An interview with author Dee Dauphinee
This year’s surge in hiking and other woods-based recreation inevitably comes with greater risk of people getting lost off trails. Dee Dauphinee is an author, outdoorsman, and experienced mountaineer who has been involved in several search and rescue teams. We asked what he had learned from writing his bestselling book, When You Find My Body: The Disappearance of Geraldine Largay on the Appalachian Trail, which recounts the unsuccessful 2013 mass search to rescue Appalachian Trail hiker Geraldine Largay, who was lost in the remote western Maine portion of the trail.
How have readers responded to your book? Do you feel it has changed how they view or experience hiking the Appalachian Trail?
I’ve received over 400 emails through my website from readers saying that they have changed the way they hike, the way they interpret the out-of-doors or the backcountry, or how they approach the wilderness. A few even mentioned that it changed the way they live their life. Many readers have indicated that they have purchased a compass or have taken orienteering classes.
Geraldine Largay was a very experienced hiker and seemingly well prepared for the thru-hike with a strong support system. Can you speak to the psychology of what happens when a person gets lost?
Everybody seems to react a bit differently upon learning that they are lost in the woods, but typically varying degrees of panic will set in. People stop thinking clearly and they start rushing everything they do: how they tie their shoes, taking water breaks, and walking and hiking trying to find familiar ground. More important, they hurry their decision-making.
The most important thing to do is to prepare before you go by knowing the common mistakes lost people make, and how you would overcome them. Think of it as a challenge if you do get lost. Practice maintaining sound judgment and a clear head. It’s best to stop, think things out, use whatever modality or device you can to calm yourself, and come up with a solid plan – a plan that will occupy your mind and help you make steps that will best aid those searching for you or your own self-rescue.
Many people run once they realize they are lost – usually either in circles or in the wrong direction completely. Sometimes they shed their clothes; some researchers theorize that the stress level gets so high that the lost person’s core temperature skyrockets.
In the book, I cover many search and rescue techniques and lost person behavior, with several personal anecdotes about this very thing.
Did the failure to find her result in changes to how search and rescue is handled?
Interestingly, I think the answer to that is no, not really. Everything done on the search for Gerry was by the book. It was a Herculean effort, and I believe if there were 10,000 searchers at the time, there is a great likelihood that she would still not have been found. That is how remote and treacherous that terrain is once you are off the trail. That is one of the sad parts of the story. If she knew what to do as a lost person, then by day four or five, she could have easily self-rescued. That is one of the crucial points in the book and is one of the sections that many of the readers have touched on in their communications with me.
This gives me hope that perhaps some of them have retained that crucial part and will know what to do if they find themselves in dire circumstances.
How do you feel about the use of technology as a way to avoid future tragedies like this one?
Clearly one of the takeaways from Gerry’s story is less about changes to how search and rescue operations are performed, and more about hikers’ reliance on technology, which has become an enormous part of any long distance hiking. At all of my talks at bookstores, schools, and libraries, invariably someone brings up cell service, phones, and other technology. I always try to bring the group I’m speaking to back to basics. “What if,” I ask them, “you’re lost in the woods and you slip crossing a tiny brook and smash your phone, or your phone charger, or your fancy solar charger?” There just seem to be scores of ways the reliance on technology alone can backfire on you in the woods. I use cell phones, but I also have a really good compass that weighs next to nothing, and I always have a map and a pretty good idea of where I am.
What did you learn from the search and rescue personnel during your research?
For many of the book talks, I’ve been accompanied by Dennis Haug, retired Navy Master Sergeant, survival and search and rescue expert, and one of the team leaders for the Navy during the search for Gerry. Paralleling part of the Appalachian Trail in western Maine are tens of thousands of acres owned by the Navy, home to the Navy’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape – or SERE – school. It is a code of conduct school for many branches of the military that teaches soldiers how to resist or evade capture or to escape from capture and how to survive on their own in the forest. Because of its proximity to the Appalachian Trail, the Navy sent several teams to comb their property, the AT, and other surrounding land in search of Gerry. Those Navy survival experts were sure that if she was lost on their property they would find her alive. When they didn’t, it was devastating for them. They felt they had left a “man behind.” To this day, those Navy personnel still struggle with it, as do the Maine state game wardens who worked so hard for weeks to find her.
Dennis speaks of his experience with great passion and emotion. Inspired by Gerry’s situation, he and another Navy survival expert are starting a search and rescue and survival course in New Hampshire.
How has the research and writing of this book, and the subsequent talks with readers around the country, changed you?
Every book you write changes your life. There’s so much effort and so much detail that goes into the process of writing a book that it becomes a part of you, and I think that’s amplified when it’s a biography. When You Find My Body isn’t technically a biography, but the telling of Gerry’s story follows the same process. This particular book changed me quite a bit because of the people who I met along the way.
I talked to 14 or 15 people who had hiked with Gerry, whose trail name was Inchworm, while she attempted her thru-hike in 2013. It became obvious pretty quickly that Gerry had profoundly affected those who knew her on the trail. It also became obvious that she was a wonderful lady: a recently retired nurse and someone who had an amazing love of life and learning. I traveled to 13 states conducting 32 formal interviews and sent out over 700 emails back and forth with hikers, family members, and lifelong friends of hers. Some of them have become friends.
Dottie Rust and Regina Clark were the last people on the trail to speak with Gerry. They spent the last night with her. Dottie took the well-known photograph of Gerry in her red jacket and beige hiking shorts leaving the Poplar Ridge shelter. Gerry became lost about two hours later and that interaction when Dottie took that photograph may have been the last human interaction Gerry had. My research assistant, Doug Comstock, and I agreed to accompany Dottie and her husband Mark into Gerry’s final campsite where she perished. It was a pilgrimage for Dottie. It was a very emotional, very poignant moment I think in all of our lives, so, yeah…that changes you.
What are a few things people should know or carry – and often don’t – before they undertake a multiday hike?
Quite simply, map, compass, and the skills to use them. We hope people prepare themselves mentally for being lost and prepare themselves physically so they won’t get lost. Take a local orienteering class. Purchase a decent compass and learn how to use it. Gain the confidence in yourself and your skills before you go so that, God forbid, if you do get lost, you will have the skills to help yourself get out of a tough situation.
I think the main lesson that emerged from the book is that while the Appalachian Trail mantra is hike your own hike, Gerry’s story underscores the importance of being prepared beyond fitness or mental preparation, and beyond having the stamina to put one foot in front of the other on the trail. It’s important to have basic survival skills and to improve your own spatial awareness of where you are on the trail.
Before writing the book, I told myself, if I write this and down the road I can help one person save themselves…if I can save one life, it was worth the effort and I will have done my job as a writer. Best of all, I think that would make Gerry happy.