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Her body relaxed a little, and the panic attack subsided. He really had helped her.
She pushed down on the ground and lifted her body. The adrenaline of the panic attack had washed away the grogginess she’d had when she first woke up.
But the crying had left her eyes burning and her head hurting from the sinus pressure. She needed to think through what she needed to do. Maybe she wasn’t that far out in the woods.
She stood and took in her surroundings, more thoroughly this time.
The cliff behind her seemed to stretch as far as she could see to the left and right. She walked away from the cliff. The ground rose off in the distance too. A valley? But how to get out? If she was up in the mountains, as the terrain suggested, she’d need to go down.
But sometimes these little valleys could be completely surrounded, and the only way out would be up. That rock face was too high. There was no way she’d be able to get up it without having a panic attack. She’d rather stay at the bottom and die of starvation. Or worse, what if the only way down looked like that?
Her lungs closed up again.
You won’t even have a chance to die of starvation if you don’t breathe.
How was she supposed to make it through this? She wanted to trust that God would make a way, but what if He didn’t?
She put one foot in front of the other. Even if God did make a way out of here, she wasn’t going to find it standing still.
What did her training tell her? Use her equipment.
But she didn’t have any!
She felt her jacket—nothing, not even her hat.
If she could find a stream, she’d be set in two ways. One, a mountain spring-fed stream would provide safe drinking water, and two, water flowed downhill.
She fought with her mind not to be overwhelmed by the possibilities—especially the negative ones that wanted to force her to give up.
But the harder she fought that, the more her mind decided to catapult her back to that stupid day thirteen years ago. But if she blocked those memories, the ways she could die today in the woods clouded her mind.
“Stop!” She stomped her foot on the ground. “Jesus! Help.”
She walked forward again. If only she had flagging tape, she could mark where she’d been, so she didn’t end up walking in circles.
What was it Owen had done?
This time she let the memories come.
Chloe gripped Owen’s hand a little tighter and tugged on him. “We should have found the trail by now.”
It was the summer before their senior year of high school, and while on a camping trip with their church youth group, they had gotten up early to watch the sunrise at the top of the trail. The only problem was they made a wrong turn when coming down the mountain to get back to camp.
They’d wandered around looking for the trail for entirely too long. When the sun set, they camped against a tree overnight. Despite the long hours of not knowing where they were or how they’d find their way out, they continued to dream of the future.
In the morning, Owen said, “I guess it was a bad idea to leave the trail we were on to find the other one.”
“So it would seem. Now what?”
They stood and looked around. It all looked the same. While different sizes and varieties, the trees were the same as everywhere else in the mountains. For hundreds of thousands of acres they were all the same. Nothing seemed clearer in the light of day.
Owen wrapped his arm around her. “Let’s do that thing that the ranger was talking about if you get lost.”
“Stay put until someone finds you?”
“Not that part. The marking a spot and then walking as far in any direction as you can while still keeping an eye on the mark to see if you can find the trail.”
“Sure, but what can we use to mark?”
