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

We were out there four days.

I built a shelter from the plane’s cargo tarp and spruce boughs. I caught grayling in the river and cooked them over a fire. I kept the fire going all night to keep the bears away.

Jenna was braver than she believed. She hauled firewood. She helped me lay out a giant SOS in white rocks on the gravel bar. She never once complained, except about my coffee, which was fair.

At night, by the fire, we talked.

She told me she’d spent fifteen years traveling the world for magazines. Fifty-one countries. No home, really. A condo in Boston she saw three months a year. Her travel insurance company knew her better than her family did.

“My mother says I’m running from something,” she said. “I tell her I’m running toward something.”

“Which is it?”

She poked the fire with a stick.

“I’ll tell you if we get out of here.”

On the third night, it rained. Hard. We sat under the tarp, wrapped in the same emergency blanket, listening to the river get louder.

She fell asleep on my shoulder.

I didn’t sleep at all. I didn’t want to miss a minute of it.

On the fourth morning, I heard an engine.

A search plane. Then a helicopter from the Alaska Air National Guard.

They saw our rocks.

Jenna started crying and laughing at the same time, waving both arms at the sky.

When the helicopter landed and the rescuers ran toward us, she turned to me, very fast.

“Erik,” she said. “I’m going to tell you now. In case I lose my nerve when we get back.”