The person we rescued would never see us. She would never know what it was like to try and get to her on her an icy pinnacle, her potential grave, at midnight. She was unconscious for all of her rescue. She passed out on top of Beacon Rock in the Gorge one January night after drinking a whole bottle of rum and doing whatever drugs she and her boyfriend had with them.  He couldn’t wake her.  He went for help.

I was sitting in a warm house with a good book and a fire going when I got the call.  Our search and rescue group was called out. It was gusting to 70 miles an hour here in the Gorge and the temperatures were around 20 degrees farinheight, with a wind chill that was much lower.  We needed to dress warm, take good lights and all our rope gear for carrying someone down a steep treacherous trail.  I clearly remember trying to walk across the highway from my car in full rescue gear sliding on the ice-sheathed road blown out of control by the winds. I remember her drunken singing and foul language, which were the only sounds as we toiled away to bring her down safely. None of us talked as the words were blown away anyway. The EMT’s who were administering care on the way down were very worried that she would die. But, happily she walked out of the hospital the next day around 10:00AM and she wasn’t even too hung over.

I also remember the guy who jumped off a dark ladder in a mineshaft thinking that the bottom must be a couple of feet down.  After his thirty-foot fall into rebar, debris and into a cold rocky creek he was in bad, bad shape. One of our SAR group repelled down to him and found that he was still alive.  Then, fortunately, the mine owners showed up and let us know there was an easier way to get to him.  I remember running up a creek in a mineshaft on slippery rocks trying to help get the stretcher into him as fast as we could when my headlamp went dead.  Knowing I was soon to be another liability to the team I dropped off.  In seconds I was in a very weird spot.  In complete darkness and alone with cold water washing around my boots I had to carefully carry out the procedure of replacing batteries in my headlamp. If I dropped anything it would be gone. I blindly moved my pack to where I could unzip it and by feel found the batteries.  Meanwhile the mineshaft creaked and leaked around me ominously. I opened the case to the headlamp while trying not to drop the fresh batteries and got the old ones out. Then I realized that there was no way, except by trial and error, to put the batteries in the right direction.  At that moment I was as near to personal panic as I have ever been on a rescue. I had to have a talk with myself.  I told myself my life was not in danger immediately but if I stayed stupid it would be. I made myself breathe and take a minute for reflection.  I devised a plan. Carefully, one battery at a time I felt inside for the little spring that pushed the negative side of the battery into the contact. After doing this for three little batteries my headlamp was lit again.  As I replaced my pack I looked around. I almost panicked again. Had I moved very far in the dark I would have fallen into a deeper trench to the side of the main tunnel. Yikes.  I moved back down the swift slippery stream towards the entrance with unsteady steps. When I had gone about fifty feet the team of firemen and rescue personal came careening down the shaft with at stretcher full speed.  As they went by, a teammate asked me if I was OK? I yelled an affirmative and he tossed me some extra gear to carry out, my small contribution to the rescue. I was never so glad in my life to see “the light at the end of the tunnel”, a cliché whose graphic meaning will never be the same to me again. When I got out, the team was administering serious emergency first aide to a now combative, unconscious subject and needed me to help hold him down while we waited for a helicopter.

Then there was the night that my search team took a break on a brushy ridge at 2:00AM. We were searching for a lost huckleberry picker who had been lost two days. He was in his 80’s and most people believed he had expired. As we stopped to drink and eat something, I looked around at the absolutely gorgeous August night and thought that I would never in my life have been there at that time of night to appreciate the full beauty if I wasn’t on a rescue. The man was eventually found alive and in good health after three nights out much to the surprise of many.  His rescue is a long story but my personal memories of it are a treasure of wonder that a night awake in the wilderness could be so magical.

We don’t always see or know our rescuers and perhaps that is true in all of life. Being an anonymous rescuer is a personal gift only you can give to yourself.