It felt like hours before we found a gentler spot we could use to escape. I managed to grab one of smaller bags as it went by, but it only had snacks and water for the day in it. Everything else was lost—the map, the compass, the gps, and the phone. Funnily enough, I still had my cell phone on me and it worked, but when I checked, there was no signal. That wasn’t really unexpected, but it was then, as I stood dripping wet and cold, waving my arm around as though trying to catch a cell tower’s attention, that a stark realization began to replace the surreal shock of the last few minutes.

We were very, very fucked.

We had argued initially about what direction to go in. I suggested that we follow the river back up, see if we could recognize where we initially started rafting, and then try to follow our old trail back to where we were first dropped off, as we at least knew there were roads in that direction. Tony argued that we needed to keep heading like we had planned, as we were bound to hit the national forest and would have a better chance of finding people or a ranger station in that area. Also, he added, if it reached the point that there was going to be a search party, it was better to be closer to where people expected us to be. I wound up agreeing to his plan, both because I couldn’t say for sure which was the better option, and in part because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

Looking back on it, I feel like a fool.

In some ways, the next three days were the worst. We were both scared and sore and tired, and every day the limitations of our bodies and our survival knowledge were becoming more evident. Have you ever watched one of those survival shows and thought, “Hey, that’s not so bad. Who can’t last a few days out in the woods?”

Believe me, the reality is very different, particularly when you don’t have the safety net of a t.v. show to pull you out if you get too sick or weak to go on. By the fourth day, we were dehydrated and starving as we spent every day walking in the direction we hoped would get us to safety. The nights were worse—between the bugs and cold, we barely slept at all the first two nights. After that, we would collapse into exhausted sleep when we stopped for the day, but each morning it was harder to start going again. We had both developed hacking coughs, and I found my thoughts spiraling out in strange, incoherent directions as we kept up our zombie march east.