My Bush Plane’s Engine Quit Over the Alaska Wilderness With a Travel Writer in the Passenger Seat. We Had Four Days to Get Out

There’s a moment in every pilot’s life when the training takes over and the fear waits in the back seat.

I set up a glide. I picked a gravel bar along a wide braided river, about two miles ahead. I told Jenna to tighten her belt, put her head down and trust me.

She said, “Okay,” in a very small voice.

The Beaver came down hard on the gravel, bounced twice, skidded and stopped twenty feet from the water.

Nobody was hurt.

But the radio had been knocked out in the landing, and my satellite messenger was somewhere under the gear in the cargo hold, smashed.

We were in a valley with no name, ninety miles from the nearest town. Nobody would start looking until we didn’t arrive at the lodge.

Jenna sat on a rock for a long time, shaking.

Then she looked up at me.

“So,” she said. “What happens now?”

“Now,” I said, “we make camp.”