Haplessly Lost in the Woods

"I survived basically off of rain water and puddle water. Anything I could find basically, and was lucky there were orange wild berries ... to eat around the 4th, 5th day."

"I found shelter in the trees where I could but had no phone or lighter for support or to depend on."

"I saw signs of bears yes, the markings and the scrapes on the trees, the droppings ... could sometimes hear them and the coyotes [or fox] not too far ... really scared but had to keep going."

Jenny McLaughlin, 34, Saint-Isidore, New Brunswick

Jenny McLaughlin; THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Jenny McLaughlin

"Employees were in the process of moving locations with the aid of a helicopter to prepare for the next day's events."

"Our employee disembarked off the  helicopter and when the helicopter flew away to gather more material our employee could hear a faint cry for help."

"The quick-thinking lineman immediately called for help and notified the rest of the crew."

East Coast Powerline statement

"Those workers did an outstanding job to stabilize her, to put her on a stretcher and give her first aid. It was a really rough terrain, a lot of swamps, a lot of dead wood."

"We had to do it with her on a stretcher and us walking because there was no way to evacuate her by helicopter, or with an ATV because the terrain was too rough."

RCMP Cpl.Kevin Plourde

She'd gone off for a casual hike in the woods. Never imagining that she would get lost. But she did. And she stayed lost for two weeks in the forest, where no one knew where she was, though search parties set out to find her after she was reported missing on July 17. Hiking through a forest is fascinating. You never know what you'll come across; odd vegetation, wildflowers, trees that are unusual, some giants and others merely mature among the striplings. There will be birds in flight, birds singing, and small mammals like squirrels and chipmunks rushing about.

And if you aren't familiar with the  terrain and the geology and fail to stay on a marked path you may find yourself lost. And that's quite the feeling. Suddenly what had been interesting, a living green landscape  to explore, benign and quite wonderful, becomes alien and forbidding; the thought of wild animals unseen but present, some of a size to equal your own, intrudes on a confused mind. Lost, tired, thirsty and hungry. You find temporary shelter, spend an uneasy, fearful night, then at dawn look for water. And like any other animal begin to forage for anything edible.

Two weeks of this, of cowering at night when darkness falls and sounds are amplified and your imagination runs overtime. Quite the experience that is. Bad enough if you had an equally lost companion sharing the experience. Daunting beyond measure on your own. You think of normalcy, of being at home, and the relief that is. You think of your family and imagine what they may be thinking and regret the impulse that took you from the trail you had followed to an area that definitely was off-trail.

Jenny McLaughlin was without a shadow of doubt extremely grateful to be rescued from her unexpected misery on Tuesday, two weeks after she failed to return home. Thinking about her family, she told her rescuers, invested her with the physical endurance needed to continue forging her way to what she must have felt would be bringing her closer to civilization, away from the raw unfamiliarity of a forest interior. She must have known that there was a search on for her, that the RCMP would have initiated a search.

Acadian Forest, Cape Breton, N.B.

Her vehicle was found at an ATV trail some 220 kilometres north of Moncton, her cellphone discovered in the woods last Saturday. Of little use to her there. Searchers could find no sign of her, however. Not until late Tuesday when linemen for East Coast Powerline were in the backwoods to perform maintenance work for New Brunswick Power. When she was rescued finally and brought out of the woods she was carried for 1.3 kilometres to approach the nearest trail that would be ambulance-accessible.

It was likely, thought police, that she had wandered in circles the last several days of her ordeal. In hospital where she was treated, she was found to have a few injuries; scraped ankles, sunburn, nothing that a period of rest at home wouldn't cure. Fortunate, she was, to have been found in the remote area where she had wandered into, a forest in climax, swampy areas, wetlands necessitating that anyone wandering about would have to proceed with care.

Fundy National Park, New Brunswick