet and plunged our arms down. We kicked back and munched down the fish we just caught. It had a different flavor. We had no idea what type of fish it was but we liked this one better. It could have been that we were so sick of the fish we had been eating for weeks that any other type of fish would have tasted like our favorite treats. We had reached the point of barely being able to suppress gagging while eating the other stuff. We didn’t mind eating the pine nuts, though. We packed up our goods and moved on.

I squealed, “Hey, I haven’t felt like anything was watching me for quite a while. Have you guys?”

“No, I completely forgot about the coyotes.” Mom said.

Crystal laughed, “I forgot about them too. Maybe they went home to their families, just like us!” Sarah was on Mom’s back again. She lifted her head from her snug little shell as if she were a turtle popping her head out and gleefully announced, “I forgot about them too!” She quickly put her head back down. She was weak and exhausted. She had done a lot of exercise for a six year old.

“M-O-M!” I shrieked.

“What Jessica, What’s wrong?”

I whispered, “Look what’s in front of me.”

Mom moved forward and stepped beside me. Before me stood a powerful tan cougar with black markings on its face.

“Oh Jessica, that’s a mountain lion.” She said this so matter-of-factly, it was almost funny.

“It seems to be deliberately blocking us. I think we should walk back to where we ate lunch and cross the creek. Maybe she has babies around here somewhere. We won’t be a threat to her if we’re on the other side.”

We stood still while trying to everything we had learned about

mountain lions.

“Okay girls, do not turn your back on it. You will have to walk backwards very carefully. You do not want to crouch down or fall down. That may cause the mountain lion to attack. When they attack, they go for the back of your neck, you must protect it at all times. The important thing is do not bend down and do not fall.”

We took baby steps backwards keeping our eyes on the mountain lion. We walked around a outcropping of rock and lost sight of it among the trees. Mom played caboose while walking sideways with her back to the stream. Sarah slept through the whole incident. We got back to the stream where we could cross and continued on the other side. We decided to sing, to warn animals of our approach. We figured they would rather flee than duke it out with a human. I never said it but I thought, “That depends on how hungry they are!”

We had lost a lot of time back tracking to get past the mountain lion but we had no choice. The terrain on this side of the stream was actually easier.

Mom was sweating from her heavy load so we stopped and took our jackets off. Our faces had been exposed to a lot of sunshine lately but it seemed that today we would actually get sunburned. We didn’t have any baseball caps or sunscreen with us. Whenever we could we tried to walk in the shade of the trees. The sun felt great, if only we didn’t have to walk with our faces directly facing it. The reflection off of the snow only made it worse.

We walked until dusk with the same eerie feeling of being watched. At sundown we found a a secluded spot with a huge rock overhanging that we decided was better than a tree well. We could turn it into a small cave. We layered green branches on the ground and set the suitcase around to fill in any gaps. We built a

fire in the back of the cave so the smoke would rise and then flow out. Mom said if we built it in the front the smoke would come in and suffocate us. We put heated rocks beneath the brush and slept on them. I never thought a bed of rocks would feel so good. Except for how hard and bumpy it was, it was like sleeping on an electric blanket. We had soup for dinner. Mom made fish strips and crushed pine nuts and put it in water. It filled our tummies. We started talking about what we were going to eat when we got back. All of us wanted pizza.

Sarah, who was nestled on Mom’s lap, said, “I want strawberries and watermelon.”

Mom said, “I can’t wait to have a huge salad with sunflower seeds, raisins, croutons, blue cheese, bacon bits, tomatoes, and ranch dressing.”

Crystal chuckled, “That sounds good. I want fried chicken, corn on the cob, baked beans, and garlic bread.”

I said, “I want steak, peas, and rice-a-roni. Oh, and a fruit smoothie!”

We all yelled at the same time, “M-I-L-K!”

Mom, always the teacher, started talking about food groups. We could see from our cravings the food groups our bodies were missing. We had continued to brush our teeth because we had found Mom’s suitcase that had our toothbrushes in them. We were able to take sponge baths using a sock and heated water in the cabin because we didn’t want to risk getting our bodies wet. I offered to stay up for a while so Mom could get some sleep.

I managed to stay awake for about three hours before getting tired. I was daydreaming about seeing Daddy and my friends again. Did they think I was dead? When I started feeling my eyes flutter I woke Crystal up to take a turn. She wasn’t too happy with me but when I told her Mom needed more sleep she agreed. I put some more wood on the fire before making Crystal stand guard. I gave her my watch and told her she should give Mom two more hours of sleep.

Crystal did as she was told and woke Mom up at one a.m. When Crystal woke her up, Mom simply refueled the fire and went back to sleep. She said she needed sleep desperately and she wasn’t worried like she was the night before.

Chapter 9

Perseverance

The thin mountain air and excessive exercise were taking its toll on our bodies. We finished breakfast, packed our bags, and went on our way. The weather was changing. Yesterday we had taken off our jackets and we had to again today. Clouds were moving in quickly.

“Mom, do you think it’s going to snow?” I asked. “Look at the clouds.”

Mom said, “It’s awful warm for snow, don’t you think? Usually before a snow you can feel the temperature drop more than this. Maybe this is a tropical front coming in.”

“What does that mean? Crystal asked.

Mom answered, “The weather is coming from a warmer climate so we may not get snow. It will probably rain.”

For some reason I was pleased to hear this. It didn’t occur to me, until it actually rained, how miserable it would be traveling in it.

“Mom, will we be able to get a fire started in this?”

“It won’t be easy, but let’s go as far as possible. We should eat the fish we’ve packed. Maybe we can make more progress today.”

Sarah was on Mom’s back again. She was getting quieter and quieter. She was a thin girl to start with, but after going through this she was becoming emaciated. What a trooper. I started thinking about our yearbooks. Too bad we hadn’t taken any pictures this whole time. Mom even had the camera in her backpack on the plane. Everything was etched in my memory anyways. I might enjoy writing this essay after all! We continued walking until dusk and then searched for a place to sleep.

The snow was very wet and slushy. We needed a place like we had last night. We found a huge rock that was like the side of a cliff, straight up. There was a thin area along one side of the rock that was sheltered from rain. Mom cut down four small trees. They were very heavy because she didn’t want to cut the top off. We dragged them over to the cliff and leaned them up against the sheer rock wall. The room we created was about seven feet deep by seven feet wide. We cut off brush and piled it on the bottom part of the trees to better insulate our room. We used branches to block off one side as a wall. Working as a team we had our room finished in no time.

The fire took more work. Mom tore up two magazines and balled up each page. She formed a triangle with some of the dry kindling we saved. The tough part was getting the fire hot enough to burn the damp wood we had gathered. We had it piled up inside pretty close to the fire, hoping that once the fire got started it would dry our supply. It seemed to be easier to light a fire when it was snowing! When the fire started getting hotter, we made a ring with rocks so we could use them for our bed heaters. We ate our meal and cozied up to the fire. We took turns starting stories and having someone else finish them. It was interesting how we each had our own idea on how the story should end. When we were ready to sleep Mom began her story, “Once upon a time there was a Mommy cat who had three babies. They were so cute and so smart. They loved adventures.

One day they wandered away from their Mommy and…”

We woke up to a clear day. It was warm, not like summer time weather, but it was warm compared to what we had been experiencing. We drank our hot tea, munched a little and then went on our way. We started singing “Hi ho, Hi ho, it’s off to work we go.” We were light hearted and enjoying the nicer weather. The snow was thinning because of the lower elevation. The rain and warm weather washed the snow away and we noticed the variety of trees changing. There were less pine trees and more colors. We walked for about four hours before taking a break. At lunch we decided not to waste our time trying to build a fire so we drank water straight out of the stream.

Again, Sarah was not up to hiking the last half of the day so Mom carried her on her back. Sarah had been very quiet for the past couple days, although Crystal was holding up very well because she was enthusiastic and agreeable. The terrain became muddy so our boots and ski pants were getting disgusting. We kept them on so that we would have dry clothes underneath. I was ready to just wear the ski pants because I was getting so hot. We had walked beside our stream for hours, when we looked up and saw something shiny in the sky a long ways away.

The sun, low in the sky, reflected off a plane like a tiny piece of tin foil in the sky. We threw down our cargo and kindled a fire. Mom built a small pyramid and balled up paper to put underneath. We fanned it, we yelled at it, we prayed, and finally there were enough flames to put green pine needles on it to create a smoke signal. I grabbed my jacket and swing it through the smoke like the propeller of a helicopter.

Huge dots of smoke floated up to the sky. We continued feeding the fire dry wood while throwing on green leaves. We watched the plane in the air.

“Mom, is it coming closer?” I asked.

“Gosh! It sure looks like it is! What do you think Crystal? How about you, Sarah? I think it IS!”

Mom began our chant, “Uh huh, Uh huh, we’re really, really good!”

Then we all ed in, “Uh huh, Uh huh, we’re really, really good!”

We stood gazing up in the sky. The plane flew close to us but we couldn’t tell if the pilot saw us. We frantically continued with the smoke signals.

The plane turned and headed west away from us. We stood heartsick watching it disappear. Time seemed to stand still as we stared into the sky.

Suddenly, the speck started getting larger. “Mom, it’s coming back!”

Mom laughed, “Y-E-S, it is!” The plane came back and as it flew over us, it lowered one of its wing and we knew for sure the pilot saw us. It was time for us to begin our campsite because the sun was just about to fall beneath the horizon. We looked around for a place to call home. There wasn’t much to choose from. Tonight, we were going to have to use our suitcases as a tent.

We found some rocks and piled them up high enough to our suitcases so we would fit underneath them. We used brush again for carpet. We covered the

suitcases with brush for extra insulation and piled the jackets and blankets on top of us.

We used the same fire we had signaled the plane with earlier to heat our dinner and our bedtime heaters. We were tired and wondering how long it would take for someone to meet us here. Mom said there was no place to land a plane and it didn’t look like they could land a helicopter anywhere near, so they might have to hike in to us. Mom began our bedtime story, “Once upon a time there were three little girls, one had strawberry blonde hair, one had light brown hair, and one had blonde hair. They were the bravest girls in the whole wide world …”

We woke up to another incredibly beautiful day. We heated some water on the fire and some fish on a stick and packed up to start walking. We figured if they couldn’t find us, we would find them. We continued alongside the stream. Our stream. Sarah was becoming very weak and started the day out on Mom’s back. At least she was still eating and drinking fluids. We started talking about our adventure and how fortunate we were to have been able to survive.

“ the coyotes,” Crystal moaned.

“Ya, what about the mountain lion,” I answered.

“There’s no doubt about it this has been the experience of a lifetime!” Mom said.

We walked for about two hours when I spotted something ahead of me. I couldn’t make it out. I saw something else move right next to it.

I quietly murmured, “Mom, there’s something in front of us again. This time there’s at least two!” Just then they came running toward us.

Chapter 10

Broken Bones

They were golden retrievers! They ran up to us barking their heads off. We looked at each other in bewilderment. Was it over? At first, the dogs didn’t even see us. It wasn’t until Mom whistled that they paid any attention to us. When she whistled they stopped what they were doing, perked up their ears, and then ran toward us. We greeted them on our knees. They were friendly dogs, wagging their tails, and bouncing around us. They barked a couple times as if they were saying something to each other. We kept looking around expecting someone to be following them.

“Mom, do you think they are rescue dogs?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Honey. They could even belong to hikers. Let’s yell and see if anyone answers.”

“Y-O! Any body out there?” Mom yelled.

We stood still listening. There was no response.

Crystal screamed, “H-E-L-L-O! I-S… A-N-Y-B-O-D-Y… O-U-T… T-H-E-R-E!

Still, there was no response.

“Well guys,” Mom said, “These dogs might be lost like us or they may be out on a daily jaunt. Either way we can’t be too far from civilization.”

“Ya, let’s go in the direction they were coming from.” I said.

“Okay. Let’s keep moving.” Mom sighed.

We picked up our things with Sarah on Mom’s back and continued walking. The dogs went on their merry way. We were still trying to follow the stream as best we could. I was in the lead, followed by Crystal, and then Mom and Sarah. When I came across an obstacle like a rock sticking out of the ground I would holler and let them know. Sometimes I would have to walk through the branches of a tree and have to warn Crystal, “Grab this branch or it will slap you in the face!” Our constant awareness of each other’s moves made our progress efficient.

We kept moving trying to reach our destination by lunchtime. Today my mouth was watering for a hamburger. I could imagine walking into a city and straight to a hamburger t. In my mind, I placed my order.

“Four hamburgers, four large fries, and four large cokes, please.” I was so distracted with my daydream that I wasn’t paying close enough attention to my footsteps. I pushed through some branches and came out the other side; I stopped and screamed, “W-A-I-T!”

It was too late, I was falling. I tumbled down a fifteen-foot drop. Crystal stopped just in time. I screamed in pain, “M-O-M-M-Y!” Mom and Crystal were standing near the edge looking down at me, their faces full of empathy and fear. Mom was looking around trying to figure out how to get down to me. There was no way except to jump.

“If you jump down, then how are we going to get back up?” I was in too much pain to contribute to the plan. Mom placed Sarah underneath a tree. She didn’t move, for once that was a good thing. At least she wouldn’t fall over the edge too.

Mom opened the suitcases and made a pile of all the jackets.

“Let’s see if I can tie these together tight enough to make a rope.”

She tied the arms together and fortunately, there were enough of them to make it down fifteen feet. The last jacket she tied so that I could put my legs inside the sleeves and sit inside it. I climbed inside and held on with my right arm as Mom struggled to drag me up the embankment. I used my legs as much as possible to walk up the embankment. Finally, I was near the top. Mom wrapped the line around a tree just incase she slipped. As I got near, I reached for her hands and she pulled me up.

I fell to the ground, rolling in pain. “My arm, I think it’s broken!” I hadn’t cried for so long it felt good. Mom cradled me in her arms and sang to me. She liked to sing ‘Hush Little Baby’ and change the words to all the cool things she was going to make us. Sometimes it was a nice warm blanket, sometimes it was a lemon meringue pie, and sometimes it was cinnamon on toast. It always distracted us from our pain because we wanted to hear what she would come up with next.

Eventually I calmed down enough for Mom to take a look at it. I took my sweater off to show her my arm. It was definitely broken. There was a big bump between my wrist and my elbow and it couldn’t be anything but a bone sticking out. Seeing my arm made me feel lightheaded.

“Mommy, it hurts.” I cried.

“I know, Jessica, but we are almost there. You have to keep walking because I can’t carry you. You are going to have to be really strong and just bite the bullet.”

“Mommy, it hurts.” I repeated.

“Jessica, I know it hurts but we have to move on anyway. I’ll give you five more minutes and then we have to go. Focus on seeing Daddy.”

Mom pulled a shirt from one of the suitcases and devised a sling for my arm so I wouldn’t have to carry the weight of my arm.

I got myself together and then stood up, “Okay, I’m ready.”

“Great! You can do it, Jessica. Just don’t think about your arm. Think about Daddy.”

We backed out of our resting spot and found another route. This time Mom went first with Sarah on her back, I was in the middle, and Crystal was the caboose. Before long Mom came across a trail. It looked like it was a deer trail. We stayed on it as long as possible but then the trail started moving away from our stream. We dodged boulders, trees, and holes. We came to a ridge and stood staring at what lay ahead.

“Look,” Crystal shrieked, “A town!”

“Y-E-A-H!” Mom screamed. “We did it! We walked out!”

“I can’t believe it! We’re almost there.” I said. I felt very weak from the fall. I was beginning to wonder how much braver I had to be.

We stood looking at the scenery in front of us. We pondered the best route as we viewed the town beneath us. A road was only about five miles away. We sat down and stared at the last part of our journey. It wasn’t easy terrain but it was almost over. Mom placed Sarah on her lap so she could see the town.

“Mommy, is our house down there?” Sarah asked.

“No sweetie, but we’ll be at our house very soon.” Mom said.

“Oh good, coz I miss Daddy.” Sarah murmured.

“I know, baby, we all miss Daddy.”

Mom stood up, “Well guys, there’s no time like the present.”

We followed Mom’s example. “Okay, I’m ready.” Crystal and I both said.

Mom swung Sarah on her back again and we began our descent. We got to the road about two hours later. We sat on our suitcases and waited for someone to drive by. It wasn’t exactly a well-traveled road but someone had to be coming or going somewhere!

Chapter 11

Our Return

A utility truck arrived twenty minutes later. As the truck approached we stood up and started waving our arms. I was willing to jump in front of it if I had to.

The driver stopped and walked over to us. “Hi, what can I do for you?” He said.

We all gushed out our story at once. The poor guy didn’t know who to look at or who to listen to. His eyes finally landed on Mom as he listened to her side of the story.

“Well sir, we were in a plane crash. We waited for someone to find us but we gave up and decided to walk out. And here we are. You are the first person we’ve seen since the crash.”

The man pulled off his cap and ran his hands through his hair. It was almost as if he was trying to decide whether or not to believe our story.

“Okay, I’ve got a radio and I’ll call this in. I’m so sorry I don’t have anything to offer you. I left my ice chest at my desk.”

He went to the other side of the truck. I was afraid he might take off on us so I

stood in front of his truck. This might have looked suspicious to him, but, at this point, I really didn’t care.

He came back over to us and said, “The police confirmed your story. They said an airliner went down over the Sierras almost two months ago. A small plane radioed your whereabouts yesterday and they have a team searching the mountain for you this very moment. They are sending two cars as well as paramedics right away.”

He pulled his truck off to the side of the road and came back to us. He wanted to hear our story but we were too exhausted to share it with him. He finally caught on and just sat with us. Two police cars and two ambulances arrived. Ahhh, our ride home!

They approached us and said, “Hello ladies, we’ve been searching for you for almost two months!”

Mom quickly directed their attention to Sarah, “Could you take a look at Sarah, she has been very weak for a couple days now.”

Mom told another paramedic, “Jessica has a broken arm, can you give her anything for the pain?”

They pulled some things out of their bag and gave Sarah a shot. “What’s that? I’m sure we could all use some of that!” Mom said.

“I know mam, but since the rest of you are coherent and are still moving, we’ll wait to take you to the hospital and run some tests on you. Would you like some trail mix bars or some juice?” I have both with me.

“I think we’ll eat whatever you have on you!” Mom said with a smile. “We’re really sick of fish!”

They started laughing. “You’re husband will be waiting for you at the hospital. He’s had a tough couple months.”

“Oh really, well we’ve been on vacation!” Crystal remarked sarcastically. She always knew how to put my feelings into words. The paramedics started barking out orders.

“Take the mother and the youngster in this ambulance and take the older two children in that ambulance,” the sheriff said.

Mom yelled, “W-H-O-A, Wait a minute. Either we take one, or we take none. We haven’t come this far to be separated now. We can all sit up in that ambulance next to Sarah, that’s the only way we’ll go.”

The guy who was giving orders responded, “Okay mam, you can go together. I understand.” We climbed in the ambulance, exhaustion setting in. Sarah was under an oxygen mask. Her eyes were open and she looked better already. We sat around Sarah, each of us holding on to some part of her body. She would never be without us. They took us to the nearest hospital in Nevada. We arrived at the hospital and they immediately put us in wheelchairs. They wheeled us in through the emergency room and that’s where we saw him.

He looked ragged but even taller than we ed. He had a scraggly beard, sunken red eyes, and he had lost a lot of weight. “D-A-D-D-Y!” We screamed in unison. Even Mom yelled! He couldn’t have looked better. We scrambled out of our wheel chairs and ran into his arms. He smelled so good. We led him over to Sarah’s gurney in the hallway. Dad reached down and kissed his baby. We couldn’t let go of him. They made us get back in our wheel chairs and Mom made another demand.

“We have to be in the same room, too!

“Of course, we already have a room set up for all four of you. You shouldn’t be in here for very long. Sarah might need a couple extra days of recovery,” the doctor said.

“Sorry, we stay as long as she stays.” Mom said. With a look on her face and sparks jumping from her eyes, she communicated, “Don’t mess with me.”

He didn’t, of course. We spent four days there altogether. Jim, the utility guy who stopped for us, came by and visited us everyday. We grew very fond of him. Our adventure was a big story on the news, consequently, our room was filled with flowers and cards. We received candy and treats from across the country. We were still craving nutrients that our bodies had been lacking so we saved our candy for later.

We had to tell some investigators how to find the plane. It landed in such a way that it could not be seen from the air. Another reason they couldn’t find us was because we were off course by almost a hundred miles.

The investigation into the cause of the plane crash was under way. We were only able to tell them that we saw something fly off the wing of the plane but that was all we knew. By the time we left the hospital we were ready to dance. We missed music. We missed our house. We missed our beds. And we missed our pets. We talked about the meals we were looking forward to. Dad promised a surprise for us when we got home. We stopped at a store to buy clothes that fit us better than the ones we had. Mom refused to get rid of any of her other clothes because she figured it was just a matter of time before she fit back into them. She looked pretty good now that she got the color back in her face.

We were so anxious to get home it really bugged us when Dad made frequent stops on the way home. He said he didn’t want us to be tired out from the drive so we made fun of him. “Tired out from the drive! Are you kidding? All we’re doing is sitting here, try walking for days on end!” Dad started laughing too. He was so thankful to have us back, and all of us healthy.

We pulled in our driveway and looked around. Tiny buds were forming on the ends of the oak tree branches. The meadows and hills were a beautiful rich green carpet. Our cats ran up to us and greeted us. They rolled on their backs in front of our feet. We kneeled down and sweet-talked them. Finally J. T. smelled someone had arrived and came barking around the corner. When she recognized us, she wagged her tail and lifted her head in greeting. She smiled and snorted and blocked our path. We had to stop and spend some time with her before entering the house.

“J. T., We missed you! Has Daddy been taking good care of you?”

Dad chuckled. “Can’t you tell, look how fat she is!” He was right. She was much fatter than when we had left.

We opened the door, “S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E!”

We jumped back, “N-A-N-A! G-R-A-N-D-A-D!” Out popped everybody else. We ran around hugging everybody. Everybody had tears streaming down their faces, including us.

We had been anticipating this moment for ages. We reached the kitchen, and saw the spread that we had dreamed about. They had filled the countertops with fried chicken, steak, corn on the cob, peas, rice-a-roni, pizza, strawberries, watermelon, salad, and a gallon of milk sitting in a tub of ice. Before beginning our feast we stood in a circle holding hands to give thanks.

“I’m thankful for the return of my daughter and my granddaughters,” Granddad said.

“I’m thankful they are healthy,” Dad moaned.

“I’m thankful these wonderful young women were so courageous,” Nana said.

Aunt Carol whispered, “I’m thankful to have my sister and my nieces back.

Mom said, “I’m thankful for guardian angels.”

Crystal sighed, “I’m thankful for fire!”

“I’m thankful for fish!” I said jokingly, then turned my head and filled my cheeks with air.

“I’m thankful the bears were sleeping!” Sarah squealed.

The room was filled with laughter. We were home. Home Sweet Home.

THE END