In reconstructing Fendler’s story, Maine woodsmen estimated that he walked 35 miles. The Bangor Daily News proclaimed Fendler’s rescue with a banner headline. Lena McCoarn fed him soup, and got Fendler’s parents on the phone. Nelson McCoarn and another man canoed to Fendler and brought him to the McCoarns’ sporting camp. Fendler saw a man across the water and began yelling. On the ninth day, July 25, he came to the East Branch of the Penobscot River. “He was pulling me along,” Fendler replied. “Your Guardian Angel must have been helping you,” Fendler’s father said in the book. But when he looked around, he didn’t see anyone. He felt something grab him by the shoulders and slowly, gently pull him to his feet. On the eighth day, he fell and lay on the ground for a while. His feet were a mass of cuts, he lost part of a toe, and his knees were badly swollen. A plane passed overhead but he couldn’t draw its attention. He found abandoned cabins on separate days, and took a blanket from one cabin to help stay warm. Twice he encountered bears at berry patches, but they moved away without harming him. He ate strawberries, but shunned other berries because he wasn’t sure what they were. He fought off clouds of mosquitoes and other biting insects. So he followed the water for days, losing his sneakers and jeans along the way. It was up to him to use his Boy Scout training to find his way to safety. He fell in a stream, and when he pulled himself out of the water the figures he saw were gone.Īs he got over his disappointment about the possibility of being rescued, Fendler realized that it was up to him to stay calm and search for a way out of the woods. Then he saw his father drive up in a car.įendler ran toward his father, screaming, “Here I am, Dad!”

“I know it wasn’t a dream, even though it sounds crazy now.”įour ghostly figures appeared. “You may think this was a dream, but it wasn’t,” he said in the book. It was when he woke on his second day that he saw his friend Henry, sitting by a nearby stream. Before falling asleep he said prayers, which he would continue to do morning and night throughout his ordeal. The temperature dropped to 40.ĭescending the mountain through boulder fields, he made it to the forest, where he found shelter under a tree. Although he knew he was lost, he decided the best thing was to get off the mountain, which that night was pounded by sleet and a 40-mph wind.

Lost on a mountain in maine book