In the summer of 2015, I was interviewed by a Seattle news channel about the epic survival story of 16-year-old Autumn Veatch. She was flying home to Washington from Montana with her step-grandparents when their small plane crashed in the North Cascades. Autumn survived the fiery wreck with bruises and burns; however, her step-grandparents didn’t make it. The blaze destroyed any tools and first-aid or survival kits that may have been in the plane.
Although she didn’t have any training to fall back on, Autumn remembered a few survival tips from TV programs she’d watched with her father years before. She remembered to head downhill until finding a stream, and then to follow the water downstream.
So, Autumn made her way out of the mountains by locating and following a stream, climbing down several waterfalls along the way, until the stream joined a larger creek. The water looked dirty, and Autumn didn’t have any purification tools. She decided not to drink it, since she didn’t want to get too sick to keep hiking. She spent the night on a sandbar, huddled in a sweatshirt,
