Lost in the Wild: Danger and Survival in the North Woods Audiobook (Free)

In the wilderness, one false step can make the difference between a delightful respite and a brush with death.

On a lovely summer afternoon in 1998, Dan Stephens, a twenty-two-year-old canoeist, was leading a vacation deep into Ontario’s Quetico Provincial Recreation area. He stepped right into a gap among cedar trees to look for the next portage-and did not return. A lot more than four hours afterwards, Dan awakened from a fall using a lump on his head and stumbled deeper into the woods, confused.

Three years later, about Lost in the open: Danger and Survival in the North Woods Jason Rasmussen, a third-year medical student who loved the forest’s solitude, walked alone into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness on the crisp fall day. After a two-day trek into a remote area of the woods, he stepped from his campsite and produced some seemingly trivial mistakes that left him separated from his items, wet, and dropped, as cool darkness fell.

Enduring days without food or shelter, these men faced the full harsh pressure of wilderness, the area that that they had searched for for tranquil refuge from city life. Lost in the Wild will take listeners with them because they enter realms of pain, dread, and courage, as they suffer dizzying confusion and unending disappointment, and because they get over seemingly insurmountable hurdles in a race to survive.