I'll have mine medium-rare, please. . .

     First some bad news: A few of you will probably be disappointed to learn that we did not resort to cannibalism.  

Oh yes, there were many times we wanted to bite each other's heads off, but that was out of frustration, not from hunger.  Peggy caught a bigger fish than Mike; Betsy didn't think Ron's joke was all that funny...these kind of things can be very upsetting.   Nor did any of us become crazier than we already were before leaving Montreal.  Regardless of no bowling alleys or Big Macs, none of us pulled our hair out or tore our clothes off and ran naked around the wilderness, screaming at the top of our lungs.  I suggested this course of reaction to Betsy once when we had to wait an extra week for the salad greens to finish growing, but prudence doesn't allow me to share her unseemly retort with you.  Sorry.  

 

    Nope, we succumbed to none of the above...we settled into our situation almost immediately after the crash, realizing quickly that we had two --and only two-- options on the table:  One, load up with whatever we could carry and start walking.  Problem: Our best guess, based on the direction we'd been flying, the speed of the aircraft and length of time in the air, indicated that we were probably six hundred or so miles from anything or anyone that would see us as more than a tasty lunch; six hundred  miles through some of the most hostile terrain on earth.  Option Two was to hunker down and survive on what nature and the wilderness provided, and wait for a better day and more suitable circumstances.

    We chose Option Two.

 

I know what you're thinking: "The pilot must have been in radio contact with a control tower somewhere, because that's what pilots do.  Surely he radioed a Mayday! before the crash, and rescue planes will be along shortly.  That's how it always happens." 

    That's true enough when circumstances allow it, but things happened a bit differently in our case.  We had flown so far north avoiding the storms that we were well out of radio-range from any airport or control tower.  Indeed, a vast number of rescue crews went out as soon as we didn't show up at our destination or on somebody's radar screen, but they were looking where we should have been, not where we actually were.  Eventually, time and resources and money ran out, and the searching was halted.   Plus, our estimated position wasn't on a general flight path from or to anywhere, and with the lack of cities, towns, or even tiny settlements in that region, the chances of being discovered accidentally by a wayward pilot were odds you definitely should not take to Las Vegas.  

    Oh, what a dilemma!  

    For some it would have been disastrous experience, no doubt about that.  Perhaps many --or even most-- would have crumbled under our circumstances.  But we chose to flourish instead.  Once the decision to stay put was final, we focused our energy on the tasks to support that decision.  If rescuers found us then so be it, but given what we knew and what we suspected, being rescued wasn't something we planned on or waited for.

 

                                                         Eventually, it wouldn't matter anyway.