The Tao of Travel

Later: "We have not washed now for two months. Catching a chance glimpse of my face in the sextant's mirror the other day gave me a terrible fright. I am so disfigured that I am unrecognizable, covered as I am with a thick layer of filth. And we all look like this. We have tried to rub off some of this dirt, but without much success. As a result we look even more frightening, almost as if we were tattooed! Our underclothes and outer garments are unspeakable. And since these underclothes are swarming with 'game' [lice], I am sure that if we put one of our infested jerseys on the ground, it would crawl away all by itself!"

Dougal Robertson: Survive the Savage Sea (1973)

OF THE MANY accounts of sudden sinkings, and survival at sea in a raft, this book stands out as coolly observed, detailed, and eloquent in its stoicism. After a year of sailing, the Lucette, a well-made but fifty-year-old yacht, is rammed by a pod of killer whales just west of the Galápagos Islands. It sinks in a minute, and Captain Robertson has only enough time to launch a dinghy and an inflatable to save himself, his wife, their twin sons, their daughter, and a teenage friend.

This is the beginning of a 37-day, 750-mile voyage, and after the dinghy sinks, they are crammed into the leaky inflatable, living on rations for a short time and then on fish that they catch and the occasional turtle, battling storms and twenty-foot waves and huge ocean swells. The group also endures bickering between husband and wife, the fear and weakness of the children, sharks, sores, boils, heavy rain, and near capsizes. Robertson, who had been a farmer in rural England, is resourceful in fashioning tools and catching fish and turtles. Many pages describe the catching and butchering of turtles on the tiny raft; the drying and preparation of meat; the manner by which rainwater is trapped and kept.

One is convinced, before the book ends, that the Robertsons could have made it to land on their own—they were spotted by a Japanese fishing boat 290 miles off the coast of Costa Rica.

"'Our ordeal is over,' I said quietly. Lyn and the twins were crying with happiness ... I put my arms about Lyn feeling the tears stinging my own eyes. 'We'll get these boys to land after all.' As we shared our happiness and watched the fishing boat close with us, death could have taken me quite easily just then, for I knew that I would never experience another such pinnacle of contentment."

Donn Fendler: Lost on a Mountain in Maine (1939)

HIKING WITH HIS family high on Maine's Mount Katahdin in the summer of 1939, twelve-year-old Donn Fendler became separated from the others, then lost in a low cloud. For the next nine days, until he stumbled upon some campers in a remote cabin, he wandered down the mountain, following the course of a stream. At one point he loses his shoes and has to continue barefoot. On the sixth day he faints in the middle of the day.

The next thing I knew I woke up and it was getting dark.

I was sitting on a rock looking at my feet. They didn't seem to belong to me at first. They were the feet of someone else. The toenails were all broken and bleeding and there were thorns in the middle of the soles. I cried a little as I tried to get out those thorns. They were in deep and broken off. I wondered why they didn't hurt more, but when I felt my toes, I knew—those toes were hard and stiff and hardly any feeling in them. The part next to the big toe was like leather. I tried to pinch it, but I couldn't feel anything.

My head ached and I didn't want to move, but night was falling and I had to go on, at least as far as some big tree. I got to my feet. Was that hard! I could scarcely bend my knees, and my head was so dizzy I staggered. I had to go across an open space to the stream, and as I went along I saw a big bear, just ahead of me. Christmas, he was big—big as a house, I thought—but I wasn't a bit scared—not a single bit. I was glad to see him.

Wilfred Thesiger: Arabian Sands (1959)