Disorientation Oriented
"The only option I had was life or death."
"I heard this voice that said, 'If you want to live, keep going'. And as soon as I would doubt my intuition and try to go another way than where it was telling me, something would stop me, a branch would fall on me, I'd stub my toe, or I'd trip."
"So I was like, 'OK, there is only one way to go'."
"I wanted to go back the way I'd come, but my gut was leading me another way -- and I have a very strong gut instinct. So, I said, my car is this way and I'm just going to keep going until I reach it."
"I was getting so skinny that I was really starting to doubt if I could survive."
"I looked up [after two weeks in the bush] and they [search helicopter] were right on top of me. I was like, 'Oh my God', and I just broke down and started bawling."
Amanda Eller, 35, physical therapist, yoga instructor, Wailuku, Hawaii
"I just felt that she was alive. I was pretty much telling myself or telling everybody if we haven’t found her, if we haven’t smelled her, then that’s because she’s on the move and she’s moving out. She’s just way farther out than we think she is."For 17 days the lost young woman survived by remaining close to a water source, even as she travelled at speed in desperation to find her way out of the dense, thick vegetation she was surrounded with, eating wild raspberries and strawberry guavas to stay alive. She now also knows what moths taste like; anything she could grab and devour that wouldn't kill her but might prolong her life was fair game.
"I think a lot of her survival has to do with who she is. Her experience in the forest itself, her knowledge of the vegetation, but in reality her physical therapy, her expertise in the human anatomy." "I think that her injuries, she was able to treat them and treat herself and pretty much be able to assess her situation out in the field and be able to move forward with those injuries."
"We went way past cloud nine. And then getting there and actually hugging her and being a part of it, you know, actually Troy and Chris, they had never met Amanda before."
"That was actually the first time they had ever been with her ... so wrapping my arms around her was the greatest moment I can say about my life."
Javier Cantellops, one of three searcher/rescuers
The Hawaiian woman found it a struggle not to just give up trying to extricate herself from the impossible situation she found herself in; desolate, lost, losing hope. Injured but alive, she was found on Friday in the Makawao Forest Reserve. From the Maui town of Haiku, Amanda Eller decided on May 8 to drive her white Toyota RAV4 to a forest, the Makawao Forest Reserve. There, she left her vehicle in the parking lot. Inside was her phone and her wallet. She had decided she would go for a short hike.
Why anyone would leave their phone and wallet behind, not take them with her is a mystery only she can answer to. But the vehicle, sitting unclaimed in the parking lot was evidence that someone was lost. Identification was easy enough, and in response hundreds of volunteers took part in a massive search for the whereabouts of the young woman. Her parents put together a $10,000 reward hoping that might serve as an incentive for people to look for and find their daughter.
The short trail walk that Amanda Eller had envisaged turned out to be anything but, once she left the path to rest. When she decided to resume hiking, she lost the trail. A bit of disorientation that could happen to anyone, and she was the candidate this time. Her immediate goal was to return to the forest parking lot to retrieve her car. Instead, as it happened, listening with confidence to her instinct, she kept delving deeper into the forest.
At one juncture she fell from a cliff, fracturing her leg, tearing the meniscus in her knee. When 17 days had passed of endless wandering, she heard a helicopter overhead and understood that what she was looking at was her rescue. Three men, Javier Cantellops, Chris Herquist and Troy Helmers spotted the young woman at 3:45 p.m. on Friday, close to the Kailua reservoir, in an area of thick vegetation. "That vegetation is so thick, it's a miracle that we saw her", said Cantellope.
But they did. And she survived her ordeal.
 |
| Today |
Labels: Human Condition, Lost and Found
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, May 28, 2019
<< Home