People are increasingly trading their privacy for a sense of security. Becoming a parent showed writer Jia Tolentino how tempting, and how dangerous, that exchange can be:
Shortly after I became pregnant with my second child, in the fall of 2022, I decided to try a modest experiment. I wanted to see whether I could hide my pregnancy from my phone. After spending my twenties eagerly surveilling and sharing the details of my life online, I had already begun trying to erect some walls of technological privacy: I’d deleted most apps on my phone and turned off camera, location, and microphone access for nearly all of the ones that I did have; I had disabled Siri—I just found it annoying—and I didn’t have any smart devices. For the experiment, I would abide by some additional restrictions. I wouldn’t Google anything about pregnancy nor shop for baby stuff either online or using a credit card, and neither would my husband, because our I.P. addresses—and thus the vast, matrixed fatbergs of personal data assembled by unseen corporations to pinpoint our consumer and political identities—were linked. I wouldn’t look at pregnancy accounts on Instagram or pregnancy forums on Reddit. I wouldn’t update my period tracker or use a pregnancy app.
Nearly every time we load new content on an app or a Web site, ad-exchange companies—Google being the largest among them—broadcast data about our interests, finances, and vulnerabilities to determine exactly what we’ll see; more than a billion of these transactions take place in the U.S. every hour. Each of us, the data-privacy expert Wolfie Christl told me, has “dozens or even hundreds” of digital identifiers attached to our person; there’s an estimated eighteen-billion-dollar industry for location data alone. In August, 2022, Mozilla reviewed twenty pregnancy and period-tracking apps and found that fifteen of them made a “buffet” of personal data available to third parties, including addresses, I.P. numbers, sexual histories, and medical details. In most cases, the apps used vague language about when and how this data could be shared with law enforcement. (A 2020 FOIA lawsuit filed by the A.C.L.U. revealed that the Department of Homeland Security had purchased access to location data for millions of people in order to track them without a warrant. ICE and C.B.P. subsequently said they would stop using such data.) The scholar Shoshana Zuboff has called this surveillance capitalism, “a new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales.” Through our phones, we are under perpetual surveillance by companies that buy and sell data about what kind of person we are, whom we might vote for, what we might purchase, and what we might be nudged into doing.
A decade ago, the sociology professor Janet Vertesi conducted a more rigorous form of the hidden-pregnancy experiment. Using an elaborate system of code words and the anonymous browser Tor, she managed to digitally hide her pregnancy all the way up to the birth of her child. In an article about the experience, for Time, she pointed to a Financial Times report, which found that identifying a single pregnant woman is as valuable to data brokers as knowing the age, gender, and location of more than two hundred nonpregnant people, because of how much stuff new parents tend to buy. She also noted that simply attempting to evade market detection—by, for example, purchasing stacks of gift cards in order to buy a stroller—made her and her husband look as though they were trying to commit fraud.
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In this well-reported, entertaining, yet depressing story, Adam Iscoe reports on how hard it is to snag a table at a trendy restaurant in NYC. The city’s restaurant reservation ecosystem is far from democratic, and services like Appointment Trader (an online marketplace for people to buy and sell reservations) and memberships like Dorsia (an exclusive club that can secure you tables at tough-to-book spots) have only made it worse.
So who are the resellers, mercenaries, and hustlers who provide Appointment Trader with prime tables? Some are people who sit with OpenTable or Resy pulled up on their laptops every morning, amassing reservations in various names. Some are kids who borrow their parents’ Amex black cards, telephone Amex’s Centurion concierge, and book hard-to-get tables that are set aside for card users. Others call in favors with friends in the industry, bribe maître d’s, or e-mail reservationists with made-up stories—a diehard foodie visiting town (“we have always been desperate to come and try your delicious looking Lasagna!”), or pretending to be the Queen of Morocco or the sister of the King of Saudi Arabia.
Alex Eisler, a sophomore at Brown University who studies applied math and computer science, regularly uses fake phone numbers and e-mail addresses to make reservations. When he calls Polo Bar, he told me, “Sometimes they recognize my voice, so I have to do different accents. I have to act like a girl sometimes.” He switched into a bad falsetto: “I’m, like, ‘Hiiii, is it possible to book a reservation?’ I have a few Resy accounts that have female names.” His recent sales on Appointment Trader, where his screen name is GloriousSeed75, include a lunch table at Maison Close, which he sold for eight hundred and fifty-five dollars, and a reservation at Carbone, the Village red-sauce place frequented by the Rolex-and-Hermès crowd, which fetched a thousand and fifty dollars. Last year, he made seventy thousand dollars reselling reservations.
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Cameron Gordon moved to Los Angeles for the same reason that so many other transplants do: to make it in Hollywood. He realized it’d be cheaper to sleep in his car than rent a hotel room, and eventually, he spent $15,000—his life savings—on three ambulances, one of which was good enough to drive around and sleep in. In this LA Times profile, Jack Flemming offers a glimpse into Gordon’s mobile lifestyle, and how—within this gray area between homelessness and homeownership—he has navigated the city’s rules and found creative solutions for living and working.
Gordon’s business model immediately took shape: Sleep in the ambulance at night and rent it out to film and television shoots during the day. He bought a domain name — ambulancefilmrentals.com — and quickly mastered the art of search engine optimization. If you Google “ambulance rental,” Gordon’s site will be among the top results.
With money flowing in from his rental business and no rent to pay, Gordon invested heavily in stocks and cryptocurrency. When the market boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic, he found himself with just enough money to buy an empty piece of land in Sun Valley for $65,000 in 2022.
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Alex Wigglesworth gives us a fascinating portrait of Danielle Wall, who has dedicated her life to rescuing rattlesnakes. Set high in the desert, this story exudes the Wild West—but modern-day environmental issues are what disturb these snakes.
Later that afternoon, after she ribbed the construction crew, Wall drives into the backcountry of Landers with three Tupperware-like containers in the backseat of her truck. Inside each, a rescue. When the ride gets bumpy, they rattle and hiss.
She pulls up a map on her phone. Rattlesnakes have to be relocated at least a half-mile from any occupied property, but ideally no more than a mile or two from where they were found. They rarely travel outside of a one-mile radius over the course of their lives.
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Growing up, you might have confessed your angst to a paper diary, a blog, or maybe Myspace. Now, as Jessica Lucas reports for The Verge, teens can turn to AI chatbots to pour out their woes. But what are the emotional and societal consequences of relying on bots for support? Are the kids going to be alright?
Eventually, Aaron turned to his computer for comfort. Through it, he found someone that was available round the clock to respond to his messages, listen to his problems, and help him move past the loss of his friend group. That “someone” was an AI chatbot named Psychologist.
The chatbot’s description says that it’s “Someone who helps with life difficulties.” Its profile picture is a woman in a blue shirt with a short, blonde bob, perched on the end of a couch with a clipboard clasped in her hands and leaning forward, as if listening intently.
A single click on the picture opens up an anonymous chat box, which allows people like Aaron to “interact” with the bot by exchanging DMs. Its first message is always the same. “Hello, I’m a Psychologist. What brings you here today?”
“It’s not like a journal, where you’re talking to a brick wall,” Aaron said. “It really responds.”
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The whole “I did X so you don’t have to” rarely delivers on its promise of sparing you horror—no one asked you to watch every Hallmark movie in a single week without getting up from the couch—but I have to admit that this one got me. As well-chronicled as Elon Musk’s descent into edgelorddom is, it’s also nearly impossible to appreciate his deeply unfunny thirst without drinking from the firehose. Props to Tim Murphy for sacrificing his time (and sanity) to do just that.
A lot of his time is just spent saying the same grim things, to the same grim people, over and over. He has the mannerism not of a master of the universe, but of the reply guys clamoring for their attention. Musk tweeted “DefundNPR” at Rufo three times in two days, like a man at a ballpark by himself, trying to start the wave. He will sometimes respond to the same post multiple times, hours apart with a slightly different reaction.
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Leyton Cassidy | Longreads | May 7, 2024 | 5,821 words
There is a moment—an imperceptibly fast one—when a human’s relationship to the natural world changes. For some, it is the slipping of a rock underfoot, a flash of lightning, the loss of light, a rustle right behind one’s back, or the sudden realization that they do not actually know how to read a map.
Nature encompasses a spectrum of two opposite extremes.
There is nature as a cathedral of the earth, an exquisite, never-ending wonder that transcends time and death and reminds its viewers that they are part of something larger and perfect.
Or there is a loved one at the bottom of a ravine, a piece of root skewering their body like a hors d’oeuvre. There are final breaths and desperate sounds of waning life that no one will ever hear.
Diary entry, August 2018:
On a bus right after sunset in Slovenia, 45 minutes outside of Ljubljana. Anxious. My bus was fifty minutes late so I will miss the last bus to Bohinj. Cannot do much now to figure that out. Five days on my own, completely in the woods. I will let myself get sentimental and cinematic. I will forcefully reflect and be forcefully absent of thought. I will try not to spiral.
A few years ago, in search of the sort of clean slate that only nature can offer, I set out on a five-day solo hike up Mount Triglav in Slovenia. While planning a European trip with my then-partner, I was left with free time at the end of the month (they were attending a conservative wedding in Austria that my gay ass was not invited to). To kill time in Europe is a gift, and I had always fantasized about hiking in the Alps. I wanted that après-ski, nature-girl fantasy. We’re talking crisp air, vibrant wildflowers, and long, strenuous days that end in nights filled with beer, moonlight, and wool socks.
I knew there were pre-arranged trips where you hike to remote hostels; it seemed like a perfect combination of cottagecore and outdoor adventure. Two months before the trip, I looked for expeditions in France, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland, but all reasonably priced ones had sold out years in advance. I landed on hiking Mount Triglav, which is, as I am finding out right now from Google, the highest mountain in Slovenia. Would you look at that?
Day one was an 11-mile ascent to a cabin set up for foolish, foolhardy souls like me. I had arrived in the capital the night before around midnight and taken a billion-euro taxi to the small but well-known town of Bohinj.
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I barely slept the night before; I was too excited. I got up early, put some things in a duffel to leave at the hotel, and set out. As I started my walk, I passed kayak and bike rentals, which comforted me. I was in a town famous for nature activities, giving me the impression I was somehow in safer hands. I stopped in the small grocery store and bought some food, mostly peaches. I made a phone call, the town dropping behind me as I said, “Goodbye, I love you!” The presence of human life started to thin; I was submerged in storybook pastures. The hills were alive with the sound of music. Blonde teenagers sat outside a log cabin drinking beer in the morning. They glanced up as I entered the woods alone.
A few families out on day hikes passed me as I headed alongside a jade-colored stream towards Hudičev Most (Devil’s Bridge). The gravel path soon turned to gnarled roots and stray rocks; looking back, the trail was comically foreboding, like Mother Nature trying to remind me that I am a complete idiot who didn’t do much research. I came to a shack with a small, white-haired man inside. I assumed he had been guarding Devil’s Bridge for centuries. I answered his riddles three and he gestured for me to sign in. At the end of his hand was a damp pile of papers and a pen on a gray string. Like most sign-out sheets, the “out” column had been incredibly neglected, making it look like no one emerges alive.
In 1959, 10 Russians, nine of whom were students of the nearby Polytechnic Institute, went hiking in the Ural Mountains through what is now known as the Dyatlov Pass. They had planned a 200-mile skiing and mountaineering expedition (even now I am thrilled at the idea of participating in such a trip, despite knowing how this story ends, which is a bad sign). Towards the beginning of the trip, one of the students got injured and turned around while the other nine continued, led by a 23-year-old (which is too young to be leading anything). All nine died from unknown causes. Their tent was found containing all of their belongings and cut open from the inside with a knife. The hikers’ bodies were scattered, found over months as the snow thawed. Two almost naked bodies were discovered first. Three more were found seemingly headed back to base camp from somewhere else. All five had technically died of hypothermia. While their nakedness is strange, it can be explained by “paradoxical undressing,” which is when the body becomes hot in the final stages of hypothermia.
Two months later, the remaining four bodies were found in a ravine, all with extreme internal injuries not consistent with a fall: no cuts, scrapes, or bruises were found on their bodies, yet they had numerous broken bones and ruptured organs. Some of them were found dressed in the missing clothes of the other hikers who had died miles away. Some of the clothes had high radiation exposure. There were no signs of foul play. Until recently there were many half-baked theories about their deaths: military experiments, a strange storm, wind (which is stupid), and other cobbled-together arguments. A passionate few think that Bigfoot did it, which is the only scientifically sound argument. Radioactive Bigfoot.
Some of them were found dressed in the missing clothes of the other hikers who had died miles away. Some of the clothes had high radiation exposure. There were no signs of foul play.
The Russian government decided to reopen the case in 2019 and concluded that the deaths were caused by an avalanche. Initially, the government did not offer any transparency regarding their conclusion, which only fanned the flames of theorists who favored a government-related military cover-up. But while avalanche seems too simple an answer, it surprisingly holds water. Many avalanche scientists (dream job) tied up the loose ends by looking at tests done by car companies to design seat belts, wherein they broke 100 cadavers’ bones in different ways. Even weirder, one of the scientists saw how well the animators for Disney’s Frozen replicated the effects of snow against a human’s body, contacted them, and applied their codes to their Dyalatov research to support the avalanche theory. Based on the way the tent was set on top of a pair of skis, they concluded that a small SUV-sized avalanche could have legitimately killed all nine hikers in what can only be called a weather anomaly. So apparently the wind people won.
I’m on a tangent. The Dyalotov Pass tragedy is not my story. But it did linger in my mind as I wove through the trees. Every time a rock came loose, I thought of my body half naked, cracked and twisted in the roots of some Slovenian tree, nothing but a strange mystery.
As I continued on the trail, I became more and more alone. I had passed a few groups before, but at no point had I seen a solo hiker. A mirage-like cafe appeared in the middle of the woods. I was roughly three miles from the town, and the cups and waitresses put me at ease. I sat down to journal and grab a coffee. After writing a long entry about the racist conversation going on at the next table, I signed off with the following:
Partway through my first LONG day. . . . It’s beautiful here. Raining though, but only a little.
I left my water bottle in that cafe. An artifact.
The signs for the hutch I was staying in were painted wooden arrows that read: velo polje – triglav. The rain had slowed, and I felt like I was in the clear. All that was ahead of me was a challenging and athletic day, full of wonder and trees. Oh! But not so fast! I saw a flash of lightning; two minutes later, a boom. The lightning was far away.
The last picture I took of myself that day was a selfie by a wooden sign. I have on a goofy smile and my favorite baseball hat. I had stopped to eat a peach. Later, this picture would become terrifying.
Then came the real rain.
Two twenty-something women went missing while hiking near Boquete, Panama, on April Fool’s Day of 2014. I’m on Google Images right now—look up “Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon.” You’ll find a picture of one of them in a striped red tank top, looking over her shoulder as she ducks under low-hanging trees. The forest is so thick that it seems to build a dead end in the background; it looks like the type of wall that would form behind you as you enter Narnia.
The young ladies were staying with a host family, who first became worried when their dog, who had accompanied the girls on the hike, returned alone. Ten weeks after they were reported missing, authorities found a backpack with their cellphones, a camera, bras, and some cash—all dry and in fine condition. Their phone had several failed calls to Peruvian emergency services. Their digital camera showed that 90 photos were taken a week after they went missing, between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m., mostly of nothing but dark woods. It seemed as if one of them used the flash as a torch. Would I have thought to do that? Later, a folded pair of jean shorts were found on the side of a trail. Then, even later, pristine human bone remains were spotted downstream—including an intact foot in a hiking boot. No one has ever been able to piece together what happened, or whether it was foul play.
The rain is now consistent, and I am cold to my core. My heart pumps what feels like half-frozen, stale blood. The lightning and thunder strikes get closer together and light up the now-dim forest. I am in a thick section of the woods and well aware that lightning can strike trees; I am sure to not touch anything. I lean heavily on my hiking poles and the rocks feel like ice. The switchbacks are torture: tons of little, sadistic hairpin turns. The water adds the weight of a toddler to my backpack. There is nothing but scree underfoot and each step is incredibly precarious. The grade is so steep that I scramble on my hands, using roots like the holds on a bus. My poles are irrelevant and drag behind me, attached to my wrists. The trail signs have been downgraded from painted words on wood to dots spray-painted on the occasional rock in some unexplained color code. After seeking an illusion of shelter under a beech tree, I pull over to look at my laminated trail guides, shaking droplets from my now useless glasses.
I have lost myself on my map.
In the summer of 1989, two hikers got lost in Daisetsuzan National Park in Japan. Their goal was to summit the highest point in the park, Asahi-dake. The trail was initially straightforward, but once the two men got above the timberline, they found themselves in the same predicament as many hikers before.
As the trees begin to disappear, navigation can become difficult. On Asahi-dake, hikers are told to look for a big square boulder, known as Safe Rock. If they follow the trail behind Safe Rock, they will be on the right path up to the summit. Unfortunately, and infuriatingly, in the same area as Safe Rock, there is another big, square boulder called False Safe Rock, which leads hikers down a path into a valley with a bamboo forest so thick that you can fall off a cliff that you didn’t see. This. Seems. Like. A Thing. That. Would. Be. Stupid. Easy. To. Fix.
Anyway, the two hikers unfortunately took the path behind False Safe Rock, because they aren’t ROCK MIND READERS and were consequently lost for days. A search party was sent out, and eventually, a helicopter took a turn towards an area that was a little farther east than they had been looking before and found a massive SOS sign, made of birch logs, in a clearing. Two hours later, the two hikers were found on the brink of death and rushed to the hospital.
They survived (for a change) and the whole debacle seemed to have reached a tidy ending. However, when the pilot of the helicopter saw them in the hospital and said something to the effect of, “If you guys hadn’t made that massive SOS sign, I would have never found you,” the two hikers seemed confused. They had not made any sign, they said.
The pilot alerted the authorities and the search continued. This is not a story of a pilot having visions; the SOS sign was still there. Apparently, there was someone else trapped in this bamboo nightmare that needed to be saved. They eventually found a backpack in a hole under the roots of a tree. Inside was a license belonging to Kenji Iwamura, a 25-year-old who had gone missing five years earlier. Along with his license in the backpack was a tape recording of a man screaming “S-O-S!”—it’s very distressing to listen to.
‘If you guys hadn’t made that massive SOS sign, I would have never found you,’ the two hikers seemed confused. They had not made any sign, they said.
Police found a skeleton nearby that was initially identified as belonging to a female between 20 and 40. The fragments were later said to belong to several people but were later concluded to be Iwamura’s.
However, Iwamura’s parents could not confirm with certainty that the voice on the recording belonged to their son. It also would have been physically impossible for a single person to make the SOS sign. The wood was chopped with an ax, but no ax was found anywhere. Each of the 19 logs was massive, and Iwamura was not very physically strong and would have been without food and water for days. Adrenaline can be a game changer, so I’m not as struck by the strength issue, but I am confused about the ax. Did he stumble on 19 pre-cut logs in the Japanese wilderness? If so, who put them there?
I scan the miniaturized trail, trying to squeeze information out of my rain-soaked Slovenian map. I have no clue how far away my cabin is. I pray to an unidentified god and slip the map back into my pocket. I reach a fork. I flip a coin. I start to plan for a night alone in the woods. I still have plenty of water, a few peaches, and two cans of tuna fish. I could collapse in the mud and wait until the sun rises, but I don’t. My body won’t stop moving. Hours, or seconds, or weeks, continue to go by. With each breath, I let out a strained sound, which graduates to a yell. I start to sob. I turn off my phone, which has no reception and is dying. The rain is going sideways now and trees are whipping around like balloons out a car window. It is deafening, and even though it is only two in the afternoon, I can only fully see the trail when the lightning flashes. I chant to myself above the roaring forest:
YOU WILL NOT MOTHERFUCKING GO MISSING
It wasn’t the first time I had spent the night in the woods in less-than-ideal circumstances. A year earlier I was in a flooded tent in Vermont, in a rainstorm, trying to decide between being naked but dryish, outside my sleeping bag, or soaked but maybe warmer inside it. I opted for the squishy, lukewarm sleeping bag. There was actual water pooled at the bottom. I had to pull my legs into my chest to avoid having my feet in it all night. I slept for maybe 30 minutes. I woke up next to my tentmate, in my underwear, pale and pruned, so delirious from the long night that when I stepped out of my tent barefoot onto warmed moss, I went on some diatribe about how I had been inducted into this forest and last night was part of a hazing process by the cosmos . . . that I had passed.
When I look back at this, I realize that I had started to become hypothermic that night. My body was shaking so badly that it induced a panic attack—not from fear and anxiety, but the speed and intensity at which I was shaking. There have been other times when I have lost my motor skills and slurred my speech, both of which are signs of second-stage hypothermia.
I had thought that a person should be scared of hypothermia and do something when they start to feel warm—because that means the body is just beginning to shut down—when in reality a feeling of warmth means that it is most likely already too late. Most people who die in the woods from something other than a fall die at night, when it’s colder; with search and rescue often needing to wait until light to look for people.
The reality is you can start becoming hypothermic at 63ºF if you are wet, which I was, that day on Triglav. When I thought about my potential night in the woods, I imagined something uncomfortable and traumatizing, but not deadly. It probably would have been.
Day hikers are the most vulnerable because they aren’t prepared. Stupid hikers are also vulnerable because they aren’t prepared.
I have always known in the back of my mind that one of my stupid ideas would end badly. I think of the blizzards I’ve skied through and my calloused hand on rocks two stories above the ground, untethered to anyone below. I think about my broken ankle, broken nose, ribs, and shoulder, and all my concussions. I have watched all the cautionary shows and listened to the horrifying podcasts. I know about shark-bitten surfers and mountain bikers bleeding out in the middle of nowhere. So how did I get here? Ignoring the weather forecast with a damp, useless map from some random, unvetted travel company? Why did my brain block out the risks? Why had there not been even a tremor of doubt through the fantasies of being some new Walt Whitman-Cheryl Strayed hybrid?
I think it’s because I also know about cars coming out of nowhere. I know about angry men in the night. I know about unstoppable, internal attacks in our own bodies, and all of the millions of other ways to stop existing.
I know about shark-bitten surfers and mountain bikers bleeding out in the middle of nowhere. So how did I get here? Ignoring the weather forecast with a damp, useless map from some random, unvetted travel company?
I also know about my brain—my fairly sick brain—and about the time I lay on the floor of my apartment for hours with a knife in my hand, waffling back and forth on whether or not to kill myself. I know about my pants around my ankles as a nurse took pictures of my bruised legs before she showed me my sheetless bed at the John Muir Behavioral Unit. I know that when I don’t take my meds for two days, every single thing, every breeze, every streetlight, every bus or bird or cloud, breaks my heart. When I think about dying, I don’t get upset, which is why I do not understand why, at this moment, here in the woods, in genuine peril, I am so terrified.
But when a plane crashes into the ocean, and they never find it, the bodies rarely rise to the surface. They stay strapped in, arms in the air as if on a rollercoaster, their bodies being continually manipulated by their killer. I decide this is what scares me. I am terrified of never being seen again. If I go missing, I will rob my loved ones of any peace for the rest of their lives. I can’t handle that sort of responsibility.
I am so alone. I have been screaming and no one but God has heard.
I bow my soaked head and am met by the sight of thousands of little black salamanders. In retrospect, they are my tiny saviors. There, in arm’s reach, are living, breathing souls scuttling around my feet—they look like city dwellers seen from up high, all late to work. They are about two inches long, and when they move together, they look like a stream made from tar. I have never seen anything so black. They are in their home, and I am a visitor. It would break my heart to accidentally skewer one of my new companions with my hiking poles—so now I have a mission. With each step, I place my poles with purpose, in a worthy partnership with these thousands of souls. It feels like either the moment before I die, or the moment I pull through. I whisper “hello” and “how are you” to each one I see. And yes, this sounds dramatic, but that’s because it was.
In 2003, Rob Osbourne and Gareth Watts were hiking the Big South Trail in Bellevue, Colorado. About a mile and a half in, they decided to go off the trail to scramble up a rocky mountainside. High above the established trail they spotted a small, white tennis shoe tucked among the rocks. They immediately knew whose it was.
Four years prior, Allyn Atadero had recieved a call from a friend in his Christian singles group: “It’s Jaryd . . . He’s okay, we just can’t find him.” That morning Atadero’s kids, six-year-old Josallyn and three-year-old Jaryd, had begged their dad to let them join some of the group on an excursion to a nearby hatchery. Atadero decided to let them go.
For reasons no one seems to remember, the party changed their plans—without alerting Atadero—and headed to the Big South Trail, 13 miles up the road. Big South Trail is rated “hard” on AllTrails, an app that famously downplays the difficulty of the trails it ranks. There are a bunch of TikToks about getting gaslit by AllTrails.
Jaryd was running around, playing with sticks, and doing that thing where toddlers show you how they have more stamina than anyone else in the world. But around a mile and a half from the trailhead, he ran ahead and the group lost track of him. Soon after his absence was noticed, a scream was heard up the trail.
The search for Jaryd lasted eight days. Dive teams went into the river, search dogs snaked through the woods, and someone was always planted where Jaryd went missing, yelling his name—just in case. Coverage of the search became even more gripping and hopeless when one of the rescue helicopters crashed while trying to navigate the difficult terrain, severely injuring two of the occupants.
Not a trace of Jaryd was found.
Once Osbourne and Watts discovered the shoe, a new search began. Police said the area had been searched before, but somehow a second go at it unearthed Jaryd’s other shoe, jacket, inside-out sweatpants, partial skull, and tooth.
Theories range, the most probable being a mountain lion attack. But Atadero is determined to prove it could not have been an animal predator. No forensic evidence of an attack was found on Jaryd’s clothes, and mountain lions often go for the stomach, which, according to Jaryd’s sweater, was untouched. In a documentary featuring the case—Missing 411—Atadero also points out the white shoes. How could his son get dragged by a mountain lion and come away with clean shoes?
But, in the woods, can evidence really be preserved? When there is a “lack” of something, is that enough to build a case off of? There is rain, snow, wind, heat, animals, etc. At their least invasive, each person that passes through any stretch of nature kicks up rocks and dirt, and at their most invasive, eviscerates acres.
Atadero keeps the part of Jaryd’s skull in a box at his new home in Littleton. While holding the bowl-like bone fragment in the documentary, he reflects on returning to the mountains: “When you come up and you see the beauty and you think, did my son lose his life up here? I think to myself, gee Jaryd . . . you sure picked a beautiful place to hang out.”
Then there it was: the hutch, peeking out of the fog. The first building in eight miles. Tears and sweat meet in my mouth. Cows graze in the rain, unfazed. Once inside I head straight to my room without dinner. I get naked and cry a lot. My breath is hoarse from screaming. I am so scared about the decision I will have to make tomorrow, because, despite all logic, I am invested in finishing this. But for whom?
I put my wet clothes back on and go outside to find a spot of reception to message my partner. The last message I had sent her was: “I’m in a storm. I am scared.” I get a tiny bar of a signal, send the message, and fifty percent of my anxiety goes away. I take four Xanax and film a video so that it can feel like I am talking to someone. Part of me knows that I will try and sweep this feeling under the rug. In the video, I look like I am in The Blair Witch Project. My face is ghostly white, and I have tears dried on my cheeks. I speak softly, my head bundled in a hat, sweater, and blanket. I cannot bear to remember that I put myself in that position. I cannot watch the video, even now. I go to bed at seven.
Tears and sweat meet in my mouth. Cows graze in the rain, unfazed. Once inside I head straight to my room without dinner. I get naked and cry a lot. My breath is hoarse from screaming.
I wake up at dawn and have bread, jam, and black coffee. It’s still raining; this place must be amazing in the sun. Just beautiful.
Woke up this morning at five—kept falling asleep to dreams of being in Venice. It’s so beautiful here that it breaks my heart, but I don’t think I should do this alone. It breaks my little heart. The roof of my mouth hurts from breathing. Today will be easier. But still very dangerous. My loved ones would tell me to turn around. I would want my loved ones to turn around. It will probably rain all day. Literally, my best option is to hike down 11 miles in the rain. Getting down intothe trees will be most difficult. But once I’m there I’ll have a little reception and some cover.
Hallelujah.
There is too much fog to be able to see.
Ok. Gonna go pack up and head out. It’s 7:15 a.m. If I take as long as I did yesterday that’s 8ish to 4 p.m. Probably will be less. Plans change like the weather.
I stand on the porch. To my right is the rest of my hike, the one that I had originally planned. Probably as scary as yesterday. I see other hikers in the hutch have helmets hanging off of their bags, a lifesaving piece of equipment that hadn’t even crossed my mind.
To the left is a different kind of discomfort, one that would come from turning around on what I thought could be enlightenment. I had paid money for these hutch reservations, and I had told everybody about my plan. Everyone would know if I didn’t make it. I am an ex-competitive ski racer, and not giving up despite overwhelming pain has been sewn into every ligament and bone of my body. I always thought that there are few things more rewarding than pushing through discomfort and doubt to something amazing on the other side. I have always loved the experiences that I have earned in some way. Turning back, despite the likelihood that I am saving my life, is a difficult concept to feel comfortable with.
Either way, either decision, I am giving up on myself. I stand in the fog with the cows. I look left, back at the trail I have already taken.
Above 8,000 meters on Everest is called “The Death Zone.” Robbed of oxygen, decisions become reckless, and finishing the hike becomes a goal worth dying for. Whether from lack of oxygen or exhaustion, humble people have been reported to turn into competitive, risk-taking, careless athletes within minutes. They ignore the signs of their bodies failing until they collapse into their own deathbeds. Even today, frozen bodies litter the path as grotesque trail markers for others’ ascent, some to certain death.
Despite my pride, I turn left.
Even though I was heading back down a trail I had already walked, I still felt imminent danger. I was retracing steps that I had initially made in a state of incredible panic. When I think back on the day before, I only remember flashes—snapshots from the nightmare that had snuck through cracks in the trauma wall my brain had already built. My memories still feel like photos I had taken and then printed out and shuffled, two-dimensional and devoid of all senses.
The salamanders were not out anymore, but I stared at the rocks all the same, willing them to show themselves so I could thank them for yesterday.
I thought about the places that would be markers to me, the various clearings or drastic changes in gradient that would signify how many miles I had left. The hike down was not fun, merely a countdown. I checked my phone constantly, hoping for enough reception to WhatsApp my partner so that she would A) know I was safe and B) help me find somewhere to sleep that night. Bohinj is small and I was worried that there wouldn’t be anywhere with an opening. I would have been fine with sleeping on a park bench for a night, as long as I wasn’t in those goddamn mountains anymore.
My memories still feel like photos I had taken and then printed out and shuffled, two-dimensional and devoid of all senses.
I got through the salamander rocks, through the clearing, to the hairpins, all the while thinking about nothing but getting to safety. I made my way down the path that went along the jade-colored stream. I decided to stop, for the first time in the whole hike, and take off my hiking boots to put my feet in the water. They were blindingly pale from being in socks that never dried. In the water, they looked like some type of albino fish. I knew that, since I had gotten to the stream, the most difficult parts of the hike were over, so I changed to my Chacos to let my feet dry. I passed through Devil’s Bridge again and came to the cafe that I had passed the day before. It was incredibly crowded. They only served hot soup, pie, and Turkish coffee. The pie and the coffee were great.
A couple more miles to go. I got through the nightmare and now am stopped having coffee and pie at the cafe. All my clothes are soaked and my back hurts like hell. But I’m so close. Ema got me a hotel room. All is fine, all is good. I am alive and happy. I don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow. It doesn’t matter. Sleep in and rest my body.
[Drawing of my blueberry pie. Drawing of my Turkish coffee. No sugar.]
Ok. Onto the final stretch. I keep seeing the same blonde Spanish woman and her group. She is kind and distinct. They are leaving now from this same cafe, so I will wait. They are a whole group of friends. They’ve done this right.
I remember this woman kept looking back at me, a sympathetic, worried wobble in her chin. She looked at me as if she too had tried to climb some stupid mountains, all alone in her early twenties. A pink helmet swung off her backpack like a flashing neon sign that I had done this all wrong. She smiled at me, tenderly, skillfully, often. Wherever you are, you blonde, tall Spanish drink of water, you made me realize that turning around was the correct choice. Hope that you are well.
I finished the hike down and checked into my hotel room. The only room open was at a sort of fancy place, and there I was in the lobby covered in dirt, bleeding from a cut on my leg, and so tired that I was slurring my speech. I could tell by the way people were glancing at me that I looked like that guy from The Revenant. I went up to my room and cried, hard. I took off all of my clothes and looked at my naked body in the mirror. I was astounded to see that I already looked stronger than I had two days ago. I saw my abs for the first time since . . . well, ever. I took a picture. I went to sleep.
Since doing this hike, I have found out that I was hiking in something called The Bohinj Triangle. In the last 30 years, six people have gone missing. It being named “The Bohinj Triangle” implies something mysterious and malevolent. While that is possible (anything’s possible), that was not the vibe I got from the whole ordeal. It just felt genuinely dangerous, in an earthly, explainable way. Bohinj is a small town that attracts a lot of international nature enthusiasts, which means it is harder for families back home in other countries to know when people have gone missing. There is no reception, and the terrain is dangerous—all the ingredients for one of those tragedies that is really no one’s fault.
Had I gotten hurt, I would not have even known what number to call. I am so embarrassed to say that to you, reader! What is wrong with me? For your information, all of Europe uses the same emergency number, and it is 112. Apparently, it can be dialed from anywhere in the world. Now you know.
One of the missing people from The Bohinj Triangle was a 25-year-old man named Jonathan Luskin, who had traveled to Europe from Wisconsin. Bohinj was one of his many stops along what seemed to be a typical, young adult, European romp. He went missing in June of 2018.
Two hikers stumbled upon his skeleton in the winter of the same year. His skull had a large, fatal crack across the face. It seems as if he had fallen off the trail. As I screamed in the rain, Luskin’s body lay decomposing a few feet out of my sight.
I imagine my peach pit falling from my wet hand, rolling down to the left where perhaps it found itself in the crook of Luskin’s neck, touching the bones that had just begun to show.
This essay began as part of an MFA thesis anthology, a snippet of which is excerpted online here.
Leyton Cassidy is a writer and summer camp professional from Arroyo Seco, New Mexico. Her work has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, The Columbia Journal, Entropy Mag, The Weekly Humorist, and Vagabond Journal. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia University and a GED from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
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